IRC, that lovely simple chat network that's been around since forever is still going despite other much more popular solutions appearing (hi Discord) and recently the huge Freenode network had a hostile takeover.
The situation and history of what's going on isn't exactly easy to explain. To keep it somewhat simple: Andrew Lee (rasengan) who is an entrepreneur, a crown prince of Korea, the founder of Private Internet Access, Shells and more now owns and controls Freenode. You can see a pretty reasonable summary over on Ars Technica.
Sadly, the newer owners of Freenode have since decided to make many missteps and have become outright hostile to us and a great many other channels. We've seen over 700 projects (including us!) have their Freenode channels be taken over, removed and redirected elsewhere while the remaining Freenode staff attempt to take control. Why? Us and all the others had the sheer audacity to mention Libera.Chat and so Freenode swooped in to take control of any channel that does.
Imagine if Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Matrix, Mastodon and so on took over if you dared to mention another network? To be blunt, the way Freenode (Andrew Lee) has been acting has been more like a hostile dictatorship than anything we wish to be associated with and so we're cutting all ties.
Like multiple hundreds of other websites, FOSS projects and more, we've migrated over to Libera.Chat and we suggest you do the same.
If you wish to continue being part of our community on IRC, please point your clients to #gamingonlinux on Libera.Chat. We have updated our IRC webchat to this.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
dziadulewicz May 27, 2021
Quoting: Perkeleen_VittupääThank you, Mr. Jarkko Oikarinen, the father of IRC, for this marvel that carries even today!
indeed! even all the current messengers (telegram, whatsapp, etc) are based on it.
Quoting: win8linuxQuoting: DuncSo, something that's been nagging at me since people started mentioning it... is he a Prince of the Republic of Korea, or the Democratic Republic of Korea?
He's a prince of Korea as a whole, as the Korean split is post-dynastic. To be clear, his family has essentially no power at all. They are entirely symbolic or ceremonial, unlike some other existing royal families. Lee has however seemingly rebranded his company London Trust Media into Imperial Family Companies using his family's royal symbols:
https://imperialfamily.com/
Two clicks on this website and I get the long term plan for IRC link . Frigthening
inlinuxdude May 27, 2021
Quoting: Perkeleen_VittupääThank you, Mr. Jarkko Oikarinen, the father of IRC, for this marvel that carries even today!
IRC will always have a special place in my heart... I met my wife over IRC (Undernet) back in the late 90's.. So, I also thank Mr. Oikarinen..
ElectricPrism May 27, 2021
Quoting: KithopThankfully, IRC (and Matrix and Mastodon listed in the article) are open enough that you can just cut ties and say 'screw it, we're doing our own!', like the Libera.Chat team is doing.
Any mention of them on Freenode gets you booted, and yeah:
It's happening (Matrix)
to lots
of people
Also, for anyone using the 'main' matrix.org homeserver, they're working on proper IRC bridging:
Bridge libera.chat #1324
After reading those and the comments in this thread I'm so done with private networks. You get 10 years into something, and then all of a sudden something changes and the next thing you know you have people breathing down your neck with unreasonable requirements.
To me Federated seems like the only sane way forward. I hope this leads to the rise in Matrix, Mastodon, PixelFed and other Federated networks like Email.
I'd say I feel like a hacker for retaking #gamingonlinux twice now, but that wouldn't really be accurate because both times it's been enough to just ask ChanServ to invite me and then reset the modes.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me