The new team of the FreeNode IRC network expressed regret over the incident that occurred yesterday, which some communities perceived as a takeover of their IRC channels. For example, projects like Ubuntu, Gentoo, HardenedBSD, LibreELEC, FSFE, and Void Linux announced their departure from FreeNode due to the loss of control over their channels.
After the departure of the administrators who founded the new network Libera.Chat due to a conflict with the owner, domainssome open projects moved their discussions to the Libera.Chat platform and blocked communication in the old channels. The FreeNode administration deemed the actions taken unacceptable, as they prevented users from continuing to communicate in the old channels due to bot settings that automatically removed users with a message stating that the channel had moved to Libera.Chat. FreeNode believed that it would have been sufficient to simply post a message about the move without blocking.
FreeNode representatives considered the blocking to be coercion of users who did not wish to leave the old network and amended the rules to prohibit such blocking of users in channels. In the case of blocking communication, the new rules prescribed closing the channel and redirecting user connections to another thematic channel.
Users who were blocked from communicating in channels were assigned a script that created a new channel in a different namespace '##' (for example, ##ubuntu instead of #ubuntu) and automatically redirected users attempting to connect to the old channel to this new one. The problem was that the new FreeNode team did not properly test this script before implementation, did not notify users about the upcoming change in advance (discussion only occurred in the niche channel #freenode-policy-feedback), and did not consider all nuances.
The script determined the fact of the channelās migration by the presence of the string 'libera' in the channel header, but it was overlooked that many projects still remaining in FreeNode were only at the discussion stage regarding migration to the new network and thus mentioned 'libera' in the channel topic. The script created mirrors in the new namespace for these channels as well and began redirecting users to another channel, which caused a wave of outrage and accusations of channel takeover.
It is estimated that around 720 IRC channels were affected by the script's actions, including channels from the OpenBSD, NetBSD, Gentoo, WikiMedia, Python, Rust, POSIX, OpenZFS, Linux, and FOSDEM projects. Some communities still hesitating about the migration were forced to move to a new network as they lost control of their channels on FreeNode. FreeNode's administration began efforts to recover the channels after complaints, but it was already too late and the reputation of the network was damaged.
Source: opennet.ru
