The recent resignation letters indicate they have become aware of how much technical control the owner has and intends to exercise.

Edit: that said, I was unaware of the statements from Lee that are linked to by an arstechnica article linked elsewhere in the comments. Honestly really not sure who to believe. For all I know (which is nothing first hand) this could be another group sabotaging things to boost their own new network over personal disagreement. Which I'm not suggesting is the case, but as someone not personally involved, all I see is conflicting hearsay.

Totally agree with that. But that "other group" needs about the highest level of ops you can get (i.e., staff level). When your new Andrew-approved staff then starts de-opping ops in ~700 channels, sets up a new #freenode-services channel where you can beg to get your ops back, where they first tell you NO because the channel that was previously yours violates some new instated FreeNode policy which prohibits referencing via topic (and including talking about?) other networks like Libera..

That's when people on all sides pack up shop and leave.

removal of per-channel staff/per-channel owners and replacement with network owners.

like removing a subreddit's creator/moderators and taking over it.

In 2017 said entrepeneur and then freenode head of staff downplayed what happened to the public and the rest of the staff. Otherwise this drama would have occured in 2017.

The legal entity purchased in 2017 isn't the Freenode network and wasn't intended to be able to assert control over the network. In 2021, it started to do so.

And indeed it appears the thing they wanted ownership of wasn't a thing you can own, which is doubtless very disappointing but too bad.

Communities consist of people, and you aren't allowed to own people, so you cannot own a community.

As far as I can tell he bought it in 2017 and promised not to change the operating model or interfere with the staff. In 2021 he started doing just that.

As far as the community is concerned in 2017 he bought something called "freenode limited" which doesn't own the network, doesn't own the servers, and had no operational control beyond owning domain names.

This would be like if you found out the local little league basball had been sold. It's a community resource that only exists through the continued donation of time by the members. It's not something that should ever be "owned".

More like if Little League Baseball, the umbrella organisation, changed hands. Let's say the new owner intends to officially keep the charitable structure, but to monetize it by partnering with his own media company and televising the games.

If he didn't change anything for the users (kids and parents across the US), but cleaned house in head office and installed his own management team, the local teams would continue running as they always had. The owner really would benefit from the goodwill of the community and really would "own" it in a meaningful way. Some grumbling idealists would start a new "really truly non-profit" competitor, but for most people the friction of switching would be too great. But if he interfered too much and made the players' experience worse, people and teams would find it attractive to move to the new competitor.

Dude bought an NFT in 2017, and has now decided the NFT was a proof of ownership.