 | |
| Founded | 19 May 2021 |
|---|---|
| Website URL | libera |
| Primary DNS | ircs://irc.libera.chat:6697 |
| Average users | 31,740 (01 October 2023) |
| Average channels | 22,559 (01 October 2023) |
| Content/subject | Public / unrestricted |
Libera Chat, stylized Libera.Chat, is an IRC network for free and open-source software projects. It was founded on 19 May 2021 [1] by former Freenode staff members, after Freenode was taken over by Andrew Lee, founder of Private Internet Access. [2] [3] [4]
In 2017, Christel Dahlskjaer, then the head of staff at Freenode, incorporated a new company called Freenode Limited and transferred ownership to technology entrepreneur Andrew Lee. [5] [3] [6] In February 2021, Dahlskjaer added the logo of Shells, a company co-founded by Lee, to the Freenode website. [3] Following criticism from staff, Dahlskjaer resigned from the leadership of Freenode, [6] [3] and Freenode staff elected Tom Wesley as the new head of staff. Lee allegedly removed a blog post explaining the leadership changes and, on 11 May, appointed a new person to oversee the Freenode infrastructure. [3] Freenode staff members resigned en masse, and some published statements outlining their view of what happened and claiming that Lee had been applying legal pressure to Wesley. [3]
Lee denied these claims, and said that he had provided Freenode with millions of dollars and was entitled to Freenode's servers as the owner of Freenode Limited. [3] [6] Lee also accused Wesley of harassing Dahlskjaer and of attempting a "hostile takeover." [3] [7] [6] [8]
After resigning from Freenode, the former staff created Libera Chat on 19 May 2021. [2] [3] They have described the network as a successor to Freenode, which they intend to focus around "free and open source software projects and similarly-spirited collaborative endeavours". [6] Many major projects like Bitcoin, FrOSCon, Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, FreeBSD, the Free Software Foundation [9] and Wikimedia have since moved their channels from Freenode to Libera Chat and to other IRC networks. [10]
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Libera may refer to:
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