www.IRC-Junkie.org – IRC News

All about Internet Relay Chat

Monthly Archives: June 2008

ChatSpike Migrates to Atheme IRC Services

“ChatSpike is migrating to Atheme IRC Services (from ircservices 5 which we have been using since we started, 6 years ago)” Brain said to IRC-Junkie.

W00t explains why IRC Services no longer serves the network. “IRC services was and is a big influence on the IRC landscape, to me. It was one of the first packages to be OSS’d, it was actively developed over a long timeframe, and incorporated user feedback. It supported a wide range of IRC daemons, and was also one of the earliest packages to get modules support”

Its age was showing in the flexibility however, w00t, who is also a developer of Atheme IRC services explains: “some features have taken us hundreds of lines of code to write, including database handling and other horrific and repetitive code. Atheme has a more streamlined design that lets us tackle this in a RAD style, meaning new toys take a lot less time to get from the ideas stage to the point where our users can play with them.”

Additionally the maintainer of IRCservices Andy Church will be leaving the project soon making future updates too unsure for Chatspike’s needs.

Another reason to switch to Atheme is its better integration with the networks IRCd, InspIRCd. “In atheme [...] we can add and customize things specifically *for* ChatSpike a few light years quicker than we could in the past, new commands, new website integration features, anything becomes feasible instead of a pain in the ass.”

IRC Defender 1.5 Released

IRC Defender is a security package written in Perl made for small to medium sized networks. Its written in Perl and fully modular.

It took some time to release version 1.5. Developer Thunderhacker explains: “InspIRCd became far more popular than he (Brain, ed.) expected and development of Defender got pushed to the side.  Shortly after I took over I went back to school, so my schoolwork pushed its development aside.  Now that school is out for the summer I will be doing a lot more development.”

Although newer versions are always available over SVN the team recommends stable releases if stability is important.

IRC-Junkie asked what’s new in the release. “Along with the addition of a couple of modules this release fixes many bugs that have been found over the months.  Aside from that not much of the functionality has changed.”

“As Defender is primarily a services package for ChatSpike, I am currently working on modifying the InspIRCd link module for their new 1.2 release.  There is a copy of the partially completed module in SVN. I will keep it updated nightly with any progress I make on it.”

Finally Thunderhacker likes to express a few thanks, “I’d also like to add a thanks to everyone who has helped with development.  I have credited everyone in the changelog and also in comments on SVN commits.  In particular I’d like to thank satmd and w00t for their help with support in the help channel during my absence and also OUTsider for his work on the P10 link module as he has become an unofficial developer of that part of Defender.”

Thanks to Greg for the tip.

Operation Fastlink Suspect Pleads Guilty

Back in April 2004 we reported about a worldwide anti-piracy sweep named “Operation Fastlink” where members of the APC group (and other warez groups) were being arrested.

Mark Shumaker, 21 years-old, was a member of the APC group and also led the Apocalypse Crew’s Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel. The group specialized in releasing music not yet available to the public.

Shumaker has pleaded guilty and faces up to 5 years in jail and a USD 250,000 fine. Fifteen other members have been convicted already.

Brad Buckles, executive vice president for the RIAA; “For the first time ever, a criminal online music piracy case went to trial, and the jury rendered a swift and unanimous verdict. [...] The crimes committed here — as well as the harm to the music community — are severe, and so are the consequences. We congratulate and thank the U.S. Attorney’s office for its work on this case.”