Hey Andrew. I’ve now been able to speak to Christel about your lawyer's letter and to get legal advice on it. I should say that the reason for taking legal advice was not because I want to have a dispute with you, but because I simply did not know what to do when I got your letter – I have no experience with these things personally, having never received anything like a lawyer’s letter before.
A next-generation IRC network for FOSS projects collaboration!
A previous copy of this was a draft. This one isn't - its the real thing. Some time ago, Christel, the former head of freenode staff sold `freenode ltd` (a holding company) to a third party, Andrew Lee[1], under terms that were not disclosed to the staff body. It turns out that this contract did indeed intend to sell the entire network and it's holdings, a fact hidden from the of staff. Mr Lee at the time had promised to never exercise any operational control over freenode. In the past few weeks, we began to realise this had changed[2][3], and Mr Lee has sought to assert total legal control over the network, including user data. Despite our best efforts, the legal advice the freenode staff has obtained is that the contract signed by the previous head of staff cannot be fought with a reasonable likelyhood of success. As a result, Mr Lee will shortly have operational control over the freenode IRC network. I cannot stand by such a (hostile[4]) takeover of the freenode network, and I am resigning along with most other freenode staff. We know that many of our users and communities also do not want this, as you have made clear directly to Mr Lee in #freenode and through letters[5].
Posted on Freenode Limited on the morning of May 12, 2021 US PST: ❧
For context, here’s the other side: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409
Annotated on May 20, 2021 at 09:12AM
I simply want freenode to keep on being a great IRC network, and to support it financially and legally as I have for a long time now. ❧
Simply?
What’s the long term plan/goal here in owning and controlling it? If it’ out of the goodness of your heart, why not set up a foundation and donate the money to that? Why need/have corporate ownership or control unless there’s some other motivation?
Annotated on May 20, 2021 at 09:11AM
After the Webmention session last weekend, I was inspired to revisit a quirk of Micro.blog’s Webmention implementation. Bridgy is an IndieWeb-friendly service commonly used to forward tweet replies via Webmention. If you were using Bridgy to connect your blog to Twitter, Micro.blog had been essent...
I love my website. Even though it isn’t a physical thing, I think it might be my most prized possession.
It’s a place for me to think and a place for me to link.
So for Bush’s greatest legacy, my answer would have to be his supervision and support of Claude Shannon’s work at MIT.