Re: [gentoo-user] why libera?

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, May 28, 2021 at 6:10 PM Michael Cook <mcook@××××××.net> wrote:
>
> Tor simply introduce too much chance of abuse. If people didn't abuse
> it, it wouldn't be blocked.
>

Yeah, as much as I love it, this service obviously is going to be
abused, especially for something like IRC.

Really though the main reason they went with Libera was that it was a
much simpler move.  Libera was basically feature-complete, while OFTC
lacks namespaces and channel management features.  They're looking to
change that, but Libera was a drop-in replacement.  Gentoo has a LOT
of IRC channels and managing them all would be painful on OFTC.

You also have the issue of nick collisions.  Having everybody change
nicks would be inconvenient, and chances are there would be collisions
across the networks.  A Gentoo dev can't very well expect somebody on
OFTC to give up their nick that they were using perhaps for many
years.  Libera was new so collisions were unlikely unless it was
intentional abuse.  We did have a case of that, but the Libera admins
were happy to fix that (only one case I've heard of and it was obvious
abuse with many Gentoo nicks being registered to one person).

There was also some discussion about moving to something other than
IRC as a primary communications medium.  The general sense was that
this was going to be more controversial, that alternatives had some
issues, and again Libera was an easy drop-in replacement.

Supporting some other network or technology down the road is always
something that could happen, either as an alternative or primary home.
However, the general sense was that it would make more sense to just
consider that and transition in a more orderly way down the road.

-- 
Rich