Libera dot chat

May 26, 2021

Update: June 14, 2021: all nicknames apparently got reset (or lost?) mine included. I am no longer connected at all. If anyone is using my nick there, it’s not me.

As many people within the tiny Venn-diagram circle that includes “still actively use IRC” probably know, some sort of crap went down inside the Freenode IRC network.

I don’t have very much insight into how IRC networks are run, but nearly a dozen “staff” (who are actually volunteers, hence the air-quotes) quit and formed their own network instead. Obviousy, nobody is going to take such a decision lightly. If you wish to learn more about the “crap” the best summary is probably joepie91’s FAQ.

We decided to follow suit and take the #tahoe-lafs channel over to Libera, as several other projects were doing. The day after we did this (including a /topic change to point people to the new official channel), the channel was seized by Freenode ops (that is, all current ops taken away, the topic changed back and people re-directed to ##tahoe-lafs instead of Libera.chat).

This is not a good way to run anything and caused me to leave any other channels I was still in on Freenode. I will not be using the network anymore and will only monitor channels on Libera (#tahoe-lafs and #magic-wormhole being the projects I’m current contributing to).