Christel stepped down, new staff lead shut out Andrew Lee, not realising the depth of his ownership - helped by both Christel and Andrew Lee downplaying it in the past. When it became clear that "Freenode" was owned by Andrew Lee, and not the volunteer run organisation they believed it to be, drama ensued over whether she had the legal right to (probably yes), whether it was morally appropriate to (probably not) and what she actually sold (Freenode runs via volunteer staff on loaned servers, none of which freenode ltd owns or has contracts for, so it basically just owns a domain and a website).
After the legal discussions found that Andrew Lee did legally own whatever freenode itself owned, the staff all quit and formed libera.chat, their own network. Andrew Lee brought in new staff to freenode and some policy changes (notably allowing network ops to reclaim channels that were abandoned as redirects, and toning down the code of conduct portion).
More detailed timeline: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27236455
Instead, they decided to portray this as a hostile takeover in order to gather further sympathy from the public at large without providing any evidence that Andrew actually planned this.
Christel could have cleared any misunderstandings to both sides, yet she is the only person who got anything out of this, with an acquisition and a salary, while Andrew is the target of a smear campaign after spending who knows how much money sponsoring freenode for years, and the staff and community had to create a brand new network after spending who knows how much time on running freenode for years.
there were misunderstandings on both sides on who owns what, and actions, while initially well-meaning that were influenced by suspicion and mistrust of the other side. mistrust that was caused by those early misunderstandings.
Andrew Lee <rasengan> currently controls the freenode domains and is being accused of a hostile takeover. The network was sold to Andrew Lee by Christel Dahlskjaer <christel>, who was head of staff until she resigned in March 2021.
The other side seems to be the "staff", which seems to have mostly moved over to the libera.chat side now. Among them <tomaw>, who was elected as head of staff after <christel>'s resignation.
What I don't fully understand is the structure of the Freenode network. There's the domain/website, presumably under control of Andrew. There are the individual servers, which as I understand it are under the control of their independent owners/maintainers, some of which are also "staff" but others aren't. There is the nickserv database that is likely under control of Andrew Lee now, although it's unclear on what infrastructure it runs, who owns it, who pays for it, where it is, etc.
Doesn't it sound contradictory to be accused of a hostile takeover of something you already own?
The question is really... what is an IRC network, and what constitutes ownership of it? If all the people who own and run the IRC servers themselves change their banner from Freenode to Baznode, and tell people to start connecting to irc.baznode.com instead, then perhaps the entity that owns freenode.com doesn't really own an IRC network?
(I know that's not what happened, as Freenode-the-IRC-network is still running as-is, but just presenting it here given that it could happen based on how the servers are run.)
Looks like Lee legally owns something. I am not exactly sure what it is? Something much less than the entire IRC network. Some kind of account to something. First Wesley had revoked Lee's access, and then returned it. Anyway, when Lee asked for this access to whatever it is that he owns, it was seen as an attempt to a hostile takeover.
"I was locked out of the account"
"Finally, tomaw voluntarily handed back all of the accesses"
https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/blob/main/content/news/2...
(edit: Maybe that when all this drama started, Wesley held on giving access again.)
15 march: I have not, am not, and will not interfere with the operations of freenode outside of when asked for help
Ask HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27253900
Timeline document: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250514