TL;DR: #centos and #centos-* are moving to libera.chat
Over the past few days, there has been some upheaval on the Frenode IRC network, resulting in a number of the staff members quitting and starting a new IRC network. I wont attempt to explain all the details here, but you can read more at https://kline.sh which also links to other sources.
The various ops have discussed the situation, and we intend to migrate all of the various #centos-* channels from Freenode over to irc.libera.chat over the coming days.
This will take time, since libera is still spinning up, and some servers are moving from one network to the other.
As libera is still in the early stages of setup, you may have significantly more timeouts/disconnects, netsplits and other issues for now. Until the new network is fully stable, we'll all continue to be present in the Freenode chanels.
Please bring further questions to the IRC channels (on either network).
On 2021-05-19 10:49 a.m., Rich Bowen wrote:
TL;DR: #centos and #centos-* are moving to libera.chat
Over the past few days, there has been some upheaval on the Frenode IRC network, resulting in a number of the staff members quitting and starting a new IRC network. I wont attempt to explain all the details here, but you can read more at https://kline.sh which also links to other sources.
The various ops have discussed the situation, and we intend to migrate all of the various #centos-* channels from Freenode over to irc.libera.chat over the coming days.
This will take time, since libera is still spinning up, and some servers are moving from one network to the other.
As libera is still in the early stages of setup, you may have significantly more timeouts/disconnects, netsplits and other issues for now. Until the new network is fully stable, we'll all continue to be present in the Freenode chanels.
Please bring further questions to the IRC channels (on either network).
We're dealing with this same issue on the clusterlabs channels. We're debating libera.chat and oftc, with my personal preference being OFTC, given it's 20 year history, hosting other OSS projects, and being disconnected entirely from the current drama.
Has the CentOS community considered OFTC? If so, I'm curious what made libera.chat win out. I have no horse in the race of either, and ask to see if I'm missing arguments for/against OFTC or libera.
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 01:01:57PM -0400, Digimer wrote:
Has the CentOS community considered OFTC? If so, I'm curious what made libera.chat win out. I have no horse in the race of either, and ask to see if I'm missing arguments for/against OFTC or libera.
It's a different culture and oftc is unable to scale the way that the sponsor model of libera allows. It's also _all_ the same staff from freenode as of this morning. Same operational mode. Same commands. Same culture. Same trust established with working with the staffers over many years.
It appears that Fedora is moving to libera as well:
https://pagure.io/Fedora-Council/tickets/issue/371
I expect some of the other Red Hat-based project channels (#anaconda, for instance) will also move but this is merely a hunch.
John
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:50 AM Rich Bowen rbowen@redhat.com wrote:
TL;DR: #centos and #centos-* are moving to libera.chat
Over the past few days, there has been some upheaval on the Frenode IRC network, resulting in a number of the staff members quitting and starting a new IRC network. I wont attempt to explain all the details here, but you can read more at https://kline.sh which also links to other sources.
The various ops have discussed the situation, and we intend to migrate all of the various #centos-* channels from Freenode over to irc.libera.chat over the coming days.
This will take time, since libera is still spinning up, and some servers are moving from one network to the other.
As libera is still in the early stages of setup, you may have significantly more timeouts/disconnects, netsplits and other issues for now. Until the new network is fully stable, we'll all continue to be present in the Freenode chanels.
Can you elaborate a bit on the choice of libera.chat? What made it appealing to move to? Why is it more trustworthy than freenode or oftc?
I'm simply curious, not objecting to the move.
josh
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 1:09 PM Josh Boyer jwboyer@redhat.com wrote:
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:50 AM Rich Bowen rbowen@redhat.com wrote:
TL;DR: #centos and #centos-* are moving to libera.chat
Over the past few days, there has been some upheaval on the Frenode IRC network, resulting in a number of the staff members quitting and starting a new IRC network. I wont attempt to explain all the details here, but you can read more at https://kline.sh which also links to other sources.
The various ops have discussed the situation, and we intend to migrate all of the various #centos-* channels from Freenode over to irc.libera.chat over the coming days.
This will take time, since libera is still spinning up, and some servers are moving from one network to the other.
As libera is still in the early stages of setup, you may have significantly more timeouts/disconnects, netsplits and other issues for now. Until the new network is fully stable, we'll all continue to be present in the Freenode chanels.
Can you elaborate a bit on the choice of libera.chat? What made it appealing to move to? Why is it more trustworthy than freenode or oftc?
I'm simply curious, not objecting to the move.
Libera.Chat is operated by the people we've worked with at Freenode for many years. Everyone who quit Freenode is working at Libera.Chat.
That's also why Fedora will transition its legacy IRC channels to Libera.Chat: https://pagure.io/Fedora-Council/tickets/issue/371
On 19/05/2021 18:09, Josh Boyer wrote:
Can you elaborate a bit on the choice of libera.chat? What made it appealing to move to? Why is it more trustworthy than freenode or oftc?
In case you hadn't followed the drama, freenode was subject to what appears to be a hostile takeover by a large company which some/many people distrust. I think that's probably the safest way to phrase it.
Almost all members of staff on freenode that made the place run have quit and it is they who have set up libera.chat and are running it. So other than a domain name change, libera.chat _is_ freenode by another name. The servers that freenode used and ran were all on donated "hardware" and libera is most likely following a similar model.
Effectively libera is freenode minus the company that staged the takeover.
Trevor
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 06:16:32PM +0100, Trevor Hemsley via CentOS-devel wrote:
On 19/05/2021 18:09, Josh Boyer wrote:
Can you elaborate a bit on the choice of libera.chat? What made it appealing to move to? Why is it more trustworthy than freenode or oftc?
In case you hadn't followed the drama, freenode was subject to what appears to be a hostile takeover by a large company which some/many people distrust. I think that's probably the safest way to phrase it.
tl;dr version and this is accurate, yes.
Much longer version with lots of references written by a member of staff that resigned this morning and is now on the new network:
https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491
If you want a complete background this is a good read.
John
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 1:32 PM John R. Dennison jrd@gerdesas.com wrote:
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 06:16:32PM +0100, Trevor Hemsley via CentOS-devel wrote:
On 19/05/2021 18:09, Josh Boyer wrote:
Can you elaborate a bit on the choice of libera.chat? What made it appealing to move to? Why is it more trustworthy than freenode or oftc?
In case you hadn't followed the drama, freenode was subject to what appears to be a hostile takeover by a large company which some/many people distrust. I think that's probably the safest way to phrase it.
tl;dr version and this is accurate, yes.
Much longer version with lots of references written by a member of staff that resigned this morning and is now on the new network:
https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491
If you want a complete background this is a good read.
Thank you to all that responded.
I'm left with the impression that I thought Freenode was more centrally organized and staffed than seems to be the case. I don't know why I thought that, because it makes no sense if I think about it for more than 2 minutes. WIth that in mind, it doesn't really seem to be much of a risk moving to an IRC service hosted on brand new infrastructure that materialized out of nowhere, since the existing infrastructure was already random. I'm glad the staff is the same. I wish them well.
josh
On Wednesday, May 19, 2021 12:59 PM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@redhat.com wrote:
I'm left with the impression that I thought Freenode was more centrally organized and staffed than seems to be the case. I don't know why I thought that, because it makes no sense if I think about it for more than 2 minutes. WIth that in mind, it doesn't really seem to be much of a risk moving to an IRC service hosted on brand new infrastructure that materialized out of nowhere, since the existing infrastructure was already random. I'm glad the staff is the same. I wish them well.
I was also under the impression things worked internally at Freenode only to discover how I imagine things doesn't match reality.
One of the stated reasons for CentOS getting folded/merged into Red Hat was to get more resources to help protect the control CentOS brand. But to some extent, availablity of the community through Freenode has been part of the CentOS brand/experience. While CentOS has done a good job to respond quickly and get the message out, there will continue to be third-party documents on the internet that reference freenode in relation to CentOS.
Should this event be treated as an opportunity to further protect tthis resource that plays a role in the brand?
Is there any discussions going on of CentOS, Fedora and/or Red Hat donating servers, staff and volunteers to be directly involved in libera.chat?
To some extent, I feel we got lucky so many members of the freenode staff felt obligations to the mission. Maybe next time we might be more blind sided.
On 5/19/21 1:09 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:50 AM Rich Bowen rbowen@redhat.com wrote:
TL;DR: #centos and #centos-* are moving to libera.chat
...
Can you elaborate a bit on the choice of libera.chat What made it appealing to move to? Why is it more trustworthy than freenode or oftc?
I'm simply curious, not objecting to the move.
Once the dust settles, libera.chat will be freenode with a new name. Same staff. Many of the same hosted/donated servers. Same channels, for the most part. This is all just a very disruptive, inconvenient renaming of the network. Like in 1998, but with memes.
John answered the "why not oftc" question else-thread, and he has more experience with both networks than I.
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 1:18 PM Rich Bowen rbowen@redhat.com wrote:
On 5/19/21 1:09 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:50 AM Rich Bowen rbowen@redhat.com wrote:
TL;DR: #centos and #centos-* are moving to libera.chat
...
Can you elaborate a bit on the choice of libera.chat What made it appealing to move to? Why is it more trustworthy than freenode or oftc?
I'm simply curious, not objecting to the move.
Once the dust settles, libera.chat will be freenode with a new name. Same staff. Many of the same hosted/donated servers. Same channels, for the most part. This is all just a very disruptive, inconvenient renaming of the network. Like in 1998, but with memes.
John answered the "why not oftc" question else-thread, and he has more experience with both networks than I.
Wow. I see that the name "librenode", to follow the recent traditions of "libressl" and "libreoffice" software forks, was unavailable. Sorry you folks have been made so unhappy, such a mess can take years if not decades to recover from.
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Digimer -
John R. Dennison -
Josh Boyer -
Neal Gompa -
Nico Kadel-Garcia -
redbaronbrowser -
Rich Bowen -
Trevor Hemsley