How was this money directed towards freenode? Certainly the accounts published by freenode ltd do not mention anywhere near this sum (though it is currently behind on publishing accounts).
Most people on freenode don't give a shit about these conferences. To me it seems like someone wanted to try to help freenode do something cool and used that as a way to cheat everybody and steal the network. Not cool.
The freenode live conference was another thing not supposed to be "part" of the network. Freenode Ltd was created for the conference purpose, not the network (according to what christel said at the time).
Yes and no? As I understand it, they weren't supposed to be involved in the day to day operation of the network in general, but back in 2016 Private Internet Access' logo (then Andrew Lee's current company) was added to the corner of the main Freenode website and as I recall it was widely discussed at the time that this was part of the deal which funded Freenode Live. Most people didn't care and it remained there until 2021. The Shells logo which was supposedly such an outrageous, unprecedented corporate intrusion into areas of the site sponsors never were never allowed before that everyone needed to jump ship was a direct replacement of that PIA logo. Same location, same overall prominence.
While the details are still a bit fuzzy, a far as I can tell from the outside someone on the Freenode staff seems to have used that logo switch as a pretext to try and upset the status quo and seize more power through a bogus narrative about unprecedented corporate intrusion and a logo suddenly appearing in 2021 where one would never be allowed before, likely including kicking out the then head of staff of the actual IRC network, whilst insisting that it was the other side that was trying to seize more control by obstructing them.
> While the details are still a bit fuzzy, a far as I can tell from the outside someone on the Freenode staff seems to have used that logo switch as a pretext to try and upset the status quo and seize more power through a bogus narrative about unprecedented corporate intrusion and a logo suddenly appearing in 2021 where one would never be allowed before, likely including kicking out the then head of staff of the actual IRC network, whilst insisting that it was the other side that was trying to seize more control by obstructing them.
This is one possible interpretation. After reading a lot of these self-testimony documents I think that Freenode staffers really never knew how the organization was legally run. They only understood the internal politics of Freenode. When these two authority complexes clashed, it's predictable how disasterous the outcome would be.
That said, I'm still not buying rasengan claims about money spent. Maybe he thinks this money was spent on bettering Freenode, but unless it's money that's spent literally on keeping Freenode online, then it's hard to claim that and get the audience to agree. I think if rasengan really wants to shepherd some FOSS monolith then he need to start producing transparency documents that show exactly how he's funding things and to which organizations that money goes.
