#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."

Comments

#slackware

[(startx)]

#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.

Re:If you build it, they will come

[dzym]

That's not quite the point.

For some better insight as to what was going on at the time, you should read at the very least this page.

See petition here.

Read Eterm developer Michael Jennings' thoughts on the matter here.

Re:debian planet took it down

[trelaneopn]

from an "inside source" it appears debian planet is staying out of this.

OSDN Channels Have Moved

[saveth]

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 whole lilo story goes a lot farther back...

[Primer]

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.

Trolling for Dollars - Bully

[jbridges]

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.

Re:last post from this nick

[dzym]

let's see here

/ignore lilo!*@* NOTICES

a few weeks later

/ignore lilo^!*@* NOTICES

a few weeks later

/ignore dilbert!*@* NOTICES

a few weeks later

/ignore *!*@*staff.opn NOTICES

a few weeks later

/ignore FUNDRAISING!*@* NOTICES

a few weeks later

/ignore *!*@*.freenode NOTICES

Am I the only one who sees a pattern emerging here?

#kernelnewbies (Re:#slackware)

[Rik van Riel]

Yes, the #kernelnewbies channel was moved over at the end of june already, together with #linux.nl, #dsbl and (I think, not sure) #php.

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...

Anybody who uses OPN...

[drdink]

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.

What I think the story is

[Bruce Perens]

Lilo (Rob Levin) contacted me some time ago looking for support for him to operate OPN full-time. My response was, and still is, that rather than have an organized IRC network operated by Rob, various projects should operate their own IRC servers, not very differently from the way that many projects operate mail and FTP servers.

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

Re:What I think the story is

[dbarclay10]

I'd just like to throw in my here.

I've long wanted Debian to run its own IRC servers, for instance. I really think it's smart :)

On OFTC we've talked about what we'll do when we have too many IRC users to manage effectively (given the flat namespace and all) ... I suggested, "split" :) As in seperate into two networks, managed seperately (but still abiding by rules and the constitution).

Despite OFTC being very IRC-centric right now, we do want to offer SourceForge-like services. It's in our .plan, so to speak.

That's where I see many projects using our IRC services; projects that don't yet run ther own FTP/HTTP/SMTP/DNS/etc servers ... if we're going to offer all that, they may as well use IRC too, if they want. *shrug* :)

Just my two cents.

(Disclaimer: my statements are my own, though I am part of OFTC staff.)

A Petition

[LightningTH]

A petition I found for stopping lilo's silliness.

http://void.printf.net/~chris/petition.pl

Bring Debian to irc.exiled.net

[SwedishChef]

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