Sure, but Freenode has a "namespace" system. A channel with a single # is supposed to signify that it's officially affiliated with whatever project it's about,

Sure, but Freenode has a "namespace" system. A channel with a single # is supposed to signify that it's officially affiliated with whatever project it's about, while a channel with a double ## is something community-driven. It's thus perfectly reasonable to me that, if the project decides to move networks and stop using the official channel, it should shut it down and redirect it. (If for no other reason than because the project won't be moderating that channel any more, and it reflects poorly on the project if something that's flagged as being "official" turns into a cesspool.) It's not stopping people from creating a ## community channel on the old network to keep talking. That's irrelevant, of course, because Freenode hijacked a lot of channels that weren't doing the full shutdown, and just had a soft "we're moving to X soon" topic set, thus punishing the gentler communications you'd prefer.