OFTC was founded by people who didn't like how freeenode was run. but that was quite some time ago. i don't remember the details but there were some issues very early on, and the people responsible for those issues left long ago.

OFTC is another IRC network - irc.oftc.net

OFTC is a competing IRC network run by tomaw who also is staging a hostile takeover of freenode as we speak.

OFTC is run by the OFTC board (of which tomaw is a member) on behalf of Software in the Public Interest, who originally organized it for Debian.

According to the current freenode people page, tomaw is head of staffing, projects and communities and also the overall project lead in charge of the other heads.

Edit: here’s the staff as of 23 Apr. tomaw is still there today, the rest are gone, including fuchs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210423231451/https://freenode....

Edit: Given the situation with PIA

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27154226

maybe it wold be a positive event from the POV of the free sw community?

Edit 2: Er, I guess not:

https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/88549ec34ee32d01629354e...

How is PIA related to any of this?

rasengan was a co-founder of PIA, and became involved in Freenode via "freenode becoming officially part of the PIA family" in 2017: https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn

This was later downplayed in 2019, after PIA was acquired by a company Kape with a poor track record: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-pia-changes

It appears shells.net which is another rasengan company (but not associated with Kape?) has since taken PIA's place in the organisation.