Ad Terras Per Aspera

So, Rob has responded to my call to free Freenode, and bring it back into the control of the community, on his blog.

In response to his saying that I have no proof that he’s mismanaging the PDPC for his own gain, and otherwise abusing the community, I have a couple things to offer.

First, where are the PDPC yearly budgets? Rob keeps offering simple ‘draft’ budgets, which are of no use to anyone. They are not approved by the rest of the board, and they aren’t even online anywhere. As far as I know, the law requires non-profits to have detailed budgets, that say where every last dollar goes; the handwavium going on makes me think there is something shady going on inside the non-profit. The lack of public financial reporting is not a good thing.

Second, are non-profits not required to have an Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Board? Again, as far as I know, they are, infact, required to do so. They are also required to release the logs/minutes to the public. I see no reference to AGMs on the PDPC website, let alone the logs to them, or any way to get them. Or, hell, if the PDPC even has them.

Third, the Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) IRC network was started by ex-Freenode¹ staff and servers. Many of these people left Freenode because they got tired of Rob Levin’s constant network-wide notices², reminding people to donate to the network. Said money was being spent on Rob Levin’s private life, such as bills and food, and was not helping the network in any way. They didn’t split from Freenode for no reason, although Rob Levin has tried to spin it to sound like that.

Fourth, Rob Levin attacks anyone who disagrees with his methods either directly, or via third parties. As documented here, and here, he uses third parties to basically say, “Yeah, my opposition lies a lot, and offers no proof that I’m a ‘bad guy’.” Yet, Rob does the exact same thing himself. No one, not even Rob, has offered proof that anything I am saying is a lie. Infact, if someone can prove that I have my facts wrong, I implore them to include any corrections or proof in comments under any of my Liberation of Freenode posts. However, Rob himself doesn’t support such a policy, and on his own blog, he deletes any comments that do not agree with his point of view.

Fifth, Rob Levin has continued to maintain that his Spinhome project (the one to pay off all his bills, and buy him a brand new motorhome), is in no way connected to the network. He says this doesn’t enable him to better serve the network, and on his own blog he says that his alternative nick, ‘Somegeek’, is the one he uses to talk about Spinhome, as not to confuse this as a Freenode/PDPC project; but by mentioning that it is his nick, he is implying that donating money to him for Spinhome, it helps the network.

Sixth, supporters of Rob Levin say that, thanks to Freenode, he lives in poverty, as if the two have a connection. (See this comment.) Rob Levin has paid very little out of pocket for the network. As I said in my earlier post, Rob pays nothing for the server hardware, he pays nothing for the server bandwidth, and I don’t think he even pays for the hosting of the Freenode.net website. The only thing he pays for is the three domains (freenode.net, pdpc.us, peerprojects.org), and the occational other things; the majority, however, is donated. He doesn’t even pay the hard working staff, who volunteer all their time instead.

So, even though Rob wants it to appear so, I am not attacking him for no reason. Nor am I attacking Freenode at all. I think Freenode is a great network, and has a great community; but neither the network being great, nor the community being great have anything to do with Rob’s efforts. The network and community are that way because many people, from all different corners of the FOSS community, came together and made Freenode into what it is today. These same people are developers on hundreds of FOSS projects; in essence, they are the FOSS community.

_{[1]: Back then, Freenode was still called the Open Projects Network (OPN). The PDPC didn’t exist yet, either.}

_{[2]: Does anyone have IRC logs of these global notices? Please email them to me, my client doesn’t keep logs.}