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Network policies |
Libera.Chat's services are provided by Libera Chat, a Swedish non-profit organisation. It is operated by volunteers from all over the world. Our services are available for free, bound to the following rules that we kindly ask you to familiarize yourself with.
Libera.Chat aims to be a place where free / libre / open source software projects, peer directed projects, and their communities can communicate, collaborate, and flourish. In order to be a welcoming place for everyone and as required by Swedish law, there are some base rules that are valid for the entire network.
Our goal is to encourage and foster the development and use of free and open source software projects, peer-directed communities, broadly licensed content, and similar. Any group or project falling under this broad description is welcome on our network.
We also encourage collaboration and communication with users, including giving support or receiving feedback. As long as content doesn't fall within the types of unwanted content and behaviour noted in the next section and doesn't disturb the daily operations of the network or other on-topic channels, on-topic projects and groups are also welcome to have channels and discussions about other content.
Please note that groups wanting to use our network for other subjects (e.g. financial, political or dating chats) should use a network that is better suited for that kind of content. If you are unsure and wish to avoid a future inconvenience, we invite you to check with us first.
As long as within our policies, our communities will manage themselves and are free to expand our rules with their own. Libera.Chat staff will usually not interfere in channel management and disputes, unless networkwide policy is violated. We can offer to mediate or help out if our workload allows it, but we should not be the first line of defense.
We encourage our users, communities, channel owner and operators to follow our guidelines to base their rules and conduct on.
Libera.Chat is bound by Swedish law. Unlawful activities and related supporting activities are not allowed. In addition to that, heavy media file trading, pornography and various forms of antisocial behaviour are forbidden.
Both by our values and Swedish law, discrimination based on faith, ethnicity, sexual orientation, sex or gender expression, disability, or age is not permitted. Your personal values (e.g. religious, political, etc) do not protect you if you participate in discrimination.
Inciting violence is not allowed. The same goes for any other behaviour meant to deliberately put upon a person harassment, alarm or distress. We also do not tolerate libel and defamation.
While we believe in the concept of freedom of thought and freedom of expression, Libera.Chat does not operate on the basis of absolute freedom of speech, and we impose limitations based on the above rules.
Channel operators are asked to manage their channels to adhere to our network policies. Channels which demonstrate inability to meet these minimum standards may be asked to find a better suited network. This isn't a decision we take lightly and we will typically make efforts to guide channel operators to an atmosphere in line with our policies first.
Violations of the rules can lead to temporary or permanent removal of the network. There might not always be prior warning of this.
In addition to that, there are many reasons why we might remove someone from the network, including technical difficulties and false positives in spam prevention. If you are unsure why you were removed from the network, we invite you to seek clarification by emailing bans@libera.chat.
Ultimately, our decisions are up to staffer discretion. We expect users to act in good faith, be respectful and not disturb the network operations and our communities. We reserve the right to terminate anyone's access to our services at our discretion.
To register your nickname, please see nickname registration. Nicknames on Libera.Chat allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, to the first person who registers an available name with NickServ. However, we expect users to act in good faith and reserve the right to remove a nickname registration at our discretion if we believe that this has not been the case. You can group additional names to your account, but please remember that these are not collectibles and should not be hoarded or squatted.
Nickname and account registrations expire ten weeks after they are last used. For grouped nicknames, "used" means that you were using the nickname while logged in to the account which owns it. For accounts, "used" means that you logged in to the account, regardless of the nickname you used to do so. Nicknames which are the primary account name expire only when the entire account is expired. If you know or plan to be absent for longer, please contact network staff in advance for potential options.
In some cases, such as for very old accounts, we may, at our discretion, extend the expiry time of a nickname or account, usually not beyond 15 weeks past the last use. In some rare cases, staff might deny a drop request. Some nicknames and accounts do not expire at all. These accounts can be identified by the "Hold" flag in their NickServ info output.
Nicknames and accounts which are expired will not automatically be dropped. Please contact network staff if you would like to take over an expired nickname.
Channels on Libera.Chat fall into one of three categories. Details on these can be found under channel registration.
Channels in the primary namespace (#) are assigned to registered projects
and communities. These channels can be registered via the process described in
channel registration and by default these channels do not expire.
In case of loss of founders and / or all channel operators, someone
representing the project or community should contact staff. In case of an
official project contacting us about a channel already registered to a
community, our staff will try to find a good solution. However, a community
ran channel in the primary namespace could be transfered over in this case.
Channels in the secondary namespace (##) are informal channels and allocated
on a first-come, first-served basis to the first person who registers them
with ChanServ. As with nicknames, however, we reserve the right to remove or
alter registrations where we believe they have not been made in good faith.
They expire after 60 days in which no user on the access list for the channel
has joined it. If you would like to inherit such a channel, please contact our
staff. We will gladly have a look and decide which new founder should be
assigned to best serve the community and our network.
Libera Chat and its staff are required to pass on and act on credible information about any unlawful activities as it relates to your use of Libera Chat's services.
In some instances user may want to reward a project or one of its contributors with, for example, a donation to the project. However, it is expected that you carry out your own due diligence before entering into financial transactions. Libera Chat accepts no liability for any losses incurred as the result of financial transactions you enter into as a result of activity in Libera Chat's services.
Some projects may wish to log their channels publicly, if you do so the logging should be authorised by the channel owners and users in the channel should be notified (through for instance the topic, entry message, or similar) that public logging is taking place. Channel operators should consider ways for users to make unlogged comments and a process for requesting removal of certain logs.
If you operate a service that scrapes internal channel content or published logs, ensure that you have obtained permission to do so from Libera Chat staff or the channel owners before you start scraping data, also make sure that there is an easy way for channels to opt out.
If you wish to publish logs of a single conversation, please make sure you have gotten permission from all participants before doing so.
You can find details about what data we collect, keep and for how long in our privacy policy.