RFC: Move Away from Freenode

[Chris Johns]

On 29/5/21 3:17 am, Johnson, Andrew N. wrote:
> On May 28, 2021, at 1:57 AM, Christian MAUDERER
> <christian.mauderer at embedded-brains.de
> <mailto:christian.mauderer at embedded-brains.de>> wrote:
>>
>> I still think it's a bit odd to say "Drop Freenode" because Freenode seems to
>> go into a more commercial direction but at the same time say that the Discord
>> (which seems to be commercial through and through) is a good alternative.
>>
>> In other words: As long as we don't mind using Discord, I would just keep the
>> Freenode IRC just like it is.
> 
> I’m not an IRC (or Discord) user so I won’t be affected whatever you decide, but
> I wouldn’t categorize what has been happening at Freenode as “going in a more
> commercial direction.” The fact that any mention of Libera.chat in a channel now
> seems to result in that organization’s channels being taken over may be more of
> a risk than the RTEMS community would want to take. If Joel were to have even
> raised this question there you might have already lost control of those channels.
> 
> If you want more of the back-story, here’s a free link to Wednesday's LWN
> article at https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/857140/9dcadcf209612879/
> <https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/857140/9dcadcf209612879/> which is more up to
> date than The Register story that Joel linked to.

Thanks Andrew. Any dispute like this is messy.

For RTEMS it is the content that is posted that we need to consider. It is
freely given and needs to be freely available to anyone to see at any point in
time. The means to do this can and will change.

Discord is free to use even through it is a commercially based service. If we
cannot easily access to the contents of the chats and archive them we need to
consider its long term viability.

Chris