Ubuntu, Wikimedia jump ship to the Libera Chat IRC network after Freenode channel confiscations

One of the bigger beasts of the Linux world, Ubuntu, has abruptly jumped ship to Libera Chat from the Freenode IRC network after what the Ubuntu Community Council described as a "hostile takeover" of its namespaces. Just hours ago at the time of publication, Wikimedia also upped sticks. For Ubuntu, the move had been on the …

[Pascal Monett]

"confiscated by the new freenode management."

Freenode urgently needs to rebrand itself as Dictatornode.

[lglethal]

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

It's becoming increasingly clear that anything with "Free" in the name is usually anything but. Just like any nation with People's Republic or Democratic Republic in the name is absoutely not a democracy nor is it run for the people...

[Joe W]

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

"Democratic People's Republic" is to "Republic"

like...

"Straightjacket" to "jacket"

[b0llchit]

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

Soon they will be on-the-frits-Node. Who wants to be there anymore?

Next releases of the major and minor IRC clients will remove or deprecate the freenode link(s) and replace it with prominent libera links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

Well, it seems to be rather free of users, content and traffic now.

Fun question: who owns the copyright on channel content? If there's no arrangement in the Terms for a rights transfer you could maybe entertain the idea of withdrawing your permission to use such on Freenode.

Could be a fun exercise.

[keithpeter]

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

I know nothing about IRC or trademarks but that isn't going to stop me having a thought...

Ubuntu is a registered trade mark of Canonical, a company in the UK I believe. I also gather that one of the freenode related companies whose sale to Mr Lee has caused all this kerfuffle is based in the UK. Would Canonical's legal people perhaps be sending letters about the use of Ubuntu on Freenode servers sometime soon? Can Canonical stop having their Ubuntu brand 'represented' on Freenode's servers?

[Tomato Krill]

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

You want canonical policing which entities can and can’t run Ubuntu? That sounds like the start of a very slippery and very pointless slope

[ibmalone]

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

Not run, have channels named after. After all, Lee himself claims this is about brand representation. Like if you or I were to launch 'Ubuntu magazine'. The real slippery slope would be whether this would affect people like local user groups, but, since you get to choose how far to enforce, that doesn't seem like a problem.

[keithpeter]

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

"You want canonical policing which entities can and can’t run Ubuntu?"

No. I was on about ubuntu the trademarked name, not the software

[karlkarl]

Thats right. Everyone should flee Freenode and leave more room for me... and my "brand to be represented on IRC". ;)

[Chris G]

Coming soon to Freenode

Tumbleweed blowing across the office accompanied by the sound of crickets.

[Mage]

Re: Coming soon to Freenode

pining for the fjords.

[TrevorH]

fleenode

[keithpeter]

Most fleenode domains are not registered including the .org. Only fleenode.net has been registered.

Very tempting...

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

I haven't used IRC for decades but this is fascinating to follow

[heyrick]

Indeed, it's practically a masterclass in how to annoy the most users in the shortest amount of time.

I wonder how long it will take before somebody realises that the product wasn't the selling point, it was the user communities. The ones that are swiftly departing.

[McCovican]

"Frankly speaking, if I was in charge of any of these organizations, I'd revisit the decision of who is in charge of making decisions on what and how their brand is being represented on IRC."

Dude probably just made the decision to jump ship a lot easier for the hold-outs. Insulting the leadership of your client orgs, and confiscating their channels if they don't show loyalty to Freenode? Yeah, I'd peace out pretty hard at that point.

[teknopaul]

Apparently if you type libera.chat into a freenode ICR channel it gets auto taken over by Lee and you loose control of the channel.

i.e. if you discuss moving you get banned, lot of projects moved after he started doing that because they no longer had control of their own channels.

[Anonymous Coward]

@if you type libera.chat into a freenode

Are we not allowed to suggest other people do this a lot anymore?

[teknopaul]

Re: @if you type libera.chat into a freenode

So what? AC it's still shitty behaviour, whoever does it.

Fortunatly that Striesland effect will probably kill freenode now that everyone knows libera.chat exists. (and why)

[General Purpose]

If you say you're not moving to libera.chat, does that trigger the auto-takeover filters too?

[Anonymous South African Coward]

now that'll be a fun thing to try on any remaining freenode channels...

[teknopaul]

heard it said that it's a bit so it might work

[Danny 14]

scrape freenode with an adbot that posts along he lines "i heard you were moving to libara, good luck!"

let the battle of the bots commence.

[Anonymous Coward]

IRC war scripts or bring back TCP/OOB bug

I think someone should have taken a chill pill since they are well on their way to loosing any significance

Either confusion about who owns content posted upon a hosting service or heavy handed external pressure results in all the star systems slipping through their fingers.

Way to show them who is boss Moff

[Gordon 10]

By their actions you will know them

The dude seemed quite reasonable in his original press release to El Reg a couple of weeks ago and made it sound just like another internet spat.

However his actions since pretty much underline who’s the bad guy here. What a toerag.

[ITMA]

Re: By their actions you will know them

Is it necessary to insult honest, hard working, genuine toerags through such a scurrilous association?

[ibmalone]

Fedora too

See https://mobile.twitter.com/fedora/status/1397979075973730304.

[Coastal cutie]

I think Lee must have been taking PR lessons from Comical Ali.

[Gordon 10]

And Business Development lessons from Chemical Ali.

[Danny 14]

Borat school for business

[marcellothearcane]

Credit where it's due

Well done to the people who run libera.chat for being able to get up and running so quickly, and be able to accommodate a lot of users turning up.

They've handled it better than most platforms, including Signal a few months ago.

[Tom 7]

Re: Credit where it's due

I think IRC has significantly lower bandwidth than something like the Video Calling offered by Signal, and is far less affected by any latency. A 2Mb connection will do one video call but 2000 people typing fast simultaneously.

[Aussie Doc]

Optional sensible title here

"...the tide is turning..."

What? So only the big names are moving on noisily but everybody is quiet since, if they get too noisy they get censored?

What could possibly go wrong, especially when you are basically rude to your client orgs in the process.

Last one out, turn off the lights, please.

[carl0s]

Bonus of all this is that I have been able to reclaim the nick that I've used for the past 25 years but lost after a short absence. Sweet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Andrew is just going boldly where IRC has never gone before!

$ dig -t soa irc.porn

;; ANSWER SECTION:

irc.porn. 86400 IN SOA ns1.linode.com. andrew.imperialfamily.com. 2021000003 14400 14400 1209600 86400

Yes, imperialfamily.com is really Andrew Lee's business, and displays freenode as part of its portfolio on its frontpage.

[Ian Court]

Projects leaving at quite a rate

https://github.com/siraben/freenode-exodus

Lee’s futile attempts to spin this are laughable. He has only himself to blame.