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.
back
1 comments
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.