Heh, same pattern as ever: corporation takes over, first thing they do is push ads and deploy surveillance. Looks like FOSS projects are vulnerable for their “trademark” (everything other than code and community) takeover. Sounds similar to what have happened to Audacity and OpenOffice before.
There needs to be a better way to protect projects from this form of aggression.
Ultimatly the problem was that a single corruptable individual held the rights to the name and other vital stuff. For a project of the size and importance like Freenode this is highly irregular.
It’s called cryptoidiocy here in the thread (after your comment) but the better way is actually the crypto concept of DAO: Decentralised Autonomous Organisation.
It’s a bit weird to see crypto, of which one of the fundamentals is being decentralised, being called idiocy on a forum which wants to be decentralised…
Even Vice has an article about what’s going on. I was not aware that Lee is the Crown Prince of Korea. Or that he is behind shells.com, along with Mark Karpeles. I had been thinking about setting up an account there, but not so sure, now.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7ev8y/freenode-open-source-korea-crown-prince-takeover
Yeah and dodgy stuff like PIA and Mt.Gox. I would be much less worried about this if it was someone else.
More comments : https://lobste.rs/s/1z77ly/libera_chat
Why libera.chat over Matrix? This seems like a great opportunity to switch.
IRC diehards will never switch. I salute them, as a former party member.
I still have some doubts about Matrix. The concept is great but it all started within https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdocs#Controversy with iirc vector.im not having a privacy policy for years, using non free java-script, and having to sign up via their centralized ID server. What happened with all that data for which there was no privacy policy ? Furthermore I never found the Matrix chat experience very encouraging. The clients looked great and fancy, and E2E encryption is an ongoing dev process, but as long as there is no stable and light weight server for it, I’m not going to use it as a daily driver with self-hosting. I find XMPP and options like Zulip,Mattermost,Rocketchat more interesting for teams or alternative to IRC. And for libera.chat : migrating from IRC to IRC in this sudden situation seems very sensible.
So switch from one mostly centralized service being currently taken over by a dodgy crypto-currency linked company (Freenode Inc.) to one that already has been a for-profit dodgy crypto-currency funded company (NewVector/Element) for some years?
Libera.chat is at least run by a Swedish non-profit with all volunteer admins (but is also too centralized).
I don’t see any reason for communities which prefer IRC to make a move to matrix but your comment seems unfounded.
Matrix Foundation, which is a steward of matrix protocol, is a UK non-profit community interest company.
Element is a for-profit but how exactly is it dodgy? It is primarily a FOSS company. Their only connection to cryptoidiocy I know of is in some experimental P2P matrix implementations.
Read up a bit on the funding history of New Vector Ltd. i.e. about their VC funding and the “strategic” 2018 merger with Status (Ethereum-based chat and crypto wallet app).
The foundation was IMHO only created as an afterthought to make [Matrix] more palatable for the wider OS community.
From the blog by status:
Furthermore, the collaboration between Status and Matrix is expected to:
This does sour my view of Element.
Matrix Foundation might have been an afterthought but it still is a valid step in ensuring at least some independence of the protocol from Element.
True, the foundation is not all bad, but at least currently the people in charge of it are the same persons (& close friends) as those running NewVector Ltd. Once that changes significantly I am willing to soften my stance on the foundation itself.
##linux and #slack among others have already created channels on Libera
While it might be a quick fix to just move over, I am hoping that people take this opportunity to reduce IRCs centralisation on a few providers and push some more modern standards compliant IRCds like Oragono. Libera.chat sadly uses a IRCd that has very few modern additions.
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