Andrew Lee formed a contract with the head staffer of freenode a few years ago, both of whom insisted that it was only a sponsorship, but did not release any fu

Andrew Lee formed a contract with the head staffer of freenode a few years ago, both of whom insisted that it was only a sponsorship, but did not release any further info, and that Andrew would have no operational/executive control over the network. Now, it turns out that the contract was a sale of everything that could be had, and Andrew does want full operational and executive control. Learning this, the volunteer staff resign as a bloc, and move to start an alternative. 250 projects (from Ubuntu, to PostgreSQL, SourceHut, the IRCv3 Working Group, etc) have all left freenode to head to Libera the volunteer network. Losing all his projects, Andrew insists that "freenode is for FOSS" while at the same time shaming foss projects who want to exercise the freedom to choose their own chat platform and hiring a very dubious set of IRC "personalities" as staff.