Andrew Lee also claims to be the Crown Prince of Korea - because he claims to be distantly related to a very old king, contacted one of the aging claimants to t

Andrew Lee also claims to be the Crown Prince of Korea - because he claims to be distantly related to a very old king, contacted one of the aging claimants to the throne who has no male children, and organized a "ceremony" with him in a Vietnamese restaurant in Beverly Hills. I think if you want to form a theory of mind re his Freenode actions, you'd be well informed by forming a theory of mind re his Korea actions. Obviously part of it is the monarchist philosophy, the idea that an autocratic government over Korea with no input from the people is somehow worth something. Even in the case of the North, you couldn't call the restoration of the monarchy an improvement. And even in monarchism in general, there's still a vague idea of government by at least a little bit of consent from at least a few of the governed, from the Glorious Revolution to the concept of the Mandate of Heaven. The so-called crown prince has none of that. But more interestingly, Lee thinks something happened at that dinner to make him crown prince. The claim to the throne by the scion in question is already disputed, and it's far from clear that he had the power, according to the old royal rules, to make some random person who happens to have the same last name his heir. And if he does, it would be via adoption, not via a "Passing of the Sword Ceremony" and a seafood entree. There's no evidence that Lee has once participated in the yearly cultural ceremonies in Korea that honor the late royalty and still to this day involve members of the former royal house - the other claimant to the throne does that. If you're not going to stick by the very practical rule that the legitimate ruler is the person physically on the throne, you at least need to stick by the rules of the royal house about legitimacy, and he's done neither. I believe he approaches Freenode in the same way. He genuinely believes that it is possible and reasonable to transfer control of Freenode without the involvement or consent of Freenode's users and that the good users will stay loyal to the name "Freenode," instead of to the intangible community. So he didn't even anticipate the possibility that the staff would set up their own network and manage to move almost all of the community over. He also believes that all that needs to happen is to contact one person who has a bit of a claim to Freenode and arrange for DNS to be transferred, and everything will work itself out. What we're seeing is him operating as if everything will soon work itself out, once he deals with a few small problems. Once people forget about Libera, once the uncooperative channel ops "spamming" suggestions to try Libera are removed, once #python is turned from a channel run by the PSF to a channel with Python enthusiasts, etc., Freenode will eventually emerge as the home of FOSS, like it's always been, and he'll be on the throne.