Reevaluating choice of IRC network for our service bots

[Ghanshyam Mann]

 ---- On Fri, 21 May 2021 14:29:46 -0500 Jeremy Stanley <fungi at 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.2021-05-20.log.html#t2021-05-20T15:33:18
 > -- 
 > Jeremy Stanley
 >