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Java webclient decommissioning

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

Following our successful switch of cloaking on our web gateway (http://webchat.freenode.net) to show the full IP address of connecting users (see this blog post), we have decided to transition our old and relatively unused Java client (pjIRC) to our webchat service. This will be done via a HTTP redirect.

Only around 30 users at a time can be found from the java client, hence as time goes on it makes less and less sense to continue to support this platform. We’ll be decommissioning the Java client on Sun 8th August.

Other pjIRC instances which connect to freenode will be unaffected. We are simply removing our version of the program.

If you’ve any concerns, queries or comments we’d love to hear from you either in #freenode or via support at freenode.net.

Posted in development, freenode, infrastructure, projects, webchat | 2 Comments »

Group Registration Form verifications

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

For a long time, freenode has utilised a Group Registration system to give groups (such as companies and open source projects) the ability to manage channels in the primary namespace (ie, channels beginning with a single “#”) and to give contributors to their projects cloaks. Perhaps more importantly, the system allows groups to retain control of their identity on freenode. It is because of this aspect of Group Registration that filing a Group Registration Form (GRF) has been necessary for projects to acquire primary channels which have been already registered. For the same reason, we ask those who register new primary channels to file a form.

A great number of fantastic projects use freenode. Only a small subset of staff are able to handle GRFs, and in combination with the large volume of forms filed we have developed a significant backlog. We realise that because of this backlog, certain groups are unable to claim channels on freenode which should rightfully be theirs. While we appreciate that many projects have been waiting months or years for a form to be processed, we must consider GRFs filed in order to obtain channel ownership for a legitimate project to be a priority – if you’re in the former position and not the latter, I hope you can see why.

At this stage, we are hoping to move through these priority requests in the coming weeks (and, depending on volume, months), before moving on to other requests. If you are a prospective group contact who has filed a GRF form before and you fall into the priority group (to be clear: you are in the priority group only if you need the GRF to be processed in order for you to gain access to the #group or #project channel on freenode), please email us at grfprocess at freenode dot net. The email should contain your IRC nick and your group’s name – no other personal information should be sent. We will soon be in touch regarding “next steps”.

If you want to help us to provide a top class service to groups, please consider getting involved with development of our new Group Management System (GMS).

Finally, a quick word of gratitude to those who have been waiting for GRFs to be filed for a long period of time. Thank you for your patience – we will move on to processing your requests as soon as we are able, and will let you know when via this blog and network wallops. Thanks for choosing freenode

Posted in community, freenode, groups, projects | No Comments »

Groups Advisory Board

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010

For many years now, freenode has offered projects and userbases on the network the option of registering themselves as “Groups”. Each of these groups has one or more designated people as their “Group Contacts”, who are the point of contact for freenode-staff<=>group liasion, and are thus able to contact staff to request that cloaks be set, or to request assistance in administering channels.

We now have several hundred registered groups on freenode, and many more groups for which registration requests have been submitted. There is a rather large backlog of these requests, but this will reduce dramatically once GMS has been completed, tested, and deployed (on which note, if you think you can give some time to help code it, get in touch!). An aim of the groups policy is to foster good relationships between groups and staff.

This is where the Groups Advisory Board (GAB) comes in – immediately, for approved GCs! This is a way in which we would like to give groups a role in influencing the direction that freenode, and the PDPC, will follow in the future with regards to group and project related policy. The GAB is completely optional and brings with it no committment. It is open to all group contacts who would like to be members. The GAB is effectively a consultation forum where staff can get feedback from groups. As well as improptu discussions on IRC, discussions will take place on a mailing list and occasional, optional IRC meetings will be arranged. If you’re interested in giving your group a greater voice in the management of freenode, speak to staff in #freenode, or drop an email to support NOSPAM at freenode.net, and we’ll sign you up to the freenode-groups mailing list and invite you to #freenode-gab.

Thanks!

Posted in community, freenode, groups, pdpc, projects | No Comments »

freenode is dead, long live freenode

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

After much time in development and testing, the move to ircd-seven is finally complete. The migration took place in the early hours of today, Saturday January 30th 2010.

I would like to express thanks to everyone who has helped us get here — those staff and users who have helped find and squash bugs, those who have done extensive load testing and those who have helped finalising documentation in preparation for the migration earlier today.

In particular I would like to thank the Charybdis development team and the ratbox contributors whose work left us with a brilliant ircd platform to build upon to create the more freenode specific ircd-seven. In no particular order my thanks go to:

dwr, Valery Yatsko <dwr -at- shadowircd.net>
gxti, Michael Tharp <gxti -at- partiallystapled.com>
jilles, Jilles Tjoelker <jilles -at- stack.nl>
nenolod, William Pitcock <nenolod -at- nenolod.net>
AndroSyn, Aaron Sethman <androsyn -at- ratbox.org>
anfl, Lee Hardy <lee -at- leeh.co.uk>
beu, Elfyn McBratney <elfyn.mcbratney -at- gmail.com>
Entrope, Michael Poole <mdpoole -at- trolius.org>
ThaPrince, Jon Christopherson <jon -at- vile.com>
twincest, River Tarnell <river -at- attenuate.org>
w00t, Robin Burchell <surreal.w00t -at- gmail.com>

And for leading the development efforts of ircd-seven, for putting up with my many quirky and often unreasonable requests:
spb, Stephen Bennett <stephen -at- freenode.net>

I’d also like to express my gratitude to the following freenode volunteers for the hard work they’ve put in to make the migration go as smoothly as possible. I’ve been amazed at the initiative and responsibility shown in this last phase. Your help has been invaluable and I feel privileged to work with you:

kloeri, Bryan Østergaard
Lorez, Mike Mattice
Martinp23, Martin Peeks
Md, Marco D’Itri

With the exception of port(s) 7000 and 7070 which are now being used for SSL, all other ports and DNS stay the same as it did prior to migration.

If you are a regular freenode user you will most likely be aware that there’s some user facing changes with the move to ircd-seven (and likely to have been annoyed by my global notices on the subject), you may wish to familiarise yourself with the updated FAQ and glance at some of these earlier ircd-seven related blog posts:

http://blog.freenode.net/2010/01/connecting-to-freenode-using-tor-sasl/

http://blog.freenode.net/2008/11/help-us-test-ircd-seven/

http://blog.freenode.net/2010/01/migration-to-new-ircd/

http://blog.freenode.net/2010/01/ircd-migration…-jan-30th-2010/

Again, thank you for helping out, however small or large your contribution may have been. We are celebrating the migration to ircd-seven with a special fundraiser “Give £7 for seven”. This campaign will end on February 7th, until such time you may read more and donate here. Any donation of £21 or any multiple of £7 over £21 will receive a freenode t-shirt.

To all our users, thank you for using the network, and welcome to seven!

Posted in community, development, different, freenode, infrastructure, pdpc, projects, technical | 7 Comments »

Happy 25th Birthday, GNU!

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

To mark the 25th “birthday” of the GNU project the FSF have teamed up with a very special man; Stephen Fry.

I personally am a great fan of Mr. Fry — he’s an accomplished actor, terrific writer and a good documentary maker. I enjoy his books, I will happily set aside entire weekends for my fry-a-thons in which I am glued to the TV re-watching the entire set of “A bit of Fry & Laurie”, “Jeeves & Wooster” or many of the other fantastic things he’s done for British TV. And I make sure to never miss an episode of QI — again, I probably re-watch all of them. I follow his blog, I listen to his podgram.. I have a lot of respect and admiration for this man, for his insight, his honesty, his no-nonsense approach, his incredible way with words and his hysterically funny ways.

So who better to mark the anniversary of a project for which I also have a great deal of respect — a project which values, visions and goals are shared by the majority of our users. A project often found at the core of so many of the projects who choose to use freenode.

So without further ado — Happy Birthday GNU!

Posted in community, different, free software, projects | 1 Comment »

Services Migration

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

The time has come for freenode to migrate from our old, legacy services package to a much newer, actively maintained package known as Atheme, developed by the Atheme Project. Although we, with the help of the Atheme developers, have tried to make the migration process as painless as possible, there are still a few interface differences that you will need to be aware of. This guide, prepared by tomaw, will attempt to walk you through the main changes, grouped by service.

NickServ

NickServ will now require a valid, verified email address to register new nicks. Because of this the registration command has changed to
```
/msg NickServ REGISTER <password> <email address>
```
You will the receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to confirm your account registration. Accounts that have been migrated from theia that did not have an email address set will find that their address is set to ‘nomail’. These users should set an email address as soon as possible.
New NickServ accounts that are registered but not confirmed will be automatically dropped after 24 hours.
What was Nick Linking has now been replaced with Nick Grouping. This means that you have just one account (including one password, one email address etc.) but potentially multiple Nicks associated with that account. For more information please issue the following command:
```
/msg NickServ HELP GROUP
```
Migrated accounts will have the password associated to the master nick, but will have the first valid email address found when searching all linked nicks.
SET UNFILTERED has been removed and the global block on messages from users that have not identified to NickServ has been removed. This was only ever intended to be a temporary measure to combat spam and we’re hopeful that we can deal with those events in different, less intrusive ways. UMODE +E remains an alternative for any users who wish to block such messages.
SET GSM, PHONE, and the like have been removed and replaced with a SET PROPERTY feature. For more information, see:
```
/msg NickServ HELP SET PROPERTY
```
INFO will no long return a list of channels where you have access. Instead use:
```
/msg NickServ LISTCHANS
```
A new SET ENFORCE feature replaces the un-used SET KILL feature. For details, see
```
/msg NickServ HELP SET ENFORCE
```

ChanServ

Channel access is now controlled by a series of flags, rather than levels. This will allow channel owners and Group Contacts to better control the access they grant users, and to see more clearly what access those users will have. Channel Access now also includes a powerful templating system, making it easier to manage large and complicated access lists. For more information on these features, please see:
```
/msg ChanServ HELP FLAGS
```
```
/msg ChanServ HELP TEMPLATE
```
```
/msg ChanServ HELP ACCESS
```
Channel access can now be manipulated using two different commands.
```
/msg ChanServ ACCESS #channel
```
behaves similarly to our previous services, but the standard Atheme command is to use
```
/msg ChanServ FLAGS
```
Note that viewing FLAGS requires you to have flag +A on the channel in question, but ACCESS does not. This can be useful if you’re trying to locate channel operators.
ChanServ can no longer be used to OP or VOICE multiple users, though it is still possibly to OP/VOICE individual users:
```
/msg ChanServ OP #channel nick
```
A new RECOVER command is now available, which can be used by the founder to regain control of a channel which has been “taken over”.
Channel passwords are no longer used for registration as all channel access is control by the access flags.
LIST *pattern* has been replaced by a new service called ALIS. See below for details.

ALIS

ALIS provides a more useful channel list facility than what was previously available. It will list matching channels, but will filter out channels that are not currently in use. Its use is similar to the functionality that was previously built into ChanServ:
```
/msg ALIS LIST #freenode-*
```

MemoServ

Memos can now be replied to and forwarded to other users
Optional email forwarding to your registered email address. To enable this feature, issue the following command:
```
/msg NickServ SET EMAILMEMOS ON
```

Hopefully that covers most of the differences that you will come across during day to day life on freenode. Of course, if you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please feel free to drop by #freenode, email support (at) freenode (dot) net or message a member of staff.

Posted in freenode, projects, technical | 17 Comments »

Registering a channel on freenode

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

One of the questions we get asked a lot in #freenode is “What’s the command to register my channel?”This being the freenode staff blog, I’d like to answer that question the long way around

Step 1 – make sure you’re in the right place

The freenode IRC network has some very specific goals and objectives, and it’s intended primarily for developers of free and open source software. Please read these pages and make sure we’re the appropriate network for your channel and its users:

http://freenode.net/philosophy.shtml

http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#ontopic

http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#offtopic

Step 2 – register your nick

If you’re not identified to NickServ as a registered nick, then you can’t register a channel. Instructions for registering a nick can be found here:

http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup

Step 3 – pick a channel name

Before you choose the name for your channel, you should be aware that freenode uses an unusual naming convention to indicate the difference between official (primary) and unofficial (about or topical) IRC channels. A primary channel is considered appropriate for a channel operated by a project (The Ubuntu project operates #ubuntu) or a group (The philadelphia linux users group operates #plug). In these examples, these groups have a valid claim to the channel name. An about channel or topical channel is a channel for a specific subject or topic, but operated by someone without a claim to the channel name. Please read our channel naming guidelines for more details:

http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#channelnaming

The short version is that official channels (also known as primary channels) are named starting with one #, unofficial (topical or about channels) start with ##. If your channel is not an official one, please use ## at the start of the channel name, or you may be asked to move. Getting it right at the beginning is a lot easier, for you and for us. If you are starting a primary channel you will also need to file a GRF. There is more information on this policy here, and the actual registration form can be found here. It is very important that you file this form as soon as possible, as in the near future channels without one filed will need to either file or move to the ##namespace, and new registrations of primary channels without a GRF will eventually be disabled.

Step 4 – check your channel is available to register

To check whether a channel has already been registered, use the command:

/msg ChanServ info ##channelname

If the channel is already registered, that will give you some info about it. If it’s not, you’ll get a message like this:

-ChanServ- The channel [##channelname] is not registered

Step 5 – create your channel

To create a channel on IRC, you just join it. If you’re the first person to join that channel then you create it (if you’re not then you’ll join the other people in there, and you won’t be able to register it unless someone gives you op status).

/join ##channelname

Step 6 – register your channel

The command to register your channel (once you’ve joined it and you have op status) is as follows:

/msg ChanServ register ##channelname

That’s all you need. The channel will be linked to your nick, and whenever you’re identified to your nick, you have full top-level access to your channel’s settings.

Okay, so you’ve registered a channel now. That’s not the end of this post… there are a LOT of other things you should do as soon as you’ve got your channel registered.

Step 7 – read some useful webpages

http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml – our Channel Guidelines – useful info on how to run a good channel on freenode.

http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml – about Catalysts – an incredibly important concept that makes freenode the great network that it is. Please try to be a catalyst whenever you’re on the network, but most importantly when you’re running your own channel.

Step 8 – read the ChanServ help pages

The ChanServ help pages really are actually helpful. If you’re running your own channel, you probably should have read everything in them – it won’t take long, a few hours at most, and then you’ll know all the cool things you can do with your channel.

/msg ChanServ help

Step 9 – consider registering your group with freenode

As well as registering your channel with ChanServ, it’s possible to gain a more official relationship with freenode, where we have an established contact person that we know is allowed to represent your project to us. You can read about Group Registration here:

http://freenode.net/group_registration.shtml

Step 10 – if in doubt, ask!

Finally, if you need help with anything to do with registering or running your channel, remember that the network staff on freenode are friendly and really do want to help you! You’re welcome to /msg us at any time to ask for help. Even better, come and ask your question in #freenode , where both staff and volunteer helpers hang out being helpful

http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#helpfromstaff

Posted in freenode, projects | 13 Comments »

Happy holidays!

Sunday, December 23rd, 2007

It’s been just over a year since freenode saw it’s biggest shake-up yet, the passing of founder Rob ‘lilo’ Levin. It has been a challenging and interesting year both for freenode and Peer-Directed Projects Center, the not-for-profit organisation which owns and operates the network. There have been changes within the staff, there have been technical changes and soon we will see the change-over of both our Services package and our IRC daemon.

freenode is doing well — we’ve more sponsors than ever, and we’ve gained around 18,000 users. We’ve had interesting projects choose to use our services and we’ve had a lot of input from users on what changes they would like to see. This past year has truly shown freenode for what it is — a service provided by the community for the community. We’ve been joined by new staff, all of whom we’re pleased to have onboard. We’re making progress on the development side, both internally and externally.

PDPC has been more of a challenge. The NFP was fairly inactive previously and the change to having a active board who share a passion for the community we serve has been great, but it has also meant that we’ve had a lot to tidy up. While we are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel, we haven’t quite gotten to where we want to be yet. However, I am confident that all the hard work put in by the board members, project specific volunteers and of course, our lawyers, CPA and accountant (without whom we’d be hairless by now), we will be able to do some truly spectacular things for the community in the coming years.

It has been a interesting and exciting year — I am proud and happy to have had the chance to work with such an amazing group of people: freenode staff, the PDPC board, past and present code contributors, projects using our services and of course the diverse and incredible user group freenode has.

I’d like to thank the PDPC board for sticking in there and for having the energy and drive to push on with what at times looked bleak and depressing, each and every one of the freenode staff members for the time and effort they have put in to keep the network running, our developers and code contributors for new services and IRCd (and of course, to the original Atheme and Charybdis developers for allowing us to continue work on already amazing services in order to make it fit our needs!), every project which uses our facilities, every single PDPC donor for helping us help the community, and of course our sponsors, without whom none of this would be possible.

I’d also like to thank the OFTC staffers for this year’s collaboration. It has been an interesting journey and one which I hope we will continue together.

And finally, I’d like to wish everyone happy holidays and a great new year!

Posted in community, different, fosscon, freenode, pdpc, projects, social | 2 Comments »

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