muckrights-sans-merde
bonum fabula frat
### the-freenode-situation-doesnt-have-to-be-complicated
other pages:
=> why-would-muckrights-stop-advocating-real-freedom-after-so-many-years.html why-would-muckrights-stop-advocating-real-freedom-after-so-many-years
*originally posted:* may 2021
muckrights is struggling with what to say about freenode. they dont really need to have a position on it, but i suppose it would be a missed opportunity if they didnt make it about their position somehow. this may sound pot and kettle of course-- a freenode-related position on why you dont need a freenode-related position, but the only reason im chiming in here is because muckrights is going to waste time on this. so of course im going to comment on that, its what this website is for.
freenode is NOT vital to free software. its very foolish if free software depends on it that much, and freenode is not irc.
but first, here are some efforts people have made to complicate this matter-- followed by reasons they dont have to make this complicated.
1. the person buying freenode is allegedly right-wing, though this is possibly insinuated because of their ethnicity.
or maybe they are right wing.
2. muckrights has stated that the only people leaving so far are staff, not members-- and someone (bhk?) figured out a lot of the ones who left are also stallman cancellers. someones actually trying to paint muckrights as right wing because they havent cancelled pocock, which is a recursively hilarious and (at least) dubious argument.
so no great loss there.
3. the person who sold it may not have had the authority to do so.
if it was sold under fraudulent pretenses, perhaps they can sue later and get it back. but my spidey sense tells me theyre throwing this in because they just want their way, not because its true. even if it were true, the stallman cancellers are frauds anyway. if frauds are (again-- allegedly) defrauding frauds, im not condoning it but im not going to shed a tear about it either.
they already chose to run organisations they have no authority over in a way that isnt based on honesty or due process, now they might find out what thats like from the other end. it doesnt justify the actions of the person (allegedly) defrauding them, though if theyre going to have a crossfire of bullshit and lies, theres no reason to jump in the middle to defend anybody. let them kill each other, and gtfo of there.
alternatively, the owner owns it, and what the fuck do you expect from services in the clown? if you have legal rights here, use them. if you dont, you dont.
what am i missing here, other than made-up shit? seriously, im curious.
4. the proposed alternative is somehow github-based.
thats obviously a non-starter right there.
5. a reasonable list of possible choices (as opposed to a possible list of reasonable choices) to make includes:
a. do nothing
b. move to self-hosting
c. move to libera.chat
d. move to one of several other irc networks
of course this is about what muckrights is going to do, because their own channel is based on freenode.
what muckrights decides to do will probably have little to no influence on what other projects do, but we can pretend.
this doesnt have to be so complicated, in the same way that choosing from hundreds of gnu/linux distros doesnt have to be (simple: dont use any of them. jokes aside though...) the list whittles itself down very quickly once you can even guess what you want to accomplish.
if youre looking for the uptime / availability of freenode, im at least sceptical that the other networks can provide it. thats why we are pretending theyre the only network, right?
so for muckrights at least, the move to one of several other networks seems like a backwards move. this isnt meant as a vote for doing nothing.
a move to libera.chat should not even be considered, if theyre using github. besides, these are anti-stallman cancel-culture people, so theyre completely useless for providing ANY sort of communication infrastructure. tell them not to let the door hit their arses on the way out. this decision doesnt require any deliberation at all: libera.chat isnt libre, its worse than fucking worthless.
if freenode is an american non-profit, then its actually a threat to their non-profit status to redo the firing of brendan eich-- which never helped mozilla, and only helped corporations make mozilla closer to proprietary software (sorry, i mean spyware). if its for-profit... then relying on for-profit infrastructure for free software hosting is the mistake thats already been made. i personally use for-profit infrastructure in addition to what i really need, but i RELY on non-profit infrastructure.
if free software projects regularly use for-profit hosting for chat, and countless free software projects would suffer without it-- thats just dumb. its dumb in the first place. its as dumb as relying on twitter. for-profit infrastructure can fuck you at any time, and they (typically) will. if youre not basing your plans on that fact, its naive at best.
i dont actually trust the new owner, at all-- but this is the thing. freenode is already too close to a monopoly (in perception or public opinion, not reality) no matter who owns it, and thats a (real) problem no matter how this works out. the fact that people (even ridiculous people) are insisting its somehow vital to free software, if proven right, would only demonstrate the problem of relying too much on clown services.
we know muckrights isnt going to self-host, and at any rate this kerfuffle started when their own host (who is the reason muckrights main irc channel is censored now) alerted muckrights to the problem.
"self-hosting" (which is an absolutely bullshit way of putting it, the muckrights "self-host" is someone actively editorially holding BOTH the website and the irc channel hostage these days, by threatening to pull the plug on the host and then pretending they didnt mean it-- which is just the most narcissistic way you can possibly hold something hostage, really) is not a real option because muckrights doesnt have the skills (or the will) and they dont control their host anyway.
i mean, listening to people talk about this is like listening to people pretend that imgur or facebook are somehow vital to the web. but where are we going to talk, and put up cat pictures?
remain a hostage, or dont, are the two big options here. and thats a big clue for muckrights (if they had one).
1. theyll never be free with their "self"-host, who has agreed to help them migrate. muckrights doesnt care about being free. or about self-hosting, for that matter. their host is not even on the same fucking continent. their host is not owned or in any way, shape or form controlled by muckrights (quite the opposite). it is not self-hosting. its more of a hosting crisis, which by far eclipses this silly freenode business, making it even more of a farce.
2. theyll never be free with freenode, and they never were. it was always a matter of whether freenode stopped them from doing what they wanted to do. freenode hasnt, and ron is busy brown-nosing the new owner as we speak.
3. theyll never be happy with other options, which wont handle the sort of traffic that muckrights wont have anyway, because their self-host successfully demanded that they censor irc.
whats REALLY hilarious about this, is that the laughable premise that led them to censor irc in the first place was an imaginary influx of SUPER-right-wing trolls. which is exactly what the so-called-libera.chat people are on about. note they already consider muckrights itself right-wing, because they havent RETROACTIVELY censored pocock. so THERES the influx theyre worried about-- everybody who is not left of debian.
so on one side, you have ron sucking up to his "self-host" and censoring things anyway she wants, and on other side you have ron brown-nosing a guy who is allegedly hitler himself.
ron is basically turning into the democratic party here, but thats more of a personal problem.
in short:
libera.chat is a no-go. (github, anti-stallman crybullies)
other networks are a no-go. (not good enough for fancy-pants muckrights who want 24/7 uptime at no charge)
self-hosting is a no-go. (because they dont have the skills and wouldnt be any more autonomous, really)
sucking up to the new owner isnt only a given, its already in progress.
this may lead to chaos with the "self"-host, though honestly, the self-host is also a stallman-canceller (ron pretends she changed her mind-- thats bullshit however) and muckrights is in a state of chaos already. their website is already censored, their irc is already censored, and there is no way forward from freenode that muckrights is willing to go with.
so muckrights is going to do what muckrights is becoming best at-- doing nothing, with a lot of handwaving to make it look like they had any real choices in anything.
youre using debian for everything (except your server, which isnt yours) and youre being forced to evaluate alternatives to an alleged right-wing takeover of the busiest irc network, which (like github) nobody who is actually using it cares about.
youre going to make a bunch of excuses, talk a lot of shit, and then do nothing.
you see? on the surface it looks complicated as hell, but few things are simpler than talking out of your arse and then doing fuck-all about anything. its the muckrights way!
the real question is-- how many "stories" can you get out of this? im seriously hoping to keep it to two. but if it gets twice as ridiculous as it is now (and you should never say never, of course) then i wont lie, ill be tempted.
=> https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org