---- On Fri, 21 May 2021 14:29:46 -0500 Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org> wrote ----
As most people reading this are likely aware, there has been a recent change in management for the Freenode IRC network. According to public statements[0], the former staff have all left and the network is in entirely new hands. Setting aside arguments about which parties are in the wrong, further stability of the service we provide is once again brought into question. We've seen evidence of (much) lower levels of abuse mitigation over the past few days, with a marked increase in registered accounts engaging in harassment over extended periods of time across our channels without getting banned from the network.
Due to disagreements between Freenode and other large IRC networks and frequent related attacks against Freenode's servers, our communities have experienced many extended periods of instability there. In order to insure against a potential collapse of the network, the OpenDev Collaboratory (and the OpenStack Project Infrastructure before it) has for many years maintained a sort of evacuation plan: For the multitude of channels overseen by OpenDev, we also keep equivalent channel registrations on the Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) IRC network[1], and have communicated with its operators on multiple occasions about their willingness and ability to host our communities there should the need arise.
This week's events are, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. The systems administrators for OpenDev have encouraged a move to OFTC on multiple occasions, with the first formal proposal in March 2014[2]. In prior cases, the impact to the community for such a switch outweighed the perceived benefits, but as we've heard growing displeasure with Freenode from representatives of many of the projects we serve, it is time once more to revisit whether we should enact our longstanding evacuation plans.
Because the OpenDev Collaboratory exists to serve the projects it hosts, input from project representatives and the Advisory Council is critical in deciding major changes to services. If projects were to move their channels to OFTC, the transition would not be seamless. In particular, differences in authentication (no SASL support, but you can authenticate your connection with a certificate[3] if you don't want to identify to the NickServ after connecting), permissions model (OFTC has coarse-grained RBAC designed to reduce channel mismanagement), and NickServ and ChanServ command syntax are among the challenges they're likely to face. The same IRC nicks may also not be available in some cases, though due to the generally smaller size of OFTC compared to Freenode this hopefully won't come up for too many users. On a positive note, we may be able to go back to not requiring nick registration just to join channels, easing onboarding for newcomers.
If there is a consensus to move OpenDev's services to OFTC, or any other IRC network for that matter, this will entail a bit of development effort in order to accommodate the differences mentioned above. Please do note, however, that moving to a network other than OFTC would additionally mean we can't guarantee the availability of the same IRC channel names either, so that needs to be weighed in any decision. Some discussion[4][5][6] is already underway within the OpenStack community as to what they'd prefer, but we haven't heard much from other projects yet, so please do respond with your thoughts on the matter.
Thanks, Jeremy and opendev team for starting the consolidated effort. As you know, in OpenStack we are still discussing it on ML or in openstack-tc channel (adding this in TC meeting agenda too). One question though: Does openinfra projects have their individual choice which one they want to move or continue OR there will be only a single network provided/supported by opendev based on the majority of openinfra projects feedback. -gmann
[0] https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt [1] https://www.oftc.net/ [2] http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2014-March/028783.html [3] https://www.oftc.net/NickServ/CertFP/ [4] http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-discuss/2021-May/022468.html [5] http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-discuss/2021-May/022539.html [6] http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2021-... -- Jeremy Stanley