DBdb48x·May 28, 2021Submission
Letter to Freenode – Post Mortem of May 25, 2021
4 points · Open discussionfreenode
web-7.0
CSS2021–2021
freenode / web-7.0 · Archived
web-7.0
The freenode website, home to our blog, knowledge base and policies
13Distinct people
14Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
117GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The freenode website, home to our blog, knowledge base and policies
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by 6-hour interval14 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-05-21 15:25:15 UTC to 2021-05-28 02:14:43 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 21, 12:00 | 2021-05-21 12:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-21 18:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| May 21, 18:00 | 2021-05-21 18:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-22 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 22, 00:00 | 2021-05-22 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-22 06:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 22, 06:00 | 2021-05-22 06:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-22 12:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 22, 12:00 | 2021-05-22 12:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-22 18:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 22, 18:00 | 2021-05-22 18:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-23 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 23, 00:00 | 2021-05-23 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-23 06:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 23, 06:00 | 2021-05-23 06:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-23 12:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| May 23, 12:00 | 2021-05-23 12:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-23 18:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| May 23, 18:00 | 2021-05-23 18:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-24 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 24, 00:00 | 2021-05-24 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-24 06:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 24, 06:00 | 2021-05-24 06:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-24 12:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 24, 12:00 | 2021-05-24 12:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-24 18:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| May 24, 18:00 | 2021-05-24 18:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-25 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| May 25, 00:00 | 2021-05-25 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-25 06:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| May 25, 06:00 | 2021-05-25 06:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-25 12:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 25, 12:00 | 2021-05-25 12:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-25 18:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 25, 18:00 | 2021-05-25 18:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-26 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| May 26, 00:00 | 2021-05-26 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-26 06:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 26, 06:00 | 2021-05-26 06:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-26 12:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 26, 12:00 | 2021-05-26 12:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-26 18:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 26, 18:00 | 2021-05-26 18:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-27 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 27, 00:00 | 2021-05-27 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-27 06:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 27, 06:00 | 2021-05-27 06:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-27 12:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 27, 12:00 | 2021-05-27 12:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-27 18:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 27, 18:00 | 2021-05-27 18:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-28 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 28, 00:00 | 2021-05-28 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-28 06:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
14 sourcesThe comments on https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/516 are, well, an interesting read.
In Freenode Exists for FOSSAndrew is making unilateral commits to the Freenode policy & website. He's claiming Freenode is going to go seek some new decentralized underpinnings[1] possibly apart from IRC to operate under. He's shut down/blocked the community from doing IRCv3 development, which might not fit with his personal vision.
Andrew has unilaterally decided to make all channel policies draft[2]. Andrew has unilaterally changed the rule for channel take-overs, & performed a takeover (ironically for a HN bot!!! how meta-recursively high-drama!). Andrew has unilaterally decided that racial, ethnic, religious, & gender-related invectives are now ok[3] on freenode. Andrew has unilaterally changed the entire staff line up[4].
Just because he says he's doing it for good, doing it to protect us, does not justify his having seized control & having made himself dictat
Read the rest
or of this network.
Whatever disagreement he had with Tomaw, he has overly personalized this as a conflict between Tom and himself. He's ignored the wider charge that he has taken over control. Is it evil? Well it would take us many years of evaluation to establish whether it was a good or bad take over, but we'd all prefer if he not take it over like this.
"Andrew [may or may not be evil] and trying to control us!" is definitely, for sure, 100% accurate.
[1] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/507/files#diff-3c00...
[2] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/514/files
[3] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/513/files#diff-0e38...
[4] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/510/files
> I think the issue is that it's unclear what was actually sold to Lee (possibly just a domain name and a website)
Looks like Lee legally owns something. I am not exactly sure what it is? Something much less than the entire IRC network. Some kind of account to something. First Wesley had revoked Lee's access, and then returned it. Anyway, when Lee asked for this access to whatever it is that he owns, it was seen as an attempt to a hostile takeover.
"I was locked out of the account"
"Finally, tomaw voluntarily handed back all of the accesses"
https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/blob/main/content/news/2...
In Kiwi IRC founder stops contributing to IRC after Freenode dramaAndrew Lee has now unilaterally rewritten Freenode policy to retroactively justify his actions:
https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/commit/1194a3e71a427a669...
In Freenode IRC operators now engaging in routine abuses of powerFreenode removes hate speech rule
30 points · Open discussionI'm guessing that he's now going to claim that the policy change he instituted 5 hours ago that allows him to do this[1] has always been there.
[1] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/513/commits/2037126...
In Freenode IRC operators now engaging in routine abuses of power> Long story short, former staff were upset about a logo but the logos were there since the start. I wanted to share that.
https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/489
"since the start."
In “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]We changed the url from https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/raw/main/static/files/on... to one that doesn't do a file download.
In “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]I did some troubleshooting to see why the original link did not behave as expected.
The original link:
https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/raw/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf
redirects to here:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/freenode/web-7.0/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf
and this command:
curl -v https://raw.githubusercontent.com/freenode/web-7.0/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf 2>&1 | less
reveals:
content-type: application/octet-stream
The application/octet-stream is for "Any kind of binary data," suggesting the correct browser behavior would be to download. To inform the browser that the document is a viewable PDF, a web server normally sends an application/pdf MIME type. [1] The "raw" in the original link is why GitHub thinks the file should be treated as a generic binary.
While this may all seem much ado
Read the rest
about nothing and pedantic, I often see this kind of behavior exploited in the wild to deliver malicious payloads. In this case I would say Firefox behaves "safer" than Chrome, but not not necessarily more correctly.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Basics_of_...