mniip · May 19, 2021 13:26
diff --git a/freenode-resignation.txt b/freenode-resignation.txt
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 Hash: SHA256

 https://mniip.com/freenode.txt
 https://gist.github.com/mniip/ae2db79154fd39af15f24687a2421498

 Good evening freenode.

 This is not a draft.

 I have been a user of freenode for about a decade now. In a way, freenode
 introduced me to the free and open source software community, and I've been an
 active contributor for most of that decade. In 2016 I volunteered to help with
 some development work for freenode, and consequently to help with general staff
 duties. I love helping people, be it directly, or indirectly by maintaining a
 platform that enables others to help more people. To me, volunteering for
 freenode has always been about that.

 Historically, freenode has always been loosely organized: a group of friends
 (all unpaid volunteers!) who share a common vision and who collaborate on
 common goals. Even our servers were provided to us via personal connections
 with friendly people at hosting companies.

 In 2017 freenode has been incorporated as Freenode Ltd[1] by our
 then-head-of-staff christel, who proceeded to sell it to Andrew Lee's Private
 Internet Access. Other staff were not aware of the full implications of this at
 the time, and were reassured that:
 	- that this is only a technicality necessary for organizing our
 	  freenode.live conferences, which will be sponsored in large part by
 	  Private Internet Access/Andrew Lee.
 	- that Private Internet Access/Andrew Lee will not intervene with us
 	  staff managing the IRC network We forwarded this promise to our
 	  users[2]. To say that christel was not exactly honest with us (and in
 	  turn our users) would be an understatement.

 The promise has generally been kept for 4 years, and Andrew Lee never had any
 access to any freenode servers, or any privileged features of our IRC network.

 freenode staff, barring christel, were not paid, and there was never any
 expectation that we would be. As far as operating freenode is concerned, we do
 not have any legally binding contracts with anyone or anything. The sponsors
 that provided freenode with servers also never had any contracts with any
 people or companies.

 In Februrary 2021, christel rushed a sponsorship with Shells.com, whose logo
 appeared on the top of our website, and who were promising to sponsor Freenode
 Ltd. Due to the change being rushed and due to poor internal communications,
 there were more questions than there were answers -- from users and from staff
 members alike. This created a lot of controversy and in March christel decided
 to resign from her position as head of freenode staff. On the same day she was
 removed from the board of Freenode Ltd[3], which was now completely owned by
 Andrew Lee.

 With christel gone, we unanimously elected tomaw as new head of staff. In the
 meantime, it became increasingly obvious that Andrew Lee did a 180 on his
 earlier promise, and that he now wants full operational control of the freenode
 IRC network. While it was all up in the air, staff prepared for the worst, and
 unfortunately a draft of one resignation letter was found by search engine
 crawlers.

 Andrew Lee's public response to that on IRC[4][5] clarified that he had no
 intention of honoring our long established staff team structure. Some users
 reported[6][7] that Andrew Lee had already started assembling a replacement
 team, and that people were bribed to join with the prospect of money, power,
 vanity, and even revenge on former staff[8]. I am grateful for the feedback we
 have received from our people and projects, a lot of whom are sympathetic with
 us and are questioning the new management[4][9][10].

 Only some time later staff really became aware of what had happened 4 years
 prior. It seems like there's no way around it: the IRC network and all things
 to do with it, together with our users' data has been sold to Andrew Lee by
 christel. Worth noting that this is not the first IRC network that Andrew Lee
 has bought[11].

 The data that has been sold, data that freenode has been keeping and
 processing -- consists of:
 	- Any current metadata that's associated with any registrations with
 	  NickServ and ChanServ. This includes your email address, and last
 	  hostname with which you logged into your account.
 	- MemoServ memos and current ProjectServ metadata -- if you're
 	  participating in a registered project on freenode.
 	- Logs of *Serv usage and logs of connections/disconnections for the
 	  past 30 days.
 	- Any and all correspondence you've had with [email protected],
 	  [email protected], [email protected] or similar.
 To this day, freenode has not been logging your messages. As long as freenode
 is still running the same software stack, you can erase your NickServ
 registration with:
 	/msg NickServ DROP <nick> <password>

 In light of the above, I don't want to be anywhere in the vicinity of freenode
 in the future, let alone to continue volunteering for the network. I lay down
 my privileges and I will no longer be contributing to freenode. It has been a
 pleasure to work during all these years side by side with fellow volunteers, as
 well as the projects and the people that inhabited the network. I express my
 deepeest apologies to our users and projects who were relying on us and who may
 now feel betrayed.

 The group of volunteers who used to be freenode staff stands united on this
 issue. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]
 We will be building a new network for Free and Open Source Software
 collaboration:
 	irc.libera.chat +6697
 	https://libera.chat/
 Learning from our own mistakes, it is backed by a democratically governed
 Swedish non-profit. If you'd like to get in touch with us, there would be best.

 Some of you might similarly be reconsidering participating in freenode. If you
 have a community, you might be considering alternative platforms. Moving
 communities is hard, and I will encourage you to make your own educated
 decisions on that matter. But if you or your project decide to follow us to our
 new place, do get in touch with us and we will do our best to assist with the
 move.

 Good night.
 	-- mniip, May 19 2021

 [1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10308021
 [2] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn -- "the freenode project will continue to
 operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now"
 [3] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10308021/filing-history
 -- 26 Apr 2021
 [4] https://paste.sr.ht/~ircwright/7e751d2162e4eb27cba25f6f8893c1f38930f7c4
 -- Andrew Lee is rasengan on IRC
 [5] https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a123de
 [6] https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1392995496403341313
 [7] https://distfiles.dereferenced.org/stuff/rasengan-log.txt
 [8] https://distfiles.dereferenced.org/stuff/nirvana-log.txt
 [9] https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409
 [10] https://gist.github.com/shadowcat-mst/998cea12794768bdb3da2daeff31baad
 [11] https://sand.cat/fiW5QDYXauoKwybL/snoo-takeover.txt

 [12] amdj: https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491
 [13] edk: https://gist.github.com/edk0/478fb4351bc3ba458288d6878032669d
 [14] emilsp: https://gist.github.com/pinkisemils/39d4ded8b1639b6f39dcab15618649f5
 [15] Fuchs: https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt
 [16] jess: https://gist.github.com/jesopo/45a3e9cdbe517dc55e6058eb43b00ed9
 [17] JonathanD: https://gist.github.com/JonathanD82/6518b93708e0aaf4b8f92c8e7200816d
 [18] kline: https://kline.sh
 [19] Md: https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_461
 [20] mniip: https://mniip.com/freenode.txt
 [21] niko: https://coevoet.fr/freenode.html
 [22] Swant: https://swantzter.se/freenode-resignation
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	https://mniip.com/freenode.txt
	https://gist.github.com/mniip/ae2db79154fd39af15f24687a2421498

	Good evening freenode.

	This is not a draft.

	I have been a user of freenode for about a decade now. In a way, freenode
	introduced me to the free and open source software community, and I've been an
	active contributor for most of that decade. In 2016 I volunteered to help with
	some development work for freenode, and consequently to help with general staff
	duties. I love helping people, be it directly, or indirectly by maintaining a
	platform that enables others to help more people. To me, volunteering for
	freenode has always been about that.

	Historically, freenode has always been loosely organized: a group of friends
	(all unpaid volunteers!) who share a common vision and who collaborate on
	common goals. Even our servers were provided to us via personal connections
	with friendly people at hosting companies.

	In 2017 freenode has been incorporated as Freenode Ltd[1] by our
	then-head-of-staff christel, who proceeded to sell it to Andrew Lee's Private
	Internet Access. Other staff were not aware of the full implications of this at
	the time, and were reassured that:
	- that this is only a technicality necessary for organizing our
	freenode.live conferences, which will be sponsored in large part by
	Private Internet Access/Andrew Lee.
	- that Private Internet Access/Andrew Lee will not intervene with us
	staff managing the IRC network We forwarded this promise to our
	users[2]. To say that christel was not exactly honest with us (and in
	turn our users) would be an understatement.

	The promise has generally been kept for 4 years, and Andrew Lee never had any
	access to any freenode servers, or any privileged features of our IRC network.

	freenode staff, barring christel, were not paid, and there was never any
	expectation that we would be. As far as operating freenode is concerned, we do
	not have any legally binding contracts with anyone or anything. The sponsors
	that provided freenode with servers also never had any contracts with any
	people or companies.

	In Februrary 2021, christel rushed a sponsorship with Shells.com, whose logo
	appeared on the top of our website, and who were promising to sponsor Freenode
	Ltd. Due to the change being rushed and due to poor internal communications,
	there were more questions than there were answers -- from users and from staff
	members alike. This created a lot of controversy and in March christel decided
	to resign from her position as head of freenode staff. On the same day she was
	removed from the board of Freenode Ltd[3], which was now completely owned by
	Andrew Lee.

	With christel gone, we unanimously elected tomaw as new head of staff. In the
	meantime, it became increasingly obvious that Andrew Lee did a 180 on his
	earlier promise, and that he now wants full operational control of the freenode
	IRC network. While it was all up in the air, staff prepared for the worst, and
	unfortunately a draft of one resignation letter was found by search engine
	crawlers.

	Andrew Lee's public response to that on IRC[4][5] clarified that he had no
	intention of honoring our long established staff team structure. Some users
	reported[6][7] that Andrew Lee had already started assembling a replacement
	team, and that people were bribed to join with the prospect of money, power,
	vanity, and even revenge on former staff[8]. I am grateful for the feedback we
	have received from our people and projects, a lot of whom are sympathetic with
	us and are questioning the new management[4][9][10].

	Only some time later staff really became aware of what had happened 4 years
	prior. It seems like there's no way around it: the IRC network and all things
	to do with it, together with our users' data has been sold to Andrew Lee by
	christel. Worth noting that this is not the first IRC network that Andrew Lee
	has bought[11].

	The data that has been sold, data that freenode has been keeping and
	processing -- consists of:
	- Any current metadata that's associated with any registrations with
	NickServ and ChanServ. This includes your email address, and last
	hostname with which you logged into your account.
	- MemoServ memos and current ProjectServ metadata -- if you're
	participating in a registered project on freenode.
	- Logs of *Serv usage and logs of connections/disconnections for the
	past 30 days.
	- Any and all correspondence you've had with [email protected],
	[email protected], [email protected] or similar.
	To this day, freenode has not been logging your messages. As long as freenode
	is still running the same software stack, you can erase your NickServ
	registration with:
	/msg NickServ DROP <nick> <password>

	In light of the above, I don't want to be anywhere in the vicinity of freenode
	in the future, let alone to continue volunteering for the network. I lay down
	my privileges and I will no longer be contributing to freenode. It has been a
	pleasure to work during all these years side by side with fellow volunteers, as
	well as the projects and the people that inhabited the network. I express my
	deepeest apologies to our users and projects who were relying on us and who may
	now feel betrayed.

	The group of volunteers who used to be freenode staff stands united on this
	issue. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]
	We will be building a new network for Free and Open Source Software
	collaboration:
	irc.libera.chat +6697
	https://libera.chat/
	Learning from our own mistakes, it is backed by a democratically governed
	Swedish non-profit. If you'd like to get in touch with us, there would be best.

	Some of you might similarly be reconsidering participating in freenode. If you
	have a community, you might be considering alternative platforms. Moving
	communities is hard, and I will encourage you to make your own educated
	decisions on that matter. But if you or your project decide to follow us to our
	new place, do get in touch with us and we will do our best to assist with the
	move.

	Good night.
	-- mniip, May 19 2021

	[1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10308021
	[2] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn -- "the freenode project will continue to
	operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now"
	[3] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10308021/filing-history
	-- 26 Apr 2021
	[4] https://paste.sr.ht/~ircwright/7e751d2162e4eb27cba25f6f8893c1f38930f7c4
	-- Andrew Lee is rasengan on IRC
	[5] https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a123de
	[6] https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1392995496403341313
	[7] https://distfiles.dereferenced.org/stuff/rasengan-log.txt
	[8] https://distfiles.dereferenced.org/stuff/nirvana-log.txt
	[9] https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409
	[10] https://gist.github.com/shadowcat-mst/998cea12794768bdb3da2daeff31baad
	[11] https://sand.cat/fiW5QDYXauoKwybL/snoo-takeover.txt

	[12] amdj: https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491
	[13] edk: https://gist.github.com/edk0/478fb4351bc3ba458288d6878032669d
	[14] emilsp: https://gist.github.com/pinkisemils/39d4ded8b1639b6f39dcab15618649f5
	[15] Fuchs: https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt
	[16] jess: https://gist.github.com/jesopo/45a3e9cdbe517dc55e6058eb43b00ed9
	[17] JonathanD: https://gist.github.com/JonathanD82/6518b93708e0aaf4b8f92c8e7200816d
	[18] kline: https://kline.sh
	[19] Md: https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_461
	[20] mniip: https://mniip.com/freenode.txt
	[21] niko: https://coevoet.fr/freenode.html
	[22] Swant: https://swantzter.se/freenode-resignation
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