> there are lawyers-threats involved and he took infra too. so it's not
> that simple/light as you're presenting it.

To the best of my knowledge, the muppet got *access* to operations, yes.

For the hosting part, staffers have repeatedly confirmed the hardware
was donations from third-parties, with no contract/paperwork tying them
in any way to this corporation thingy, which is just really a shell.

As for the software, it's FOSS (FLOSS, even?), maintained and even
developed/improved by said staffers over time, on their free time,
without contract or ties of any sort either.

If hardware and/or people was/were to shift purpose, the ego-maniac
stirring all that crap would (will?) be powerless.

It feels all like a legal scam.
The problem being, and the reason why staffers resigned and moved on to
another project, is that said ego-maniac seems to have money, and hence
could be able to drown/stretch any legal action over time, requiring a
lot of effort/stress/money to fight, resources staffers do not seem
equipped with.

IMHO all threats are void, and the takeover will fail, damaging the
freenode name, removing from public access a long-standing,
well-identified name of ever-working IRC services.

This man seems to be a vulture, wishing to capitalize on the domain
name's worth.
He doesn't seem to realize the value is in the underlying services,
which are not his. That's only logical, as ego is by nature not an
expression of rationality.

Bernard (Beer) Rosset
https://rosset.net/