Move from Freenode to Libera.chat (was: somewhere else?) #19
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felixfontein
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https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/wiki/Bridged-IRC-networks contains a list of where Matrix bridges with, which includes OFTC & Freenode. |
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I vote for cutting ties with Freenode.. option 2 feels like it will follow other OpenSource projects so I would vote there. Option 1 would be more secure for user data, but would more more work to convince people to use the new network. |
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I assume that hosting our own instance of some chat server (whatever the protocol might be) is out of the questions because of the obvious "needs time and money", right? |
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My take: lets not be the early adopters and see what kind of success do other players have with their move (like OpenStack). Over the years I seen moves like this destroying the fragile contributors communities, ending up with a deserted channel on each platform posible (cookiecutter, pytest examples). I would be totally against setting our own instance of... anything. Why? Maintenance costs. |
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For the record, here are the Ansible channels we currently have on freenode ( Out of an abundance of caution, I have gone ahead and pre-emptively registered the following #ansible namespace channels on irc.oftc.net: Edit: In regards to irc.oftc.net, I must point out that it does not support SASL while freenode and libera.chat do. SASL provides the ability to authenticate against nickserv at the time of the connection to the IRC network so you don't need to |
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I will use this comment to aggregate decisions or discussions from other projects on this topic:
Some projects, such as Debian, Ceph, Libvirt/qemu/kvm have already been on irc.oftc.net. |
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option 3 seems like 'best of all worlds' (hopefully with future libera.chat bridge) so we could 'officially' move to matrix, but still support the same channels across irc services. But only if we can use existing infra, I don't think anyone has time/effort/resources to get into managing our own instance. |
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Seeing this spam on libera . |
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As a long time Matrix user, I'm for option 3 as well. I believe the Matrix folk are already talking about a Libera bridge (although I don't have a link just now, sorry). I think Matrix gives us some protections around this for the future - it's got a proper governance to give us confidence over it's future, and it's federated so we don't have to decide which server to be on. I'm OK with staying on IRC (and we'll likely need a presence via bridges anyway, people may not move easily). I'm against proprietary solutions for open source projects, so while things like Slack et al haven't been listed as options, should it come up, I would be -1 for that. I don't see anything Slack offers that Matrix does not, functionality-wise. |
Spam has historically been a semi-regular occurrence on freenode too. For what it's worth, libera.chat ops have sent out this notice about it: |
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fwiw, Debian has been using oftc for ages and it seems to be working fine. |
There's a good summary here: https://www.kline.sh/ |
Some other thoughts
Community Feedback wanted
Other proejcts
Previous decision IRC - Is it still right (September 2018) |
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what I also would find imporant would be: How will we avoid that in the feature, what happens if the hosting were we move to is also compromised. So I totally agree with @bcoca, switching to matrix and providing bridges seems to be a good choice EDIT: |
It should be possible for a user using only open source software, such as Fedora without proprietary repos, to get help with their automation. I will not join Slack to continue volunteering support. Perhaps non-free services could be bridged, but could get complicated.
Yes. IRC is available on every platform, and more than just Windows/macOS/Linux/mobile. There will be a long tail of users not following this who will look for Ansible on IRC. Ideally, any new community is established and documented long before the last #ansible op leaves freenode. |
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Any move to something other than IRC will result in my services no longer being available to the community outside of GitHub and occasionally on Google Groups. I also wont click on any matrix.org links for people who cannot write within the IRC limits. libera is my vote. |
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I would also vote to keep on IRC and with that a move to oftc or libera. Maybe follow the FOSS-herd :) |
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For people not familiar with matrix's bridging to irc, sivel's matrix.org reference is that when a matrix server receives a longer line than can be sent to irc, it will place the line into a web service (like pastebin) and then post the link to the irc server. With the elements client (haven't checked any others), this is done without prompting and does not appear to have a client-side config (to split the lines before the matrix server sees it). Since the links don't have explanatory text, they're not very friendly to people who are viewing on irc. Another UX wart in matrix => irc bridging is that matrix allows allows corrections to lines but those show up in irc as |
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Criteria discussed for a new irc network:
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Results of the votes from today's meeting:
We will vote on the new destination at the meeting next week. If someone prefers to no longer be on Freenode, please voice your opinions here. In case Freenode goes down before then, also discuss here. Once decided, the result will be posted here (#19) and the issue will be locked (so you can find the result at the bottom without having to search), and you will be able to find it on the regular places where we announce things (mailing lists, Bullhorn, Twitter, Reddit, ...). |
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Strong vote against Freenode. Libera looks to me like the best alternative. It will be a bit unstable now as many, many projects move there, but I think it looks like the best option, partly because the team I used to trust to run things are now at Libera. |
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libera.chat is made "against" Freenode, I don't know if it's going to be removed in case of agreement for example. I'd vote for OFTC as being stable and solid for a long time, proven for many projects like Debian and Ovirt, and mostly because it's aside of all conflicts around Freenode. |
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There is a new communication from the part of the new freenode ownership: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss |
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I also left Freenode for good. I do mind where exactly are we moving, but I would prefer to stick with IRC as a primary communication channel (matrix also being acceptable). |
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FWIW I have also left Freenode #ansible-* channels and joined ansible channels on libera irc server for now to see what will happen next. |
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+1 for option 1 (libera), I'm planning to disconnect from freenode soon. |
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Joined Matrix and got error
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Maybe a bit less relevant, but Gentoo Council decided yesterday that Gentoo will be moving to Libera Chat: https://www.gentoo.org/news/2021/05/23/Moving-to-Libera.html |
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Freenode is updating their channel ownership rules (currently labelled as a "draft" after some criticism), which allows people to take over channels after they have been abandoned, for example because they moved to another network: https://freenode.net/policies#channel-ownership (change history: freenode/web-7.0@1194a3e freenode/web-7.0@63b147b freenode/web-7.0@4210b31), and it appears that this new policy was already used before it was added (https://www.devever.net/~hl/freenode_abuse). |
For clarity to those who don't know, this isn't a problem with Matrix, but rather how we have the rooms flagged on Freenode. We're using +r (I assume) which is "Prevents users who are not identified to services from joining the channel", hence the error. There is a better way, which I'm hoping we will set up on Libera. If we instead use "+q" (which means users can join and view the channel, but can't speak unless registered), combined with a regex exception that matches Matrix users (because by definition they are already authed to something, they aren't anonymous), then you can remove the anonymous spam without Matrix users seeing the errors. I've used this approach on other channels I'm an op for in the past, and had no issues (Matrix works without error, no increase in spam). See this for Freenode channel modes (which I assume will work on Libera) and this for various spam reduction strategies. Edit: This is a useful thing to do regardless of where we decide the "source of truth" is - Matrix isn't going away, and we should make it easy for folks to join from either side. |
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Since I won't be there for the next meeting (unrelated to the Freenode discussion ;) ), I vote to move to Libera, and my second preference is OFTC. I also vote for making the move quick, i.e. start using the new network already for next week's meetings. |
There's some action on this concern - Matrix devs are adding support for per-room configuration of this behaviour, although it's not deployed yet I believe. You can learn more here but as a preview, this was the comment on HN from Arathorn:
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At this point, the herd is moving from freenode to libera, my first preference is follow the herd: libera. |
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The mediator between freenode and Andrew Lee came out with his perspective of the story and the (now ex) freenode staff doesn't exactly come out spotless: https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c1646791c61953 |
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Andrew Lee also came out with his side of the story: http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/lee-side.pdf (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27234542 where he also replied under |
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If we are to move, my preference would be to move to OFTC, especially with the extra perspective provided by |
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Please also note ansible/community#613 (comment), it looks like the new policy on Freenode is that if you mention Libera in the channel topic, your channel is taken over automatically. So please make sure you don't accidentally trigger this during the discussion by using |
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FWIW Openstack community is moving to OFTC. |
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We discussed this at the #ansible-community meeting today and:
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(Locking this issue so that the result - moving to Libera.chat, with a matrix bridge that will hopefully soon be there - is easy to find. If you think this needs further discussion, please create a new issue and reference this one. Thanks for your understanding.) |
felixfontein
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TLDR: we voted that we will move to Libera.chat (see #19 (comment) for more details).
(original post below:)
Summary
Since the current Freenode drama seems to be intensifying (like multiple global messages warning about user data being given into other hands), we should discuss whether we want to continue to meet on Freenode, or move somewhere else.
Edit: in case you missed the drama, here are some links:
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