As of today we have disabled access to the freenode irc network via mibbit. While there are numerous reasons for this, it ultimately comes down to the ability to prevent abuse via this client. We allow connections from many types of web gateways, and such connections require a certain amount of trust and communication between the server operators and the gateway operators. While we have tried to maintain a good working relationship with anyone who wishes to provide access to freenode and are lucky that most of our users and projects are very friendly and communicative, we have found it difficult to maintain open communications with mibbit. This has resulted in a large amount of staff time being spent on managing abuse coming from mibbit, disrupting service for other mibbit users and reducing the quality of the network. Sadly, we feel that this is ultimately not beneficial to mibbit users or the network as a whole.
We apologize to those who used mibbit for the inconvenience this has caused, and for the need to find a new client or method to connect to freenode.
In response to this, we have implemented our own web gateway at http://webchat.freenode.net. The webchat runs qwebirc package which was developed for and extensively used by quakenet. We’d like to extend our thanks to Chris “slug” Porter and the rest of the team for making it available.
Some of the features of qwebirc can be found here.
Our new webchat facility also makes it easy to add to your own site. To do this, just click on the menu icon on the top left corner where you will find an “add webchat to your site” option. You will be taken through an easy wizard to get this going and get the webchat on your very own site!
I use the Mibbit client to allow technophobic users from our internet writers group to easily join the chat channel. I also know that several users would use the Mibbit based web page to access the chat from alternate computers where they weren’t allowed to install anything.
Your webchat pales in style & usability compared to the mibbit widget. People who have logged onto the chat room using the web access now want to know what is “wrong” with the chat.
I have heard rumor that Mibbit access to Freenode.net was banned due to problem users. I do not understand that as I have have been able to ban (and unban) a troublesome user who used the Mibbit client I had set up to circumvent the IP ban. It took but a single command to ban the user’s Mibbit access.
Hey!!! What make you differents is just some fonts color in tittle (check both blogs:
http://blog.mibbit.com/
http://blog.freenode.net/)
So.. why not to “extend” the mibbit access just a few days/week and Freenode’ guys help Mibbit’s guys to fix the errors.
You two guys rocks.. But, you guys can’t rock without the other.. Please.. Contact yourselfs
I am a actively user of Mibbit. Even now i have installed mIRC on my computer. I use Mibbit more for the colors, and Dutch interfaces, and.. it just feel better. I use mIRC for scripts, and that such things, and for meetings where colors aren’t essential.
The only network where i frequently come is Freenode, and sometimes Mibbit webIRC. When i found out that Freenode banned it, i was very angry. This is horrible, and even when it is about your reasons, couldn’t you think about your clients?
I’m sorry for my bad English, because i am dutch by the way. But – i used now Freenode WebIRC. It looks cool, but it isnt the same as Mibbit. It looks very…. whitey… I use now mIRC. This is a VERY strange thing from Freenode…
By the way, freenode webchat doesnt support smiley faces (like mibbit did, if you say
or something)
Oh, yes, I love how the new web client integrates with your Twitter account and YIM account too! I like all of the beautiful colors and ease of use of the new client. I like how the URL is short and sweet… just a few more than six characters. I like the way that the users in the channel are grouped by being active or idle. Bravo guys, you make me proud.
/sarcasm
Sad to see Freenode banning my friends from the networking for totally arbitrary and wrong reasons.
[...] Hundred Paper Cuts, Ubuntu Global Jam, Empathy to replace Pidgin, no more Mibbit on Freenode, new Hall of Famer: Adi Roiban, Ubuntu Satanic license issue. Ubuntu Podcast Quickie [...]
You are crazy for doing such thing !
Have you asked freenode users before that ????
According to http://blog.mibbit.com/?p=306 mibbit is working on making some changes to their backend for freenode, so it looks like they are willing to cooperate with freenode
It’s easy to see from their changed blog article that mibbit is willing to co-operate only now. Freenode has had to get them where it hurts. And that’s not the users, it’s the ad revenue they generate. Mibbit is a commercial operation so it has not had an incentive to implement features to protect freenode from spammers and trolls. The view and click ads just like any other user. But now they feel the ad revenue plummeting. So they will try to please. I hope freenode has enough spline to resist the few folks that care more about GUI design than freedom.
If they were part of the FOSS community, they’d have opened the mibbit code a long time ago and built a developer community around it.
Use a real, open source, IRC client if you can. Use Google talk or Skype if you don’t care about FOSS anyways.
CGI:IRC … a selective ban?
Using the 3 web portals I’ve set up (e.g. bentrem.sycks.net/iran_irc) I can get to #irantech, but not #iranelection
Interestingly using this client I can get to neither #iran nor #iranelection on anonnet.
cheers
–bentrem
I want to use Mibbit with freenode, the GUI of Freenode webchat sucks bad.
I’m disappointed to see this too, I liked the language conversion feature on mibbit, and in the channel we are in, we were able to block people abusing it just as easily as anyone else. As mentioned, the users IP is contained as hex in the details from mibbit, so we would block on that. That’s about as good as any other ban, some people can get around it, most don’t bother.
I used Mibbet to get to both my work freenode IRC room and my activist one. Both where I meet people of all languages – Mibbet’s handling of that is outstanding – the best I have seen.
I use the web app because I want to see what my average visitor sees. I just am going to be pained to send them to the freenode web chat because I will literally be pained using it.
What needs to happen next for this whole situation to get some credibility back is for both parties to make available correspondence and rationales behind*not* working together based off of transparency.
please edit that to say mibbit – I make that error often..sigh
I think its quite a pity, to do not support Mibbit anymore. Here at work i can’t install an IRC-client program, so mibbit was very cool, because i could connect to many different servers on only one window which is shown at the task-bar. I don’t want two or maybe more fields at the taskbar, just for irc. Would you be so nice, to think about your decision? Because I think, that many other Freenode-users are thinking the same way as I do.
You guys suck.
Mibbit was awesome – easy pastebin integration, great syntax highlighting, easy to use; you should set some policies for mibbit to adhere to, not do away with an awesome piece of technology that did a great service.
You’re replacement is no where near as good as mibbit.
Don’t do a dis-service to the developer community.
This is really worse for me…
Hopefully you will stick together with mibbit and get this working again! Your own webchat is… na… kind of unusable…
An annoying move at first glance, but understandable, given the number of morons that did use mibbit for a quick drive-by trolling.
I’m not sure if this problem can be solved by having your own web frontend, but controlling the web client yourself does certainly give more possibilities (maybe build a user reputation database and do spam filtering based on content and reputation
thomas said : [citation]I haven’t grasped, but this sort of action is damaging to IRC neutrality. “Come and use our network where we celebrate the freedom of open source software and other projects, but make sure you use our web client!” Mmm. Sure.[/citation]
+1
Mark me disapointed. From what I can tell, Mibbit is essentially two or three unpayed people (at the moment) trying to produce an excellent client. I’ve bumped into one (axod) via IRC who is always very communicative about attempts to improve the client.
Likewise the Mibbit blog appears to be pretty informative about how they are attempting to fix abuse problems.
I don’t have a problem with FreeNode saying ‘we’ve cut them off until these specific issues are addressed’ – that makes absolute sense.
But what you appear to be saying is – ‘We’re cutting Mibbit off, no matter what they do now, and we’re pushing our own client instead’. That doesn’t come across as a pragmatic response to a technical problem.
Count me in the disappointed list. I want a multi-server web-based IRC client. Your substitute is simply inadequate.
More distressingly, it would appear that freenode, not mibbit, is the one who is unwilling to cooperate. It would also appear that the reasons you are giving are not only misleading but false.
Why not be honest?
This blows, won’t be able to be on IRC at work now thanks to this move. The website name mibbit is innocuous enough that a lot of proxies don’t block it.
Me going directly to freenode for my webchat… EPIC FAIL. Did you try talking to the Mibbit folks, try to collaborate on how it can be made more “secure” if that’s the word?
This is just stupid….
I used to use mibbit to talk on #python…now it looks like i can’t do that
freenode, your client sucks, and refusing connection to all competition will NOT make people want to use yours. I for one am just going to have to stop using freenode…..
Mibbit made money off of Freenode. Not the other way around.
If Freenode was ok with that – thats their business.
If they were not ok with that – its insane to begrudge them that they want to make money off their own network.
Despite the Mibbit fanboy comments – the freenode client does not suck. And I don’t have to look at ads.
I am very disappointed by how this was handled and the ultimate resolution selected.
I have used mibbit to connect for several hours a day for the last couple of years. I have been a paid member and tried to be a good member of the community. My membership expired right before this decision, and now I am in a quandry as to whether or not to renew.
The qwebirc interface is downright primitive. I have trouble sifting through the visual noise of something that feels like I’ve time traveled back to 1993 and am using ircii again. Quite frankly, the problem with revoking mibbit’s access was not ‘solved’ by this ridiculous alternative.
I find myself stuck using this interface because I need to communicate with some people on freenode in order to get my job done and for much of the day, I am behind firewalls that give me no other choice, but I for one am very unhappy with the decision to cut off mibbit with no notice to the community.
I would also like to echo the sentiments of @ssl user and the others above. The option of SSL support even up to the web server was a big plus of the mibbit client. I don’t particularly care if someone out on the internet can scrape my content, but I really don’t want some bored guy in network operations at a client site scanning my traffic. That is a very real loss of functionality.
Alas, as the communities I need to interact with are on freenode, I will suck it up and use the freenode webchat, but I feel frustrated that it seems that the only recourse I have is to vote with my wallet. As a result I will likely not continue to be a paid subscriber.
This is more than just a tragedy for me, but a real problem. I needed some help with an open source project that has a channel on freenode, and my work blocks the normal IRC ports. I headed over to Mibbit, and I was rather annoyed that it did not work where it has before. Not surprisingly the freenode IRC client did not even deign to load, leaving me with no easy way to log on.
Hopefully I’ll be able to hack something together, but I can say that this is a very unappreciated change. It is already going to cost me whatever time I now must spend of trying to get around the block instead of coding. I shudder to think of the total time lost by people in similar situations.
Free and open indeed.
The only solution is to enhance webchat.
I dont use any web-based program right now – i use xchat – but I understand people who can not use such a client.
@Dan Stenson I don’t have to look at ads either, it’s called an ad blocker. You might want to look into one of those, it makes the web a much more pleasant place to look at.
Please get Mibbit back. In my office I can only acces web based client and undoubtedly mibbit is at top. Not only it supports automated channel joining and plethora of preferences for a web client, but it also provides good layout and color coded chat text formatting. I wonder how mibbit poses a risk to freenode. Please bring back mibbit and talk to the folks out there to resolve the issues. Freenode is a great place for developers like me. Kindly do the needful and bring back mibbit.
This sucks. I use Mibbit at work (no irc clients allowed, so web access is the only way), and have been really happy with it. I use it for several irc groups, on servers other than freenode. The freenode webchat is a very poor replacement, so if it is a choice between Mibbit and Freenode, then I must go with Mibbit. I am not giving up all my other groups which run happily with Mibbit, and I am not having more than one browser open at once.
Bye Freenode.
Mibbit has ads? I didn’t even notice. Sounds like good design to me.
Frequent disconnects using the Freenode webchat. Not something I had to deal with in the long time I’ve used Mibbit. Hopefully, new updates will allow it to be used again soon.
[...] channel via the browser-based mibbit client. Unfortunately our chosen IRC network irc.freenode.net banned mibbit clients lately. No need to worry though: they fortunately offer a new browser-based client that can be [...]
Dan Stenson – just to be clear, are you saying that Freenode should be able to block an IRC client that you have to pay for?
Chris: of course, why shouldn’t they be able to do whatever they want on their own network?
Mibbit has no right to access freenode.
I wouldn’t care about an inferior webclient, i am using it only for casual communication.
But: At work i am behind pretty restrictive firewalls and there is only one client that found its way through: mibbit (and believe me, i tried a couple ones).
I have to mentor a student for a Google Summer of Code project and this severely cuts our communication. The freenode webchat is no alternative because of the above stated reasons.
Please revert this and find a proper solution with the guys from mibbit. It doesn’t appear to me that they are so unwilling to help as you stated.
This is all a little ridiculous; first of all, the new webchat lacks a lot of features previously mentioned by other users (probably the most pertinent to myself would be tab completion and pastebin integration), and secondly, as evidenced by the mibbit blog, the mibbit team can hardly be described as static – they’ve already made security adjustments; why wasn’t a greater attempt made to resolve the differences BEFORE drastic action was taken? A rushed webchat by freenode is not tantamount to mibbit and its extensive features.
Is there an equivalent to mibbit that is free (as in freedom) software?
qwebirc can’t be used to connect to other networks the same way mibbit did. I would like to make a web-client my default handler for irc:// urls.
Mibbit is by far the best web-based irc client I’ve ever used. It of course can’t hold a candle to irssi, but when it was necessary to use a browser, it was the only option that didn’t completely suck. qwebirc is just downright horrible. It reminds me of what ajax was like many years ago before anybody was competent at it, not to mention it’s significantly less feature rich than the irc clients that were around before I was born.
[...] Hundred Paper Cuts, Ubuntu Global Jam, Empathy to replace Pidgin, no more Mibbit on Freenode, new Hall of Famer: Adi Roiban, Ubuntu Satanic license [...]
As a developer and frequent lurker in many software channels on freenode, I find the unannounced and abrupt banning of the entire Mibbit service completely unnecessary and even detrimental to an extent for the casual IRC lurker. The convenience behind Mibbit is the ease of communication without any dependency on the terminal you are working in front of. I am not always sitting in front of my laptop nor am I always working infront of a terminal on which I can install Pidgin/Chatzilla on. In the meanwhile, keeping up with unlogged IRC channels on freenode as well as other servers through a single convenient webclient (i.e. Mibbit) is no less common than Slashdot refreshes.
While the potential of abuse through easily-accessible services such as Mibbit is a valid point that needs addressing, I believe such “moderation” is best left to the members of individual channels. In small channels such as the ones I frequent, we recommend the use of web clients such as Mibbit for those seeking technical support, i.e. a new Linux user seeking help is unlikely to be tech-savvy enough to understand how to install and set up a desktop IRC client as opposed to just opening up Firefox. Perma-banning such services would be largely detrimental for a community that can easily self-moderate. Even in larger channels, such radical clamping is far from an acceptable solution. As far as I’ve read, #perl handled Mibbit abuse excellently. I paraphrase: if they’re here to spam, they’re probably dumb enough to use a “mib_” nickname, but if they’re actual using real nicknames, they’re probably smart enough to contribute to the channel. If a channel is having issues with ban-evasion through Mibbit abuse, such is an indication that changes should be made concerning moderation tactics. More often than not, these Mibbit abusers are only a handful of individuals that have been annoyed by the arrogant attitudes of the channel’s mods/ops.
The open-source argument countering Mibbit I do find valid. A valid point but not a valid reason. Being a casual supporter of the open-source movement, I use open-source alternatives where-ever available – Firefox over IE, OpenOffice.org over MS Office, Gimp over Photoshop, MPlayer over whatever, Pidgin over MSN/AIM/other messengers, etc. What does not apply, however, is when it comes to services. My music files may be in FLAC on my PC but they are re-encoded into MP3 on my cell phone (yes, I do have an iPod with iPodLinux and Rockbox, but with a battery life of less than 2hrs, it is just not practical). Pidgin itself is open source but it is still used to connect to MSN/AIM/etc., proprietary protocols. I even save in MS Office 97/2003 format every time I use OO.o; typing out an outline is pointless if the other project members can’t see it. Finding an alternative to Google is pointless.
In the case of freenode and Mibbit, yes, encouragement of an open-source alternative is the best way to go, but a forceful push through banning of the popular alternative is disdainful. The open-source spirit, in my opinion, is providing an alternative that aims to give choice to and for the benefit of the users, not to try gaining a monopoly in the interest of the company.
A ban of Mibbit restricts open accessibility for legit freenode users in the name of “managing abuse” while not actually addressing the reason behind such issues. The opportune “announcement” of a substandard official “alternative” doesn’t do much to remedy the problem either.
Mibbit is simply better and users like it. The choice of client should always be up to the users. So I think you should seriously think about this another second and do what most users seem to want you to do: unblock mibbit, as it’s despite being commercial just a useful thing.
Nobody likes a network where he can’t use the client he wants.
almost 2 months that I can’t decently chat on freenode. about time to unblock mibbit.
Hey !
This is really a shame, i just found mibbit and thought to myself, omg. this looks like a really sweet web-irc-client.
However, if i cant use it to connect to freenode, it’s a no option for me, which is _really_ a shame since i totally looks like a client with a lot of features.
I think you will make a lot of people happy if you, (together with the developers at mibbit) came to a solution.
Cheers.
While I also think it’s a bit of a hassle that Mibbit has been banned, they are a commercial company making money off of freenode’s back. qwebirc may lack many useful features, but to those complaining, put your effort where your mouth is, and help to enhance qwebric with the features we need. Or write your own, better open source web IRC. That’s the best solution in the long run.
try use kvirc it is written in Qt this mean that is cross platform, you’ll use always the same irc client for every OS you use.
Your Web-IRC pales in comparison to Mibbit. Mibbit offers me the customization I needed, in both colors, and other methods, to make IRC integrate seamlessly into my site. Your webchat’s biggest feature is random user names. Please revoke this ban on Mibbit, and come to your senses. You’re hurting users more than you’re helping.
Count me in too — mibbit had some really handy features, like being able to save settings and stay connected forever …
(I only just now noticed the problem because I just started school again.)
Looks as if our comments are ignored. What a shame on Freenode !!!