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#debian & IRC Politics
eyez writes "Apparently, the recent decision of OPN(now freenode) to ask for donations has ruffled the feathers of a few debian people. This article on DebianPlanet
talks about the current discussion on the debian mailing lists which talks about the possibility of moving #debian (and #debian*) off of OPN altogether."
#slackware is allready splitting, and it appears #kernelnewbies has allready left too...... lilo' really needs to quit whinning and at least attempt to get a real job.
If Debian goes with another IRC server, then that's fine. I don't think spamming solicitations for donations (even if they are for a paid salary position) is all that bad. But if you (or Debian) can do better and build a different IRC server, then I'm sure that is where the people will go (or come), for spam-free IRC.
Daniel
I have had to put up with this OPN for awhile, other large IRC Networks such as EFnet, and DALnet do not run donations, nor do they pay their works. DALnet doesnt even accept donations are far as I know, and gets attacked quiet a bit so they probably actually do need them. I think that lilo should stop what he has been doing, or he is going to totally destroy his network which wasn't so good in the beggining.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
The incessant whining and stupid politics is driving many channels away.
Most are heading to Open and Free Technology Community irc.oftc.net, that is where kernelnewbies has gone and some others.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Debianplanet took that article down about an hour ago. I'm not sure why.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
....you know the rest
Just incase you haven't been listening. The reason for the plee for donations is to go into the pocket of the IRCops - mainly 1: Lilo.
(no, not to maintain the servers, bandwidth, etc etc).
Why? Because he doesnt have a job and is finding it hard to survive.
The reason he claims is because he spends so much time admining OPN..
Has he thought of maybe offloading some of the work to someone else? Probably, but then he'd have to get a job.
stuff
Should Debian users avoid visiting sites that use banners just because it's not free? ( Free, as in woohoo, I'm as cheap as it gets ).
Come on. There's nothing wrong about donations. It's just another way YOU could help software and services get BETTER. You don't have to, but it would be nice if you did.
Said that, I don't see any reason to donate to OPN.
I got a very good deal that I negotiated as something extra special and I get 320Gbit of transfer for USD$200/mo. The reason I went to a colo was that putting up a box at work did not seem ethical or practical (what if I get fired, quit, move, etc).
Someone has to pay for OPN's bandwidth, machines, whatever. I'm sorry, but the internet isn't free like some people assume it is, even your ISP has to pay for the bits when going to backbones. (It might not be per-bit it might be an uncapped monthly rate, but if you divide out how much you xfer in a month typically and what you're paying you'd find that bits are not cheap).
People should quit thier crying because everything isn't free like beer.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
...to get a job.
Now.
He's been pulling this kind of crap repeatedly on OPN, and despite massive backlash in the face of his blatant give-me-money spam, he shows no signs of letting up any time soon.
I corresponded via dcc chat with him myself, (I am a former disgruntled IRCop from way back on that network) and he has personally told me 90% of the money donated goes toward his mortgage and food purchases. He seems to think of this as a way to support himself without having to resort to a real job but still maintaining the "free" and "open" implication of his irc network.
The #slashdot channel (not the official channel, the fun one) has moved to irc.oublinet.net.
Come on over for some fun.
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
I get "The node you are looking for does no longer exist or is not accessible without the proper access rights." when trying to access http://debianplanet.org/node.php?id=774.
This is earth shattering news!
About 2 months ago I was on OPN staff, about two months ago, I cared. I started WOPN, and frankly without me, OPN (or free whatever it is) would still be just an irc network without me. It is my impression you'll shortly see advertisements (or at least friendly plugs (which I have seen other dj's do)). I quit both the semi-official staff position I had (of course lilo gives noone real power) and left the radio station. After an argument with one of the more dense opers on the network, I created my own server and the xiph foundation and I moved to another network. The opn at the end of this name is a relic and this name will NEVER be used again to post.
At the risk of being accused of having an "anger management issue" or being a "Troll" I say this. Anyone who stays on opn needs to conduct a serious reality check. THIS IS NOT FREEDOM ANYMORE. THIS IS A FORCED OPPRESSION. MOVE!
Andrew D Kirch
Trelane (all references on the advogato link below will be shortly stripped of any reference to any work done on opn, but will be kept as a historic reference to prove the above claims.)
a bit more about me http://www.advogato.org/person/trelane/ or my private page http://trelane.net
Two channels which I occupy on the openprojects network, #maryland and #md2600 both have complained much since lilo started the beggar act... so far we have endured, but who knows how long mortal will can sustain against the evil SPAM.
No, Beowulf clusters can't imagine in Soviet Russia.
There's always SlashNet
They're actually kind of late in doing so. Rob Levin's panhandling has already caused at least a few channels to move to OFTC.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
The majority of the OSDN channels that were on OPN (#sourceforge, etc.) have already moved to SlashNET for IRC.
OPN is in a sad state, currently, with lilo constantly soliciting money and/or services from the IRCers. It just all seems rather childish to me.
The last time that this subject came up on slashdot, a massive, completely incomprehensable flameware ensued in which whoever that guy who runs openprojects posted a whole bunch of posts saying how there was this massive troll conspiracy to discredit him, and like a hundred people (interestingly, mostly AC) posting stuff alleging him of everything from putting spam in the WALLOPs to g-lining the baby Jesus. Both sides posted a bunch of confusing and self-contradictory "facts", but didn't really cite anything from an objective source to back it up.
:)
It's hopeless. It's like trying to read a discussion about Israel on kuro5hin, or anything at all relating to Seth Finkelstein.
I'm going to just stay away, assume someone, somewhere has been horribly wronged but there's nothing i can do about it, follow #debian whereever it goes, and continue to use openprojects for its excellent C, perl, and java channels.
P.S.: Quick question, i may be setting up Gentoo soon, can anyone recommend any helpful Gentoo-related IRC channels on any irc network? I mean, the kind of channel where if you ask for help and their response is "read the documentation", they're willing to actually tell you sometimes where the documentation in question is
-- super ugly ultraman
DP took down the article a couple of hours ago because the poster bypassed the voting system for articles in order to publisize his own political stance. Or so I've been told.
-- Coops
zadok.org.uk
Being one of the few who has parted #slackware on OPN, I would like to explain this.
I used to be an operator on #slackware on OPN (freenode) for about 3 months and before that I was a regular in #slackware for about a year. Recently a lot of the ops and members had a falling out with the channel owner (robrock) due to his eradic behavor. He was banning people for no reason, threating to leave and turn the channel over to lilo and just acting childish. Quite a few of use (including 3 ops) have seen this behavior and decieded to move to a new network where we could start over again. So #slackware on oftc.net (open and free technology community) was born, and athough it was allredy registered the current owner was very nice and inviting.
There has been some talk about moving ever since the wallops of lilo begging for money started, the fallout with the owner put it over the top. We now enjoy chatting on oftc.net without either of these burndens
Also, i'd like to note that either of the two #slackware's (opn and oftc are NOT official slackware channels as one doesn not exist but we all try hard to help out people as much as we can.
So now you know the story, and would love to have you all in #slackware on oftc.net (hope to see your there!)
~Nemith
What really bothers me is WHY they're taking donations for this, and for this much ($25k in 6 months!)... To explain, here's a breakdown of the major costs of IRC networks:
.. Well, that's it really. So how does this affect OPN (I don't think 'freenode' is a fitting name for an irc network that solicits donations)? It doesn't. OPN's servers are donated. When you sponsor a server for OPN, you let them run the ircd on your server and use the bandwidth required. You do NOT get an O:line with that. (For those that don't know, the O:line is Oper privileges; it's how you administer an irc server. OPN is the only network I've ever heard of that doesn't let you have an O: on your own machine.)
1) Colocation and bandwidth
OPN is a relatively small network, with only 7000 or so clients connected at once. The Major IRC networks, such as quakenet, ircnet, undernet, efnet, etc, do NOT solicit or accept donations, and they have 80,000-100,000+ clients at once.
IRC is also a very low-traffic service. A two-server network on t1+ lines could EASILY handle the entire load of opn users.
So, why does OPN/freenet need the donations? I don't know. The numbers just don't add up to me. The servers are all donated, so they pay no network/bandwidth costs. And 7000 users isn't that much to admin over. (Talking to a quakenet admin earlier today, he mentioned somewhere around 90k users on in over 9000 channels), And it's certainly not something that should warrant full-time effort.
There are plenty of alternatives to OPN out there; there's the new oftc, and there's quite a few smaller ones, like irc.gimp.org, etc. Almost all IRC networks offer free nick/channel registration (certainly all that I can think of), so there's not really that much that OPN does that other networks can't do for your opensource project.
And I can't think of a SINGLE irc network out there that solicits or accepts donations, besides the one with 'free' in it's new name. Most IRC networks are adminned by volunteers who keep the servers up because they like IRC and are dedicated to helping the network.
You could argue that having a lot of projects having channels on the same network is helpful, but that seems really moot to me. I can't think of a single modern irc client that doesn't offer multi-server support, and for most clients it's well-documented and trivial to set up.
I don't like to pass judgement, but It really seems to me like all the flames about lilo only doing this to get out of having to have a real job at least have some SOME truth to them. I just can't think of any other explanation as to why they'd need that much money.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
... a drama on IRC that gets people so upset they move on. Heh.
I have a serious question: How come IRC can bring the worst out in people? Is it because of the equality of the internet? I haven't gone to a single IRC channel or forum without having a bad experience of some sort. I've seen people (including myself) get far more infuriated over IRC stuff than real life stuff. It's really hard to imagine blobs of text can do that to anybody, but it does.
I realize I'm drifting off topic a bit, but it seems like 'moving to a new channel' is going to end that type of thing. It might be more worthwhile to figure out how to get these situations defused. I think one major contributor of this type of stuff is that comments made in text are stripped of tone of voice or body langauge. I could say 'YOU SUCK!!' and some people would read that as sarcastic, some would read it as an indication that I'm 12 years old. It is devoid of any of the typical context you get with 1:1 communication in person. That's the nice thing about having a mediator around. That person isn't emotionally involved and can tell somebody if their tone needs adjustment.
"Derp de derp."
Sure, many of us are feeling the pinch these days vs. the glory of a few years ago. OPN has been a great resource, ala PBS in the US. Some pay, or provide a portion of their own resources gratis. But the point is not seeking the network with the least amount of whine. They all whine or have some perhaps annoying facet. The real point is what is the best resource. I think a certain amount of centralization is beneficial to the community and as a magnet for support for those looking to join the community. Yes, this is stream of conciousness and perhaps disconnected. Keep in mind, if someone had done a better job than lilo, then we would already have 'A' clear alternative.
What does a 'w00t' sound like?
-- Eric
It seems to be a pretty simple proposition; lilo is requesting money to continue providing a service. Nobody had any complaints when things were free. The general sentiment I'm seeing expressed is that he should continue to provide the service for free (and shut up about it) rather than ask for donations. I've tried taking this approach with a couple of local businesses ("You know, I could probably build my own surfaces in a couple of hours for the cost of raw materials so are you willing to make a counteroffer on this teak furniture?" or "My parents never charged me for food so why do you?") but they were less than sympathetic.
This type of attitude makes a mockery of our community in general, and explains why for-real businesses have such a hard time taking us seriously. Why does lilo owe everybody a free IRC server just because others are willing to provide one?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Read all about it here:
http://www.lilofree.net
The OPN exodus started well before this fundraising initiative. It's all documented in the above URL.
This is necessary...life, feeds on life...
and
?
People are leaving in droves...why? Not because of DOS attacks, or poor service...
Its because of Lilo.
And he refuses to comprehend this. His spamming is nothing new - hes done it since the network was created and i was a member of several channels. People have been telling him to stop for as long as i can remember, and now, finally, its driving people over the edge and making them leave. And he *still* insists on continuing, since "its his network and he'll do what he wants with it".
I mean, really. You'd think hed get a hint when an entire network is created just to get away from him.
I hope the network rots away in front of him so he can truly understand the bullheadedness of his actions. OFTC is just as good without the wallops.
As for #debian... move to OFTC!^_^
From June 13th:
Trolling for Dollars
From July 8th:
The Big Bully
[2221 lilo`(lilo@lilo.staff.opn)] you're saying that my asking for voluntary assistance based on my work on the network is abusive?
[2222 msg(lilo`)] I'm saying that your using the network to ask for personal donations which will benefit no one but yourself is an abuse of power. It's also arguable that such use of the network is now illegal given the NPO you formed to oversee the network.
Crying about someone asking for donations on your l33t IRC channel.
You people would be much better off ebaying your computer and getting a hooker.
You'd think that the official #debian channel would move to OFTC, since it's a member project of Software in the Public Interest and a sister project to Debian.
Asking for donations -- even explicitly -- is fine.
Spamming is not.
By spamming, they are forcibly transferring the cost of them asking for donations from them to us.
This is wrong.
But, at least their messages are text-based, and not huge graphics eating up your bandwidth.
I understand that these people need money to run their service. However, that doesn't justify their tactics.
Similarly, I understand that the people who run charities to help the poor need money to do that...that doesn't justify them phoning me with a taped recording.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
the ogg/vorbis irc channel has moved away from OPN/freenode to their own private server as well. irc.xiph.org/irc.vorbis.com #vorbis
openprojects or now "freenode" (oh please, trendy lame name) is getting hella corny.
These guys think running an irc network should be a full time 50 grand a year job. Sorry but huge networks like efnet, dalnet and undernet don't need to grovel for donations becuase they arent trying to make a living running an irc server.
They could run "freenode" at virtually no cost, but they want to use it as a full time job instead.
Sorry but running an irc network isnt a full time job. If you think i'm going to donate money so you can pay your cell phone bill or make a car payment (hello those have nothing to dow with IRC) you can forget it. Ever since i saw the opn founder blew like 200$ in donations on his cell phone bill i knew this place was just a scam. All the other networks find ways to manage without begging.
Personally i think debian should get the hell out of there.
Beyond the begging stuff, opn has all these wacky little ircd mods that are supposed to be clever but are just annoying and pointless, and everyone has to be a "mr. nice guy" unless of course you are friends with the opn staff then you can dis newbies and attack people with different opinions, but everyone else gets a big scolding for "not playing nice". They want irc to become a super friendly mr. rogers neighborhood, well that ain't gonna happen, get real you panzies. It makes me want to barf.
The other lame think about opn is the whining when they get hit with a dos. Like no one ever got dosed before. Ya dos is fucking lame, but guess what, it happens, especially on and around irc, so deal with and go on with your life, sheesh.
Anyway, opn is really getting cheesy so i'd love to see debian pack up its bags and head for less annoying pastures.
This isn't a terribly insightful comment, just wanted to add my voice to the fray, but I got one of these messages the other day while on IRC (though it was irc.linux.org, so I'm guessing that they're all connected) and I even considered donating. But after reading the reply, I have to say this is a bad direction for debian to be headed in and I agree that the practice should stop.
My
Limekiller
irc.oftc.net
The network run by post OPN people. Really good guys there. No "lilo needs new shoes crap".
Fatz
http://www.freebsd.org
Of course, we moved to OFTC, which is run very well by a number of ex-OPN staffers. As an added bonus, their ircd has some nice protection against flooders and spammers, so the move to OFTC has technical advantages too...
Ya i find one of the biggest problems with opn isn't just the begging. It's the way lilo likes to meddle in everyones business. Just becuase you are an ircop and run some servers doesn't mean you should go around meddling in everyones business. Just keep the servers running smoothly and leave the users alone. If lilo decides you aren't "friendly" enough by his standards he will try and take over your channel or ban you. Just ask the #freebsd people that had problems with this. Running an irc network means you keep stuff running smoothly, not go around dictating everyones behavior.
Oh ya you don't waste donations intended for the network on your ridiculously large cell phone bill.
opn is just obnoxious.
The Perl Foundation does about the exact same thing and no one really bitches are around here. I remember Slashdot article not too long ago about how that fund is running low on money. People were whining here about helping to keep that fund going.
Blender is somewhat similar. I imagine this 100,000 Euros that is needed is going to the pockets of the old board of directors of NaN.
Would it be any better if Rob Levin asked for $100,000 American and said he wanted no more?
Slashdot went the same way a few months ago and people bitched. But they soon stopped caring because they wanted Slashdot more than carying on some stupid crusade about how Slashdot should remain free. I imagine this stupid Debian people that are threatening to leave read Slashdot. Do I donate money to Debian? Nope. I won't donate money to them EVER. They should be perfectly content with this too.
I know (or care) very little about this IRC situation. But from the comments it seems somebody is running an IRC server and wants some money. He's asking by spamming people twice a day, but gives instructions how to ignore it.
And people are criticizing this?? Why? I see comments telling him to "get a job".. isn't doing something and getting paid for it a "job"? Who cares what he does with the money??
What's the angle here I'm missing..
My local public jazz radio station asks for web site donations continuously throughout the year and they also have yearly annoying telephone fundraising, how is that different??
Oh well, better let the kids play.
He's free to do what he wants, his users/server-providers/etc are free to give him their collective middle finger ... and we are free to sit at the sidelines making smart ass comments about it.
... put a fork in OPN, its done.
... the problem is that there are too many people willing to do the same thing for free :)
Aint freedom grand? Anyway, its a done deal now
That said, it would be nice if people who provide a valuable service to the open source community could manage to live on community contributions
Another link talking of lilo:
http://liloaid.ecce.co.uk/
It's too bad he's ripping that network appart begging for money. Maybe he should sell his body to internet, like experiencing cyber-sex-irc-with-webcam for money?
pr0n is probably the number1 commerce of the internet
Anyway, i don't know him, but i see a lot of ppl talking about him. So he's a famous guy... with no money
But our community doesn't live through begging, it lives on sharing knowledge freely
He didn't understand that, he's not deserving running an 'openprojects' server.
But should we care that much?
"Get A Life!"
might want to be aware of this little feature at their disposal. Here on SlashNET, we frown at such things. I, as the ircd maintainer, refuse to include such things in our ircd and have refused patches such as this in the past. Evil stuff.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
Last I checked, the donation shit was on Wallop. Don't like it? /mode -w
Simple as that.
Debian planet is a bunch of pussies. Just try to post anything even remotely controversial and it will get deleted. It is the Communist China of internet news sites!
Unfortunately, OPN does not. Or at least not valuable in the monetary sense, its a question of supply and demand ... developers who are willing to spend a lot of effort on developing Perl for free are just about non existant (not to the extent its users want it developed anyway) conversely though, there are plenty of people willing to run irc networks for free.
... why don't they just join EFNET/IRCNET/WHATEVERNET? There is no reason to split and all make an 'own' irc server, it just makes things harder. People know how to get to those irc networks, the servers are listed in their clients, and most of the bigger ircnets have been existing for quite some time now, mostly without any problem.
/ republican/tupperware so [...]' (you get the point)... That's thinking in boxes, nobody really is like that (except maybe Richard Stallman, Bill Gates and Scott McNealy themselves... heh) - instead of blending and mixing a bit, learning from each other's successes and faults, exchanging ideas and communicate, which would benefit all of us. For crying out loud, it's called 'OPEN projects network'. Mix, damn it. Get out of the little 1337 opensource subgroup and bring it amongst the people. That's what linux needs most, anyway.
It sounds very silly to me, 'we are pro opensource so we need our own irc network', 'we are pro microsoft so we need our own irc network', 'we are pro sun/mac/pr0n/christian/jewish/left/right/democrat
I just talked with him. All you folks who are upset are nutz.
The ad is:
1. Twice a day
2. Set up so you can ignore where it comes from
The way people talk you'd think he was doing it every 15 minutes from random nicks and ip addresses.
Big deal, get a life.
What, did the guy INVENT irc? Like all of a sudden it is the next, sure fire dot.com technology money maker?
Unless you are Bill Gates, alienating your user base is a bad thing.
The bandwidth and servers at kuro5hin.org are donated, so there are absolutely no costs. But they still charge $5/month subscription for full use of the services, and sell ads on the site as well (the money all goes into site-owner rusty's pockets, mostly because he's too lazy to get a real job).
By Marc Tilley
Special to ZDNet News
June 28, 2002, 4:30 PM PT
Open Projects Network, a popular chat service frequented by Linux and Open Source developers, is coming under intense scrutiny for its alleged links to the Church of Scientology.
ZDNet News was contacted recently via E-mail by an anonymous person claiming to be a former administrator for Open Projects. The person was in possession of scanned copies of apparently legitimate banking records. Amid other less suspicious transactions, these records show numerous fund transfers from the Open Projects bank account to both the "Church of Scientology of Texas" and the "Austin Dianetics Center" over the course of one year.
Founded in 1994 by Robert Levin, Open Projects provides online Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms for Open Source developers to collaborate. IRC is a free, distributed chat service traditionally run by unpaid volunteers. Open Projects collects donations from its patrons to fund the cost of maintaining the network.
The Church of Scientology, founded in 1954, has an estimated 8 million members in more than 70 countries. The controversial church has been criticized for its initiation of several international lawsuits aimed at silencing critics.
Our point of contact refused requests to talk further with ZDNet News by phone, despite assurances that their identity would remain confidential.
Numerous calls seeking comment from both Scientology and Levin were not returned.
His resume! Check out how many stable, long lasting jobs he's had! Notice how he no longer works for Levin and Associates? How can you get fired from your own or a family company? What a loser.
A new policy?
Write up howtos and post to lists saying theres a newbie friendly IRC channel (no other channel listed) then a year later beg for money every few hours? That is ridiculous!
Meanwhile there are plenty more servers and channels around to ask questions in. You almost get flooded out by entering #Debian at irc.debian.org - surely they could just round-robin the dns between a few servers (maybe irc..debian.org) and forget about OPN as being worthy.
Volunteer OS, volunteer Services - sounds like a good deal to me. If people have money and use the services they will probably want to donate anyway but begging for donations isnt very nice. There is nothing wrong with Debian.org putting a donate link on their site and there is nothing wrong with a notice *only* on-join in servers IMO.
Pixels keep you awake!
The status is that Rob Levin should get a life.
I fear (and I could be wrong) that Lilo has mixed up his personal goals with his estimation of the importance of the project to the community.
If and when I have grant money to hand out, either my own or that of a corporate sponsor, it will go directly to Free Software authors for production of Free Software, and to efforts to preserve our right to code like EFF.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
#kernelnewbies and #linuxaus have already moved to irc.oftc.net dunno of others. ppl have just been sick and tired of global notices which apparently can be switched off now. I still think some ppl are over reading into the whole issue, seriously, it's just a freakin irc server - you get on, you talk/idle on the channels you like - and you leave, how it operates should be an abstraction, and your not forced to make a donation. Basically, it is like going to a casino :P There has also been an apparent witchhunt after lilo (the maintainer) and so what if he pissed a few dollars up the wall, and if that were so that is up the the authorities to investigate (although the number of fraudulent charities there are in the U.S and elsewhere is too difficult to keep up with) I don't know what opn/freenode is going to do once the rats starting leaving the sinking ship but I think everyone should just calm down a bit.
-FUNDRAISING- [Global Notice] Hi all. Just a reminder: we're still in the middle of our initial fundraising campaign. Current total is $1,219.48. OPN is a service of Peer-Directed Projects Center, a new Texas non-profit corporation whose application for US 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status is in process. There are about about 6,316 clients on the network at the moment, and we are 1,189 $20 contributions away from our goal. Please help us if you can.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
I use channels on both OPN/freenode and on OFTC. Longer experience and more channels on the former. But to me: an IRC network is an IRC network is an IRC network. If it *works* and is reasonably reliable, I'm a happy camper.
Others perhaps need politics and "victories" and stuff like that to make their lives complete.
I've been on IRC since 1995. I even started my own IRC network in early 1996. All I can say about things lie this is, it's sad.
Moving a given channel to another network isn't exactly easy. My little hangout has moved networks 4 times since 1995, and each time, we lose folks. We moved networks mainly due to excruciating lag (and, in the case of EFnet and cajnet, losers taking over channels or DOSing the whole network) and constant netsplits (dal.net c.1998).
What's really "fun" (haha, right) is when a channel has infighting and splits up. Enjoyment-wise, that's right up there with ice cream headaches and root canals.
Oh, and the way our network is run, I certainly don't have to solicit a paycheck. One of the prerequisites to keeping my server on was that I could still have a job. Gotta face reality, y'know. The other 8 or so servers out there are admin'd the same way. Very low maintenance; we all have day jobs.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
is not the same as demanding donations.
Haha, check out this page.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
That said, it would be nice if people who provide a valuable service to the open source community could manage to live on community contributions ... the problem is that there are too many people willing to do the same thing for free :)
Wow - if I had mod points I'd mod that up - quite insightful. Honestly, that about wraps it up. What I don't get is WHY everyone in the world is willing to do pretty much everything for free all the time. Obviously not money, but when I suggested it was ego driving this sort of stuff (on a local LUG list) I got lambasted for such a horrifying, slanderous thought.
Anyone else got any better ideas?
creation science book
why is asking for donations bad? Would they rather simply be charged? Really, can anyone offer reasons why asking for donations is bad?
So... someone asking for donations is evil, but requiring payment is bad (as in Stallman raising his hypocritical fist in the air and ranting, "NOT FREE... ALL SOFTWARE _MUST_ BE FREE". Yet if we follow that line of logic, then would it not be even worse to REQUIRE anyone to pay for anything, especially something that they are against and is not required for their safety and security? Hmmmmm... maybe its like the old Atari games that you could 'flip' if you made the score high enough.
Just to prove once again, that speaking, wearing clothes, quoting rhetoric, memorizing things, and doing stuff like coding does NOT make one intelligent.
Keep on coding monkeys! Make sure and throw your poop against the wall when you are angry.
A petition I found for stopping lilo's silliness.
http://void.printf.net/~chris/petition.pl
I think the ego comes in more when people feel that they're likely to come under attack for some shortcoming. The goodwill of others is perhaps the biggest compensation most open source developers can hope for, and getting slammed for working on something you're giving away is pretty bogus. A lot of developers are self-starters and get pretty invested mentally into their work as a demonstration of their ability to code, and they're putting their work up for review in front of a group of people not known in general for their tact or pleasant demeanor. I try to keep this in mind when I see one post or another exhibiting a primadonna attitude; it's probably less about narcissism than it is about not letting the bastards grind you down.
Then again, some developers just happen to be assholes in general.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
EFnet is free...14 years and counting!
Lilo is soliciting money for HIM... and he doesn't own the network, he "administers it".... whatever that means. Basically he sits on his butt all day sending out global notices whining that is life sucks and everyone hates him and he needs more money. So there are three main points:
* None of this money is going to the network.
* Lilo does not own the network.
* Lilo is not providing any actual services.
If you give $5 to him, that's it, your $5 is gone... you get nothing for it. It doesn't improve the level of service. It just means that Lilo can go another 20 minutes wihout getting a real job.
And by no means am I saying that developing open source software is not a real job, the problem is that he is not developing a damn thing. He is just "administrating" (again, whatever that means) a bunch of servers owned by other people/companies/organizations. He could farm it out to other people, but he's a control freak and a power hungry person. Other people have volunteered to help, but he has refused them. As I see it, it's his own damn fault and he doesn't deserve a penny of the open source community's money.
(00:15:33) FUNDRAISING: [Global Notice] Good morning, all. We're still fundraising for PDPC/freenode. Please look at http://freenode.info/contrib.shtml and help us if you can. The current total still stands at $1,871.27, so we're about 1,157 $20 contributions away from goal. Have a great morning, and thank you for using freenode! :)
Monday is a horrible way to spend 1/7 of your life.
I caught lilo doing this a couple of years ago (and have full irc logs of the dozens of conversations over the years), and was summarily g-lined from the network (being on that network as long as I have, there are many ways into and out of there, seen and unseen, he knows this as well). He knows who I am, and I have no reason to hide my identity. Now I'm regretting moving the several channels I relocated a few years ago to OPN.
I've been there when it was truly a free network, linpeople. It was then perverted into OpenProjects, and most-recently freenode. I notice that the motd over the years has changed from "This is a free network" (linpeople) to "This is a private network" (OPN, check your irc logs people, it's in there: "This is a private service, provided for and by private users and organizations. It is not a public forum."), to no mention of free or private (freenode). Was that an intentional omission? I believe so.
OPN has always been a very locked-down, authoritative (read: non-free) network. It will continue to be such, as long as the "maintainer" of the network refuses to delegate control of it. I've suggested this to him personally over 2 years ago, to which he scoffed. Fine, micromanage it into the ground.
The success of a project is measured if it survives its first maintainer. OPN will not, no matter how many times you rename it. It does not need "donations" to survive, even if Rob Levin needs money to survive. There are other ways to get money, Rob.. such as getting a paying job. Your ego prohibits you from doing so, as you and I have discussed before.
I've been out of work for a long time, as have many of my friends and former colleagues, and you don't see me asking for handouts, and I *DO* run an open irc network, Open Source CVS services, project hosting, web development, mailing lists, development on my own Open Source projects, and many other things... all without a cent. Why? Because I believe in it. I pay for my own bandwidth, my own servers, my own time. I ask for nothing in return. My "pay" is knowing I'm doing something good for the community as a whole. If you feel you need something back, don't hand it out for free. That's not what Open Source is about.
I would love to sit home all day and get paid to work on things I love, but unfortunately in the current economy, that's not reality.
Regarding those "donations" (i.e. used to pay for your rent, groceries, et al), have you begun paying the developers who help keep your network running? What about those who are maintaining the ircd code that you run on the network (dancer). Have they been compensated? Without the software, you don't have a network. What about server administrators? What about backups? Are you compensating your leaf nodes? Likely not.
This has been several years coming, and don't say I didn't warn you about it. You know I have see the demise long before now, and I've given you dozens of suggestions to avoid it. You refuse to listen, and you bear the burdon of those choices. I just hope that your head doesn't get so big that you and your ego can't fit outside the front door.
OPN is trying to establish itself as a pillar of the free software community, but unfortunately it's can't be trusted as a stable organisation. Despite it's "open" moniker, OPN has never made any attempt at democracy. It's an autocracy under Rob Levin (lilo). Even the likes of server owners and all the other IRCops have no final say. My understanding is that Rob even refused to give any IRCops contact information for server owners. He likes control of the network centralised around him.
Rob's priorities appear to be the following:
(1) is a fair priority for anyone to have, however in the case of OPN the lack of any balancing on Rob's power (eg a committee of IRCops with the power to veto decisions) make it dangerous, as we have seen. (2) is a danger to the network - Rob would rather see it split in half than step down. (3) should not take precedence over (4). I get the feeling that OPN could be an IRC network 100 times larger than it is right now, and it would still neglect what's wanted by the present userbase - not establishing nonprofits with the goal of evolving into some sort of free software monolith, but establishing a sane power structure with proper procedures for users to air grievances.
The work that Lilo does has always been of the most professional calibar (I can not say the same about Karl's IRC network). I do not think it is unreasonable for him to ask for donations. There is a lot more to a good IRC netowrk than servers and bandwidth; an IRC network can quick degenerate to childish kick-and-ban games unless someone of Lilo's caliber maintains the network.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
So I was browsing around OFTC's site, and I looked at the staff page. I really wasn't shocked to find out that the person who sent that message to the mailing list in fact has some personal investment in OFTC, and wants it to succeed, of course. The thing that I noticed was that Josip Rodin (Joy) is a server sponsor on OFTC, running the arion server.
What's not a better opportunity to advertise one's favorite network by starting another anti-OPN war by attacking it when they are fundraising?
P.S. For proof of my statement, check out http://oftc.net/staff
He was banning people for no reason, threating to leave and turn the channel over to lilo and just acting childish. He was banning people for no reason, threating to leave and turn the channel over to lilo and just acting childish.
Talking about childish behaviour of ops, the jim of #debian started randomly banning people who has an merely slight argument with him. If you don't believe me you can check the log. The worst part is that he wouldn't lift the ban after a reasonable period of time regardless of the reason behind banning. Say is it reasonable to impose perma ban on someone who use funny emote/botemote on his friends?
I left #debian because of this month ago. I'm not sure that jim and the rest of the ops are still acting that crazy there.
depends on their ops. When ops act childishly and crazily people will leave. The ops in OPN have this tendency.
The fund rasing is just a trigger for them to leave. I don't disagree lilo to raise fund, honestly, but he should at least spend some time to justify the ops' behavior.
So I left OPN. It has nothing to do with fund rasing.
I wish people would be a little more tolerant. It costs quite a bit to operate OPN and asking for donations to help pay for it is IMHO long overdue.
The messages asking for donations are sent via WALLOPS, which can be turned off, and via the nick FUNDRASING which you may ignore. It's not as if they are sending everyone on the network a forced message that can not be ignored in any way.
It is sad to see people get so riled up over something so small. If you don't wish to donate, dont, it really is that easy. OPN/Freenode has provided a service to the community for a long time. They deserve the support of those who would wish to support them, and getting the message out there is the only way. Many many many people who are OPN/Freenode regulars rarely to never visit the website, and other avenues to inform people that help is being requested are pretty slim.
I'd bet the farm that if Debian ever came up seriously short in some way, and the very existance of the Debian project were threatened, and the good folks at OPN/Freenode were asked to lend a hand by announcing the need for donations they wouldn't miss a heartbeat in making it so. We should all do everything we can to help each other, otherwise we all won't be here at all. If you say that Debian would never do that, I reply; I sure hope to hell they would. What, not and loose Debian? I don't think so. Hard times call for 'measures that work'. Too many people rely on Debian everyday, myself included. You say that would never happen, I reply; don't be too sure. Stranger things have happened. And when/if it does, I'll be there to help, just like I'll be here to help right now, when right now one of OUR services is in trouble, right now.
Work together, be patient, be tolerant, be reasonable. That's what we all ask of each other already.
*sigh* I'll miss #debian. Already missing those who have left.
As a long time fan of OPN and Debian, that is my 1.5c.
Several IRC admins had similar problems with Galaxynet when two people who had control over services and the domain name summarily canceled the democratic principles of the original Policy and created a "founders" group with total control and no accountability. Exiled split away, wrote up its own Charter where even the IRCops have a vote and a say in the way the network is run.
Exiled is free and will remain so. It is strugging at the moment to find users and contributer to the coding of services and ircd. Debian (and any other users) is cordially invited to visit and try us out.
Swedchef
admin of seattle.wa.us.exiled.net
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
In the 2.5 years I've chatted on the network, lilo has always been a good guy. Sure, I got +q'ed once because I was being stupid, but that's understandable. I don't know lilo personally, and I don't talk to him much on OPN anymore, but I think he's been doing a great job with OPN, and I'm sick of everyone bitching so much. OH NO! NOT A GLOBAL NOTICE. Does it really bother you that much? I'll admit that these things should be WALLOPS instead of global notices, but give the guy a break. He's not forcing anyone to give him anything, he would just appreciate a hand to get back on his feet. I think he's doing a great job, and if I wasn't poor myself I'd donate, keep up the good work though lilo :-). Btw, in case anyone wants to flame me in real time the nick's bhearsum =/.
LOL
it wasted a lot of my friends minds .... college became unemployment... because IRC fuck heads and junkies ruined so many lives.. oh wait.. thats slashdot for me.. fuck I need to quit posting
$ host eris.berkeley.edu
Host not found.
sorry, couldn't help myself : )
From what I've been reading in here, it seems like the only thing lilo really does is "admin" the network (not really a full time job at all) and that all the servers are donated to OPN. Why don't all the people that donate their servers just get fed up with him and just mass de-OLine him? There wouldn't really be much he could do and OPN would be able to keep going the way I thought it was going. I really don't have a problem with the money begging, I just ignore it.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is why don't people stop complaining about everything and just forcibly take back what's theirs? Just talk to the server admins and have them take lilo out of the picture.
I'm a channel operator for a decently-sized IRC channel and we moved to our own servers a couple of months ago in response to lilo's increasingly vocal begging. I haven't really looked back, but I can tell you it's a good day to see Bruce Perens agrees with our position.
Welcome to the Internet, where people who have pathetic real-world lives turn into complete control-freak-shitheads the moment they are given even the slightest semblance of power in some silly virtual domain.
These people are not to be concerned about. Simply point and laugh at them, then move along.
An interesting excerpt from http://lilo.sargasso.net/ :
If Rob Levin reallly wrote that, I'm out of OPN!
Unselfish actions pay back better
That's the point. It's eris(.berkeley.edu) free!
("Try our new intarnet. Teh best thing since sileced bread. Evar.")
Almost.
You're trolling on slashdot on a Saturday evening and you're telling someone else to get a life? Wow. Either mom won't let you take the Taurus out for a spin tonight, you're married and oppressed into staying home by your wife, on house arrest, or just a plain old fashioned hypocrite.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
So the question should not be, to which IRC network we want to move, but where we want to move.
Ah, for all you standard weenies, SILC has been submitted to IETF as a next-generation chatting protocol draft. Really check it out, this is the future of chatting (and it's free and open source).
The first thing that seems missing from this slashdot submission is lilo's side of the story.
And as I read it, this quote stands out:
And this is the best thing he said that stands in his favor, since the negation of the above is "If you know and appreciate my work, send me money." (not a logica transformation, I know)
And we hear this sometimes from free software developers: "If you want to thank a free software developer, either donate it to the FSF or some other organization, or send him or her a thank you card--perhaps with a twenty-dollar bill in it."
So if you want to contribute funds to the free software community, it seems logical to take the entire community into consideration. If you think that an IRC network has benefitted you immensley, then send money to Freenode. If I had the money (and a credit card number) my money would go to the FSF. In my opinion, IRC just isn't that important. Over on gnu.misc.discuss, people are still keeping alive a useless thread about which is more important, GNU or Linux. So far, I haven't seen irc.openprojects.net entered into the mix.
Maybe the OS should be called OPN/Linux?
How do you respond to the great number of angry people here who say that:
1) lilo does not "maintain" the network in any way, form, shape, or fashion and
2) none of the donated money goes towards anything irc network related, but instead lilo uses the donations to pay off the loans on his expensive car and pay his rent
Inquiring minds want to know.
I posted the story on DP, as an editor, but two other editors thought it was too controversial, so they put it back into the submissions queue until they rephrased it and put back on the front page.
Move along people, nothing to see here...
Cheers,
--fred
to flame the rest of the whiners moaning about the "direction debian is taking".
Folks, if what is said is true, the problem is simply one free-loading individual who thinks he deserves more credit than he is due. STOP GIVING HIM MONEY, and MOVE ON. This has absolutely nothing to do with the "direction debian is taking". If anything, one should stop conflating a problem of one to a problem of many.
This is fscking great
Get your Unix fortune now!
Lilo needs money to run the network. You still have to pay for the server and bandwidth for the IRC traffic and web. I haven't seen a solicitation on the network myself (I haven't been on it in a long time) but to say that the money is just going into Lilo's pocket is completely unfair. Running an IRC network is a pain in the ass and having every open source project create it's own service is just going to sap some productivity from whatever programmer has to find a place to host the server, keep people from hacking it, etc. etc. etc.
I think having a service like this is a bargain here, and people aren't realizing it.
Ok, 'lilofree' came out of a beef in 2001!?? old news imho
I work on OPN irc daily, lilo's requests for funds (which admittedly fall on deaf ears here) hit my server window, and are pretty unobtrusive.
Contention is surely the nature of IRC, snotty OPs dripping attitude, /banning folks who don't kowtow. The OPN net is well run imo in that it
actively discourages that. Of course as an ircnet
which is nominally intended to aid opensource collaboration, that's as it should be.
I don't really care about politics around Mr. Levin. As long as this ircnet is better run than most (admittedly damnation by faint praise), I'm happy to continue using it. From what I can see the rants are just more IRC noise and certainly if Debian doesn't want advertising, all they need do is move.
And no surprise that the Debianistas would be the ones making noises. Same crowd that's been picking a fight over GPL with Linux -- Pffft!
I say Debian - good riddance, just as they can now use the long-awaited Hurd if Linux isn't ideologically pure enough. Personally I'm happy to live in a real world and deal with real people, who sometimes don't live up to my expectations. I can always choose to move elswhere, no cause I can see for making a big flap.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
Nice troll, lilo. Now fuck off.
The people who donated this 25K to some fag for an IRC server are stupid. This is not even news. Who gives a shit about some IRC network? Why is this even on slashdot? News for nerds. Maybe. Stuff that matters. Sure as hell not. This is not a troll, it's the fucking truth.
I really don't need to hear about people whining cause they're not some l33t IRCOP who gets to decide the fate of the world. It's IRC. It's a fucking chat channel. Yeah, this lilo person should get a job but I wouldn't either if I had dumbasses giving me 25K dollars.
Let him sit on his IRC server all by himself. With a name like lilo, you know he really does need a job and a life.
Everything at kuro5hin is indeed donated -- bandwidth (and colocation) is provided by voxel.net, which is why they have that big banner on the top/right of the main page. The hardware is provided by Promicro, who have a banner right below the voxel.net one. Prior to this arrangement, bandwidth/colocation was donated by vHosting (in return for an ad in the same place), with the main server donated by Compaq (without any advertising in return).
As for rusty's job, I don't know. I was under the impression that he quit his job voluntarily, as he no longer wished to live in the San Francisco area (he's since moved to a small island in Maine). At the very least he's not actively looking for a job (evidenced by the fact that he actively moved away from the tech job market to an island in Maine).
The only problem I have is that he did at one point claim that kuro5hin was a community site, with its most important asset being the people who provided its content (the users). So it sits a bit ill to then have him charging the very same people -- they should be the ones getting paid, not him. Sure, coding additions to scoop is nice, but it's not the most important thing kuro5hin needs -- the most important thing is new stories. So I'd support paying the story authors before I'd support paying the coders.
I have no problem with the textads. It's just the subscriptions I have a problem with.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Rock on, 1337 d0oDz!
Good riddance to bad rubbish
Flamebait? No, the truth.
not profit.. if Lilo wants to make some money through donation maybe he should develop a USEFUL service. There's thousands of free IRC Servers run by good people with good intentions and not asking for a dime. OPN isn't anything special.. at all. Lilo asking for donations for running an IRC server is like me asking for donations for posting on slashdot.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
- Abuse of power - removal of various channels, silencing of various server sponsors, his utter domination of the OPN concept to the point where he has threatened to take the whole thing away because of some minor disagreement on many occasions.
- Utter cluelessness - the
/remove command, various server hacks that net result in breaking of various major *nix irc clients such as epic4--the author of which has now put into effect a policy of not doing anything to further support of dancer-ircd.
- Unethical usage of administration privileges.
- Utterly unconcerned for complaints. Pays no heed for suggestions. Staffers are quoted as saying "why should we listen to any of you (lusers)".
HTH. HAND.