IRC friends, enemies and others,
Control of freenode has recently been seized by the proprietors of Freenode Limited, a holding company established by a previous head of freenode and a third party as part of a deal with a corporate sponsor. The terms of that deal were not disclosed, and remain unknown to me.
At the time, we, freenode's volunteer staff, were given informal guarantees that staff retained operational control of the network. The same guarantees were repeated after leadership was passed on to a new head of staff. I don't