> Why does this matter? It seems to be obvious to Lee why this is problematic, but it's not at all obvious to me. There's "freenode" -- the network, the volunt

> Why does this matter? It seems to be obvious to Lee why this is problematic, but it's not at all obvious to me. There's "freenode" -- the network, the volunteers, and there's 'Freenode Limited' the company, which owns the Freenode domain and trademark. The latter were being held by christel, and she seemed to have sneakily sold them to Lee because she needed money (she seems to have lied to the rest of team about the details of transfer, the rest of the team only learned later about all that was handed over to Lee when lawyers got involved). By virtue of controlling the domain and having access to the website, Lee seems to have put ads on the site... this rubbed some folks the wrong way. They all had a foreboding feeling of things to come and tried to get the domain firmly under their control... to which Lee resisted. Lee does own the domain, he paid for it fair and square after all, so he's got that going for him... But at this point that's the only thing he's got going for him.... because Freenode is an IRC network with community roots that wants to remain community-oriented and away from commercialization and pesky shell ads, so Freenode is no longer what it used to be, Libera is, and Lee is now left holding a dud.