It appears that rasengan (Andrew Lee) of Private Internet Access believes that ownership of the company Freenode Ltd. gives him the right to unilaterally replace the current staff team.
We may have had our disagreements with staff, but freenode being run by a volunteer team, using servers provided by sponsors, is a key reason that we appreciate freenode.
As such, we do not believe that such a unilateral replacement by a corporate interest is appropriate.
If this attemped takeover by Andrew Lee continues, we will be advocating to move our communities elsewhere.
Context: Fuchs' leaked (not by him) draft resignation letter that caused Andrew Lee to come onto #freenode: https://fuchsnet.ch/privat/fn-resign-letter.txt
Context: Andrew Lee (rasengan)'s claims: https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/88549ec34ee32d01629354e4075d2d48
Context: Conversation in #freenode on Fri 14 May: http://hermit1.scsys.co.uk/~matthewt/fnwut
(Update 16th May 23:24 BST - changed wording from "move our communities elsewhere" to "be advocating to move our communities elsewhere" to clarify that some signatories will be people with heavy involvement but not final authority. Also changed "takeover by Private Internet Access" to "takeover by Andrew Lee" to clarify that Freenode Ltd. itself is not a PIA subsidiary but merely shares ownership)
(Update 19th May 00:15 BST - made file officially a .md file, clarified leaking wasn't by fuchs, corrected stupid tyop (clarift -> clarify), set soft wrap)
Signed -
by various nicknames and a WOPN / FNR contributor from, you know, back in the day.
comment: Y'all forget too quickly the lesson learned when Rob died. People grow old, make mistakes, and then life happens. Thank you all for your service then, since and now. Andrew really is making a mess of the place though... twenty years of services registration into /dev/null is some real BOFH stuff :-/