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My understanding of the Freenode situation                                    2021-05-19
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Last update: 2021-05-19 09:07 UTC

I'm only attempting to summarise the events of today here.  If you need to be caught up,
start with joepie91's FAQ[1].  I'm writing this now to get something out there as soon
as possible.  I will attempt to either keep it updated, or link to a better FAQ by
somebody else that supersedes it.  I am not affiliated with Freenode staff, besides
being fond of them, and grateful for their years of devoted service to us users.

This morning, a staffer forcibly disconnected all other staff, and services, with a
message saying that data was about to be handed over, and people concerned about that
should drop their NickServ accounts.  Shortly afterward, other staffers confirmed that
it was true that data would be handed over to Freenode Limited.  At least two staffers
have now publicly resigned (grumble, who did the force disconnects, and Fuchs, who
confirmed what grumble said).

Fuchs's statement[2] has been updated with more information.  Of particular note:

> This really means a lot to us, but unfortunately reality sometimes looks 
> different, especially when lawyers and potential lawsuits were involved. 
> A contract in which christel, former head of staff, allegedly sold freenode, surfaced.
> And while I personally think that this would have neither included any servers
> or code or user data, since that did not belong to christel to sell, I am not a lawyer
> and apparently some of our volunteers got pressured very hard and their personal life
> could have been ruined easily should we have fought against this apparent contract. 

Multiple other staff have said that grumble's actions caught them by surprise.  It
appears that contingency plans are not ready yet, but are being worked on.  In
particular, Libera Chat is not yet open, but according to Fuchs, they are "working on
that".

[1]: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409
[2]: https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt


Alyssa Ross (qyliss) <hi@alyssa.is>
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