I think the Freenode takeover could have worked without loosing the majority of the channels if rasengan hadn't tried so hard to kill the network. After all, Freenode was a free service people were making use of and as long as it was run somewhat competently most wouldn't have cared too much about operator drama.

Here it feels more like people are providing unpaid work (by running receivers) and who in their right mind would continue doing that for a commercial entity.