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.}

It seems Rob can’t handle anyone being critical about his network, or the way he runs his network. In a recent post on his blog, he accusses me of social engineering, and implicating me indirectly for attacks, and also accusses me of lying about the terms of my leaving his network.

Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black. Rob, you’ve been caught social engineering before. Remember that OFTC attack a month ago? That is social engineering. Posting things on your blog that are obviously not true, and people, not knowing any better, think it’s true, due to misplaced trust? That’s also social engineering. Not informing people about your current income status (which more than likely exceeds US$40,000 a year), and then asking people to donate money for your new motorhome? Social engineering, and which, that specific case may actually be against the law (IANAL).

Also, I don’t care that you’ve klined me from the network. You did so after I announced I left, and you did so as an act of malice. However, something I do care about, is that you are implicating me in the attacks against the network. How can I be on the network and present for the attacks if I am klined from the network? You, by your own admission, said that you klined me. Implicating me in the attacks, even when there is no way I could have been apart of them, is defamation.

Everything you quote that I did, such as asking many open source projects to move their channels elsewhere, is not social engineering. It is looking out for the well-being of the Free and Open Source Software community. I do believe whole heartedly that you are stunting the growth of projects; and by constantly begging for money, especially when the PDPC (your own non-profit) pays you a good sum of money each year, you are keeping money out of the hands of developers who could be using this to develop software. I am not the only one who complains about your donations runs: irc.debian.org and irc.gnu.org, among others, constantly threaten to redirect elsewhere.

Also, is it not a form of social engineering to use Freenode to collect money for the sake of Freenode? You do not pay anything for the hosting of IRC servers, as all bandwidth, and even the machines, are donated. The Freenode.net website itself could be hosted on less than $120 a year (Dreamhost’s L1 plan has upwards of 1TB of traffic a month, which I seriously doubt you are exceeding), and $10 or so a year for the domain. Yet, the PDPC is raking in the money. Just like your Spinhome project, this is, without a doubt, social engineering: you’re abusing the trust of all the users on the network, and you always have been.

Update: (4/26/06, 6:55pm) Just to clarify, that 1TB figure is only the website, and not the IRC servers. As nenolod (former ircd hacker for Freenode, who left because of what Rob does) pointed out to me, the IRC servers use about 3-4TB a month, and upwards of 16TB during an attack. However, the bandwidth the IRC servers use, and the machines themselves, are all dontated, Rob doesn’t pay a cent for those.

Update: (4/28/06, 7:39am) Oh, and apparently someone dugg my story. The description kind of sucks, and is a little flamebaity, but 11 people have dugg it, and I’ve gotten several hundred hits to this story alone. If you want to help with the on-going effort to get Rob Levin to stop abusing the community that he says that he supports, please, digg this story.

I’ve decided that I’m quitting the Freenode IRC network. The network is run by someone that is very inept at his job, Rob Levin (aka lilo), who constantly causes problems with the users of the network, and makes enemies of everyone.

He also makes everything a political issue, constantly censors users for exercising their free speech rights (very insulting for a network founded on such a concept), and also constantly bans people he disagrees with from the network. In addition to all of this, he also blames people he dislikes for random attacks against the network.

The worst thing of all: Yesterday, he crapflooded #oftc on the Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) with a 300 user strong group as an “April Fool’s Joke”, wasting the network’s resources, and dozens of users are already quitting Freenode forever along with me over this.

I suggest everyone move their channels to OFTC instead, a network devoted to free speech and free software.