IRC migration

[stux...@gmail.com]

For those who are familiar with the project's IRC channel in Freenode, there have been some unpleasant activity in the network in the last few days:

• https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-staff-exodus-new-network/

Also, the following incident has been highlighted:

• https://www.devever.net/~hl/freenode_abuse

Since it looks like Freenode won't be returning to normal any time soon I wanted to bring up this topic to the group.  What should the future home of the IRC channel be? Should it:

1. Stay in FreeNode
2. Migrate to Libera Chat (this is the option we're leaning towards the most)
   
3. Migrate to OFTC

Now, to keep things simple I'm only suggesting these 3 options as we have registered channels in all 3 networks. These are the only options we're interested in pursuing. 

We'd like to hear everyone's opinion, although this won't be a straight vote, but rather a Wikipedia-like query for consensus.  Based on what looks to be the strongest support, we'll update the wiki accordingly. 

So, please let us know what you think!

-stux

[Egon.F...@gmx.de]

Migrate to Libera Chat

[hao jiu]

whichever is okay. 

stux...@gmail.com 在 2021年5月23日 星期日上午1:25:32 [UTC+8] 的信中寫道：

[DimeCadmium]

While I think Freenode's new management has certainly proven not to be trustworthy, I also think that the staffers now of Libera have deliberately escalated (or accelerated) the situation and for that reason do not plan to be on Libera.

Libera is, of course, also still unproven - although I'm not sure how much of their infrastructure is formerly of Freenode.

I'm already on OFTC and so would join there, but frankly as I'm not likely to have a whole lot to contribute you should probably take that with a grain of salt.

[Peter Shkenev]

I will add my two cents here.

Neither old or new Freenode stuff are right in this drama. So I would not trust both Freenode and Libera.

I would stay out of this conflict and move to quiet and calm OFTC.

среда, 26 мая 2021 г. в 13:33:53 UTC+3, DimeCadmium:

[David van Moolenbroek]

All,

My personal preference would be libera.chat. My view (of course, based on the information available so far) is that the ex-freenode staff that now formed libera.chat rightly escaped from an increasingly problematic situation. While they perhaps deserve some blame for *how* they did that, I see no reason to assume that that will have long-term effects on the ability of libera.chat to host us as a community as well as freenode did, at least up to recently. The most recent events [1] do suggest that we should leave freenode sooner rather than later at this point. While oftc would be acceptable to me as well, the practical upside of going to libera.chat will be that just about everything else will remain the same as it was on freenode.

For anyone looking for a quick introduction on what transpired recently, I would now also recommend ArsTechnica's summary [2], although that does not yet include the aforementioned most recent events.

Kind regards,

David

[1] https://mastodon.sdf.org/@kline/106299403921451814

[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-been-taken-over-by-the-crown-prince-of-korea/

On Saturday, May 22, 2021 at 7:25:32 PM UTC+2 stux...@gmail.com wrote:

[veganaiZe]

Libera looks to be everything which people are worried freenode will eventually turn into, anyway, and it's all backed by some over zealous pseudo-SJW propaganda.

[stux...@gmail.com]

Hi veganaiZe ,

Setting aside politically-charged language, is there (verifiable) evidence of misconduct by libera's staff?  If so, is it behavior that could affect the project?  So far I have not seen or heard any negative reports on the side of libera's management.   I would prefer decisions to be made as objectively as possible.

-stux

[stux...@gmail.com]

Speaking of decisions.  It's been a few weeks since this discussion started.  While there hasn't been a clear consensus regarding this decision, there is currently an active user base on the libera channel.  That means that barring clear evidence of problematic behavior on libera's side, most likely this will be the new IRC home of the project.  However we will wait until June 21st before closing the discussion period and making any official decision.  We also would like to be able to include users who'd rather avoid using libera altogether.  To that end I'm planning on installing an IRC bridge between the OFTC network and libera.chat network channels.  I've researched one solution although I haven't had time to test it yet.  Only those two network channels will be bridged. We'll also try to figure out a phase-out plan for Freenode.

Thanks for your help and support in this matter!
-stux

[chris]

Isn't the entire debate around moving to libera, itself, "politically charged"?  Is there verifiable evidence of misconduct by freenode's staff?

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[stux...@gmail.com]

As a matter of fact there is.  As pointed by this link in my original post:

• https://www.devever.net/~hl/freenode_abuse

Freenode has been unilaterally taking over any channel that has "libera" in its topic and removing any such mentions.  The above example was just the first of many channels that have had that problem.  Generally, this was never an issue in the past.  The #minix channel in OFTC referred to the freenode channel in its topic and has done so for years.  Same with another channel I registered in mozilla when it had IRC.  Allowing such things is usually a matter of courtesy at the very least.

-stux

[veganaiZe]

It's claimed that libera was started as a response to some previous misconduct.  The very fact that "libera" was being mentioned in channel topics shows that the situation had already escalated, by that point (Not that I condone such response).  Wasn't this done by one or a very few freenode volunteers?  Is there verifiable evidence, pre-libera,  of a "hostile takeover" which has direct links to Andrew Lee?

[stux...@gmail.com]

I think that for the purposes of this discussion, it would not be productive to dwell on how things got started.  There are plenty of articles online trying to shed light into that situation.  I think the best approach is to focus on the current state of things and discuss our preferences. 

It's clear there are those who do not trust libera staff at the moment, and freenode recently caused even more chaos by resetting its registrations.  I do not see staying in Freenode as a viable option (I'd like to know if anyone disagrees with that observation).  Therefore OFTC is a reasonable alternative, but since not everyone is there I think setting up an IRC bridge may have to do as a compromise. 

BTW The bridge I found was old and does not seem to support TLS. If anyone knows of a good ready-to-use IRC bridge, please let me know! Otherwise I'll have to cobble something together in my spare time.

Thanks everyone for your help, support and patience.
-stux

[chris]

Don't want to dwell on how it was all started?  That seems like not wanting to find out if it was arson that started the fire.  Root causes are the most important evidence of all.  Why do you dodge that?  That represents the validity of the entire argument.

Anyway, regardless, it looks like freenode has shot themselves (for sure) in the other foot.  I'll be checking into OFTC.

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[Chris]

He said that we shouldn't dwell on it any longer "for the purposes of this discussion", i.e. at this point, the "root cause" of the whole freenode situation is irrelevant to this specific discussion, which it is.  This discussion is for deciding where the community should move to, especially after the most recent freenode updates.  Moving the community is therefore inevitable; deciding where to go is the important part.  The details of the freenode quagmire no longer matter FOR THIS DISCUSSION at this point.

To tie it in to your arson analogy, if your company's building burns down in a fire, determining what caused that fire is important, but that root cause is irrelevant to deciding where the company should move to or what it should do next.  You don't need to know the specific root cause of a fire to know you need to find somewhere new to go.

As for the discussion itself, OFTC is looking like a reasonable alternative to me, and I might just use the libera chat if I want to join in IRC, for simplicity.

[veganaiZe]

@Chris  I don't need a translator, nor do I need people ganging up on me, thanks.  I was told to provide verifiable evidence -- I was simply asking for the same.  If the same people who burned down the building are telling us to move to libera then it DOES matter, doesn't it?  The building was NOT burned down when I'd originally asked.  There were people running around claiming it was on fire, so to speak.  I was simply asking if there was really a fire and, if so, who'd started it?

I'm NOT dwelling.  I'd said my peace & moved on.  I don't appreciate your redundant & unconstructive remarks.

And don't worry, I already know...  Never let the truth get in the way of an agenda.

You're not going to find me on libera nor freenode, and that's all I've got to say about that.

[stux...@gmail.com]

So this is a bit of a late update, but please excuse my inability to produce regular updates due to my lack of having been retired after winning the lottery or similar.  Man, having a day job and a house to keep up with sure is time consuming... I'll still work on things slowly.  Now, a few things about the IRC migration:

• Libera will be the official channel going forward.  This is where most of the discussion has been taking place and will continue to take place.
• I'm keeping the OFTC channel open, however my first test of the IRC bridge failed.  When I have time i'll work on figuring out how to add the necessary code to handle the options that I think are missing (most likely a host mask is required on both servers.)  
  

So again, please be patient as we work to slowly get this project back on its feet.  Feel free to send me your winning lottery tickets to help expedite my retirement (and hence the project's progress.)

Thanks,

-stux

[zacts]

I'd like to suggest at least an "official" unofficial Discord chatroom for minix3.

[zacts]

irc is terrible these days. I just think that another chat venue for the project is way better than irc. for a project that was originally affiliated with a university like minix3, I think that Discord would be a better option overall.

[stux...@gmail.com]

Hi zacts! Good to see you in the chat! And It's sad to see you leave IRC :(. 

I'll try to reiterate some of the points me and others raised in the IRC chat (and some new ones) regarding this matter:

• IRC has terrible annoyances and I don't know what exactly happened other than "you got a ton of spam".  But there's some tools out there to help resolve that (such as only receiving messages from registered users).  Of course that involves further maintenance so I can see that being a disinsentive for that.
  
• Discord is a cloud-based proprietary system (much like Google, so the irony doesn't escape me).  That said, even with Google groups I can use my favourite email client to interact with it and it keeps archived records of all the interactions.  It also has "take out" to export your data.  If groups every goes haywire and disappears, the channel can pick up elsewhere.  I don't know how much of this discord supports.  I know very little of it because I've used very little of it.  Despite its popularity, it appears as more of a walled garden than groups is: for example, groups messages can be read publicly without registering, but can discord messages me accessed in the same way?
  
• I had a similar situation with another group I frequent where they opened up a discord chat but there's no IRC bridge and I'm missing out.  I haven't had the time to properly explore discord and set it up to my preferences.
  
• IRC servers are fairly independent (you see how quickly libera was spun up after the freenode mess) and generally open in terms of management and source code.  An increasingly popular alternative is Matrix. They're open, easily bridge IRC and modern.  That's an alternative I'd be more inclined to explore.  But my time is limited.  I still haven't had a chance to figure out what's preventing me from bridging OFTC (I have a theory) and how to fix it. (BTW Matrix was recommended by someone who is actively avoiding Discord and wanted us to relay that suggestion to you).
  

So, I hope this helps.  If we set up a matrix channel and bridge to that (and maybe even have it bridge to OFTC to serve as a relay) I'd be up for that.  Although for the time being I doubt the project will officially switch to matrix, it seems like a good backup solution to have (that could become more permanent in the long run).

So, yeah, don't be a stranger and let us know what you think!

-stux

[John Runyon]

Discord is awful and the antithesis of open source or open research. It's also incredibly resource intensive (unlike minix or IRC). Oh, and you're stuck with their awful, buggy UI rather than being able to use any UI you want with any features you want.

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