2021-06-15: Is Freenode Dead Yet?                            rak
================================================================

In a rare counter-example to Betteridge's Law, freenode's
suicide is complete, and freenode is dead [0].

A day and a half ago, freenode staff decided to k-line IRCCloud.
Presumably this was in an effort to get people to use their own
BNC service, but the new owner's official response was:

<@root> mst: If you really need a comment, just say root said,
        "fck irc cloud"

Late yesterday evening, freenode staff announced with zero
advance notice that they transitioning to a new IRCd, and that
they were not planning on migrating over their user and channel
registration databases:

--------------------8<--------------------
00:20 -- keitwo (~kei@freenode/staff/kei): [Global Notice 1/3]
We are moving past legacy freenode to a new fork. The new
freenode is launched. You will slowly be disconnected and when
you reconnect, you will be on the new freenode.  We patiently
await to welcome you in freedom's holdout - the freenode.

00:20 -- keitwo (~kei@freenode/staff/kei): [Global Notice 2/3]
If you're looking to connect now, you can already /server
chat.freenode.net 6697 (ssl) or 6667 (plaintext). It's a new
genesis for a new era. Thank you for using freenode, and Hello
World, from the future. freenode is IRC. freenode is FOSS.
freenode is freedom.

00:20 -- keitwo (~kei@freenode/staff/kei): [Global Notice 3/3]
When you connect, register your nickname and your channel and
get started. It's a new world. We're so happy to welcome you and
the millions of others. We will be posting more information in
the coming days on our website and twitter.  Otherwise, see you
on the other side!
--------------------8<--------------------

Chaos has since ensued, with the old servers still up (but
themselves having internally netsplit), along with the new
servers running in parallel. There are no plans to migrate the
old user and channels database to the freenode. I haven't used
freenode since the takeover, but I stayed connected to avoid
having my nickserv registration expire. Given the latest events,
I would rather not leave my data sitting around, so I finally
just did what I should have done a month ago when all of this
started:

12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): Information on ryanakca (account ryanakca):
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): Registered : Aug 29 18:55:42 2005 (15y 41w 6d ago)
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): Last addr  : rak@ubuntu/member/ryanakca
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): vHost      : ubuntu/member/ryanakca
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): Last seen  : now
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): Logins from: ryanakca
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): Nicks      : ryanakca
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): Email      : rak@debian.org (hidden)
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): Flags      : HideMail, EMailMemos, Private
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): ryanakca has enabled nick protection
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): *** End of Info ***
12:09 -- NickServ (NickServ@services.): The account ryanakca has been dropped.

Goodbye freenode, and thanks for all the fish.

[0] https://isfreenodedeadyet.com/

Addendum: I think it is fitting that the last message on the
last(*) of the old freenode servers was:

2021-06-15 16:52:05 <girst> fuck you rasengan for destroying freenode <3

(*) They forgot about capone.freenode.net, which survived
until 2021-06-16 03:27:09 EDT.