On 2021-05-21 22:45:32 +0200 (+0200), Fabiano Fidêncio wrote: [...]
I've seen that some communities will end up moving to libera.chat. I'm not saying we should, but that may be an easier transition as that's pretty much freenode as it was before the issue, including the maintainers.
Mostly the same staff, yes, which is a big part of why their problems are likely to continue to follow them to whatever new IRC network they establish (also the software they're running on Liberia isn't quite the same as Freenode either, while exploring I've already noticed a number of syntactic differences for basic things like channel ACL management). That's ultimately why we decided many years ago to start keeping copies of all our channels registered on OFTC, and have repeatedly recommended moving there as each new installment of Freenode drama arises. Really, we ended up on Freenode originally because the OpenStack project had very strong ties with the Ubuntu community early in its formation, and that's where the main Ubuntu IRC channels were. In truth, the ideals and governance of OFTC are much more closely aligned with those of our projects, and it would have been a better fit than Freenode, but the critical mass which formed was very hard to relocate once established. The bulk of the work for any such transition is updating references in documentation and on websites and letting users know to adjust their client configuration to connect to a different DNS name, which is going to be the same degree of pain regardless of the network choice. Ultimately it's picking between a completely new IRC network where we don't have any channels registered yet and seems to be in major turmoil as they're trying to bootstrap a mass migration, or an established and very boring open source oriented network of two decades with a clearly defined governance and backed by a reputable non-profit foundation. In the end we'll run our services in whichever network we seem to get a mass consensus for among our projects, but I personally think that moving to OFTC represents an opportunity for quiet simplicity, and allows us to finally back away from the entire Freenode mess. That's why we've continued to maintain provisions for a fallback there for over 7 years now. -- Jeremy Stanley