tl;dr — Christel asked me to keep freenode alive in 2017, I paid every bill, including the former staffers legal woes, from that day forward, and the volunteers who later founded Libera registered their new domain weeks before any of the "hostile take over" headlines.
Straight timeline with docs linked so you don’t have to trust my prose:
1. April 12, 2017 - christel’s posts about freenode changing hands. Companies House lists me as director from April 1, 2017; Christel removes herself shortly after. [1]
2. LWN’s May 2021 timeline notes staff had accepted the 2017 sale [2].
3. libera.chat registered April 23, 2021, three weeks before any "hostile-takeover" fake news [3].
4. HN obviously noticed the WHOIS date the same day [4].
5. Staff minutes show plans for a Freenode-branded web client but admit they have no developers on staff [5].
6. May 18, 2021 The narrative flips as former staffers like post coordinated resignation letters (and begin e-mailing open source projects) claiming I’d just seized control [6].
7. The Register runs "Freenode staff resign en masse" hours later [7].
8. Vice repeats the story but concedes the 2017 sale is real [8]. Hackaday traces the dispute straight back to that sale [9].
What actually happened
The transaction came first (domain, bylaws, infra). I locked the DNS after staff pointed users at their new network, Libera. Until then, since 2017, everything has been paid out-of-pocket. No user data has ever been monetised (and has been deleted).
Ex freenode Staffers Legal Troubles from OldCoder
Robert "OldCoder" Kiraly’s 23 page 2019 statement names Fuchs among other former freenode staffers in a number of alarming allegations [10]. They’re allegations only, but I still paid counsel so the volunteers (Fuchs included) had representation. [11]
IRC.com
Rather than wait for the mythical volunteer developers like the former staffers were, I, a developer, shipped a modern IRC client. Judge the platform for what it is, not falsehoods being spread without facts.
Call me whatever you want, but do it on the paperwork, don't just read coordinated resignations or LulzSec member's fiction. Because a few people wanted to maintain their meritless position in a DEVELOPER's community that I was not only a part of but also financially contributed thereto quite significantly [12], the community was severely fractured.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/e364lu/private_inter...
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/e364lu/comment/f92a4...
https://archive.is/Sn7hU
[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/857140/
[3] WHOIS libera.chat
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27213996
https://archive.ph/bSbXD
[5] https://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/lee-side.p... https://archive.is/46nLz
[6] See resignation gists.
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/19/freenode_staff_resign...
[8] https://www.vice.com/en/article/freenode-open-source-korea-c...
[9] https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-sta... Note: It reports on an Ariadne Connill, who admitted to forging IRC logs.
[10] https://haggishell.com/fibers/misc/190912-freenode.pdf
https://archive.is/OsPkt
[11] It was a bit disheartening to see Fuchs take the position against me after I had helped him with legal issues.
[12] https://foundation.gnome.org/2013/09/23/interview-with-andre...