Hi folks,

As some of you may be aware, the former head of Freenode ltd., the holding
company for the Freenode IRC network, sold the organization to a third
party und terms that hadn't been disclosed to staff. Most Freenode staff
(e.g. [0], [1]) have resigned their posts and are urging communities that
use Freenode for IRC to abandon the network. This has become even more
urgent given recently reported routine abuses of power [2] and a rollback
on Freenode policy banning hate speech. [3]

Former Freenode staffers have founded a new IRC network, Libera.chat. A
handful of us (thanks, jeff) have started to set up a new #code4lib channel
there [4], although there's work to do to relocate zoia, the Code4lib IRC
bot, and update the web pages [5].

As always, this is a reminder that we don't have good processes or policies
for dealing with these sorts of changes in the Code4lib community. This was
not a unilateral decision, but one informed by a number of other folks in
IRC.

cheers,
Mark

[0]: https://www.kline.sh/
[1]: https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt
[2]: https://www.devever.net/~hl/freenode_abuse
[3]: https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/513/files
[4]: ircs://irc.libera.chat/code4lib
[5]: https://github.com/code4lib/code4lib.github.io/pull/52


--
Mark A. Matienzo
PO Box 80831
Unceded Duwamish Lands / Seattle, WA 98108
https://matienzo.org/