But (as I interpret the blog post, at least) this isn't an acquisition. Cloudflare didn't buy Sandstorm, it just hired all the Sandstorm developers. Those developers still retain ownership of Sandstorm-the-legal-entity and any intellectual property it owns. It's not an acqui-hire, in other words, just a hire.

Which, if that's the case, means that Sandstorm still is legally independent of Cloudflare, and the original Sandstorm devs can pretty much continue to do whatever they want with it. There would be some gray areas, like what will happen to future code or other IP they create for Sandstorm while employed by Cloudflare, or while using Cloudflare systems/resources; and of course their continued employment with Cloudflare may be contingent on their doing things with Sandstorm that Cloudflare likes, or at least doesn't disapprove of too strongly. But if the Sandstorm devs are just selling their future labor and not the company itself, they'll have more independence than they'd have gotten in an acqui-hire scenario.