Congrats on spotting the danger early. Still, I support editing the title back to the original. Avoiding editorialised titles is important, it means that opinions are shared in comments and it's easier to have a neutral discussion.
Back then you were right about the purchase but it seems that you weren't able to get your point across to the others; I wish people listened more and I also wish you talked more.
As someone with only a passing interest in freenode which I used to use but no longer do, learning they were bought is much more relevant than the implication they formed a partnership. I understand that there is grey area over whether they were “bought”, but a partnership doesn’t seem to cover what went down in any way.
True, but we only know that in hindsight. At the time the claim about acquisition was disputed [1] [2]. If somebody replied with information about voting rights [3] then perhaps the "joining forces" title would have been treated as misleading and replaced with "purchased by".
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102301