That said, the freenode issue was debunked and you can see receipts here: http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/lee-side.pd...
I funded freenode since 2011 so any narrative that makes it seem I just appeared out of nowhere is factually untrue. Also, I was handed it because Christel felt I was a good custodian thereof. Instead, former staff who I protected from allegations made by OldCoder for years, went on to form Libera, tried to steal the domain for a developers irc network when they themselves shockingly couldn’t even code a simple irc client, and then made up a false narrative.
The state of open source generally isn’t what you think and you would do well for yourself to read Lunduke’s Journal among other things. The developers don’t actually run most of the projects these days. Look at Mozilla.