freenode resignation

Hi all,

During the past few months in general, and last weeks in particular, it has become increasingly clear that the owners of the holding company freenode Ltd have been planning a hostile takeover of the freenode network. That takeover is now about to happen, and I cannot in good faith volunteer for this “new” freenode. freenode Ltd’s current owners’ values do not align with the values freenode the network was founded on and operated under up until now.

I, and many of the other volunteers who have resigned from freenode, have joined to form Libera Chat, a next-generation IRC network for FOSS and peer directed projects, formed as a nonprofit organisation where all its staff has equal representation at the table to safeguard its future. We invite you all to join us there and hope we all can make it a flourishing, safe place for free software and peer directed projects. You will find us in #libera on irc.libera.chat:6697 (tls).

It has been a joy to interact with all your fantastic projects using freenode these past years, and it’s with great sorrow, but cautious optimism I’m leaving for something new.

Best,
//Swant

P.S. My PGP key fingerprint is BA4B 5C09 C338 A7F5 F535 9533 F683 5D72 8D1A EE78

Some background

freenode Ltd was set up by a previous head of staff and shortly thereafter sold to a third party some years ago, described to me at the time only as a company to manage the freenode live conferences and related sponsorship. It has since become clear that much of this deal was being withheld from the wider staff. As more information about this deal has come to light, freenode staff have been repeatedly reassured that freenode Ltd did not, and would not have a claim to the network or try to interfere with its operations, reassurances that have turned out to be false.

I’ve only ever volunteered for freenode the irc network, a loosely organised group of volunteers working towards a common goal, and I have never had any contracts with freenode Ltd, it seems unclear to me how that company can hold any claims to much more than the domain name, but here we are.

You may know me as “head of web” for freenode 2018-2021, and an avid /stats p helper with some 5 000 hours at your immediate service under my belt the past five years. While I was head of web, I was asked many times by heads of staff to facilitate changes to freenode websites that neither I, nor other freenode staff, were offered an explanation to. Recently, listing shells.com in the most prominent spot on the website web-7.0/pull/489, and removing a recent blog post announcing changes to how staff was organised, positive change I had long been asking for (archived)

Around the time freenode Ltd announced their own “head of infrastructure” in #freenode, representatives of freenode Ltd messaged me and other staff personally demanding the hand over of access to any and all freenode infra. I never had the access to do that, and did not.

freenode Ltd later admitted in public that they had taken legal actions against the new Head of staff, which seems to have been the explanation for the unexplained shutdown of our testnet and the removal of the blog post from the website. It seems to me as if legal threats was used to force this outcome.

In other words, the previous freenode head of staff lied to you, and lied to staff. And we tried all we could to mitigate the effects.