1) Manage it directly, immediately, and independently of any third party as to quickly respond to abuse.
2) Directly trust the web client's reporting of IP addresses, which is the primary form of unregistered user identity management on IRC.
3) Perform proxy detection on incoming web client connections, which they already use for non-web connections (http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#firewall)
(3) makes no sense, assuming you do trust the IP address, so doesn't add anything more than (1) and (2). You can already perform proxy-detection if you have WEBIRC and you trust the reported IP.
Provide a friendly interaction environment for project coordination and for the support of community projects.
Freenode, as a communication platform (and particularly as a self-described "friendly" environment) have a duty, to common sense and intelligence, to make reasonable efforts to encourage communication rather than stifle it.
Being willfully wooden-headed about this whole thing is not just wrong because of the unnecessary harm it causes, it's also self-contradictory.
What about Facebook? Google Talk?
As a member of several "community projects", I don't feel particularly slighted (and am, in fact, relieved due to decreased abuse) by the disconnection of Mibbit.
They don't have any responsibility to provide it, they can do what they like to their users. But I think their users liked it - which is why thousands of people used mibbit to connect to freenode.
Freenode clearly has a closed management culture, which is why they want complete control of everything. I don't think that makes for a great community.
Apparently #perl found a way to get around this without banning all of Mibbit. Maybe others should take the time to put more than a "F* YOU!!" into this?
I'm curious as to how much time you've spend solving the problem vs. complaining about it in forums/channels... I can say that right now I have more respect for the #perl guys than you, and I'd never heard of Mibbit before this article...