Ad Terras Per Aspera

Rob has mentioned that he won’t talk about Spinhome, his project to pull one over on everybody, via his ‘work’ blog,

It’s worth commenting again on my use of the IRC nick somegeek on freenode. What’s that about? Do I have two identities? Why do I need a separate nickname? Isn’t it confusing?

I have two main nicknames on freenode now, lilo and somegeek. I have two nicknames, but not two identities. Both nicknames are me.

I’ve sent up somegeek because I’m in an unusual position. As head of staff, I need to make it very clear when something is official, and when it’s not. The spinhome project is personal, not official.

So, if thats true, why is his away message (emphasis mine…)

[lilo] is away (I’m away for the moment. For URGENT freenode help (channel flooding, trolling users, network problems or access issues), please email my pager at 4iiygyvs@freenode.net . For ROUTINE issues, please see http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#gettinghelp …. Please take a look at my personal blog when you get a chance: http://spinhome.org …. Thanks!)

Also, why is the topic for #freenode-social, Freenode’s official social channel, (again emphasis mine…)

--- Topic for #freenode-social is Welcome to the Biggest 'Ol FOSS Network on the Planet, Y'all. d^) || /bin/flame > /dev/yallchill . Please, no trolling, soapboxing or astroturfing. Thanks! | For freenode support: http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#gettinghelp | http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml | Let's make this the best of freenode. | Lilo's personal blogs: http://bloggage.org/ and http://spinhome.org
— Topic for #freenode-social set by lilo at Thu Jun 15 00:17:25 2006

For someone who wants to keep his ‘work’ identity seperate from his ‘personal’ identity, he’s not doing that good of a job. In fact, it looks like he is intentionally trying to confuse Spinhome as a lilo-supported PDPC project.

Well, which is it, Rob? Work or personal?

The alternate goal of the Freenode Liberation Front, if we can’t get Rob Levin to leave the network and quit his position within the PDPC, is to make OFTC the new Freenode.

On June 4th, Debian made a step towards that goal, and moved their official channel, #debian to OFTC, taking over 800 users with them.

The Real Truth About Spinhome.org

According to an anonymous staffer (who’s identity I wish to protect), he thinks Rob has been doing some serious cooking of books lately. As I previously quoted some information that I’ve been able to aquire, the PDPC made $18,600 in the fiscal year ending June 2005, which as it’s under $25,000, Rob didn’t have to file an IRS form 990 (a tax return for non-profits).

Well, this anonymous staffer has told me that he believes those 2005 figures are completely bullshit. The information that I originally quoted said there was $0 in corporate contributions, but the anonymous staffer said that a company going by the name of Digium donated several thousand dollars, and he thinks the total income for 2005 exceeds $28,000.

Now, I don’t know if this anonymous staffer is correct, and I essentially have no way of checking if his facts are true or not. If anyone out there from Digium is reading this, please drop me a line so I can figure out if this is true or not. If it is true, Rob is looking at a serious charge of tax fraud.

Update: I forgot to mention, people are still looking into seeing if Rob actually gave the money to UNICEF like he promised, an incentive he used for earlier fund raising campaigns to get people to donate more (Rob said he would donate a percentage of every donation to UNICEF). According to this page, it should have been over $5,822 for the 2005 campaign alone. However, at this time, there is no proof he actually did so.

Just a little note, someone else has written about Rob’s mismanagement of Freenode, Quinton Reeves.

As of now, I’ve spent the last two years on freenode. I, and many others, have endured constant harassment from lilo, including a highly frequent stream of global notices begging for donations, supposedly so he can focus more on freenode and less on trying to earn a living (and who of us wouldn’t want to be paid to sit on IRC all day, but I mean, come on). He’s been seen meddling with channels, and their politics, but rarely ever seen doing actual work which would benefit freenode. Several times, IRCd and Services projects have been started to improve the network, and discontinued due to lilo’s politics getting in the way of actual implementation, pissing off more than his fair share of developers in the process, including myself, as I was naive enough at the beginning to think I could help this shell of a network be a better place, even after my own dream had been dashed.

I totally agree with Quinton, Rob doesn’t know when to stop, and ends up ruining the network for everyone else.