> I apologize for this being communicated poorly. This is entirely my fault, and I take all the blame for that.

(Disclaimer: I have no stake in this drama, though I spent a chunk of my life chatting on Freenode.)

Here are some facts: through both your actions and the reaction of the volunteer staff, you have a huge PR problem. The kind of people that use IRC, that form your target audience, see you as the bad guys now. You will continue to receive strong pushback on anything you do with Freenode.

Since you're reaching out and apologizing, I'm going to tentatively assume that the issue isn't as black-and-white. I have no stake in this, and I know from experience that just because someone gets outraged, doesn't mean they're right. So, if you actually care about the community and the values it represented, stop doing anything you're doing and start communicating openly and honestly. If you want to be seen as the good guy, you need to start acting like one.

What that means is:

- Address all the accusations raised against you by the volunteer staff that recently resigned. No corporate bullshit, no PR filtering, just like one technologist to another.

- Give proper and detailed explanation for the actions you've taken. What you wrote here is an acceptable first paragraph. What you need is something like a post-issue analysis[0]. Describe what you wanted to do and why, step by step. Then, what actually happened. List the mistakes, lessons you're taking from them, and concrete steps to prevent that from happening again.

- Give proper and detailed explanation for your future plans. IRC isn't a company, and communities are not made of employees and subcontractors. If you want to keep people around and have them trust you, you have to communicate openly, in advance, give people chance to voice feedback (even if you aren't going to act on it). You can't count on network effects, because IRC is already such a pain in the butt that half of the people on it are secretly looking for ways to ditch it. That's why the other half is so afraid of this drama - killing Freenode communities is an existential threat to continued use of IRC in general.

- You're a for-profit operation that took over a non-profit one. You need to be very clear and very detailed about outlining how you want to keep the profit interest and community interest separate, and actually follow through on what you promise.

- Want to score some points with the people? Put some resources into improving IRC as a protocol and set of technologies. Note that you're starting from position of "bad guy", so whatever you do, it cannot have a single string attached, lest people will (rightfully) call it out as "embrace, extend, extinguish".

Regaining trust takes time. You have your work cut out for you.

(And, if you actually are a bad guy, then just be up front about it too. People will be able to see it anyway, and continuing the charade only wastes time of everyone involved.)

EDIT:

Want to do a quick thing to show some good will? Fix [1]. Give them control of their channel back, and let them finish their migration.

--

[0] - See e.g. https://github.blog/2020-03-26-february-service-disruptions-... for the level of detail I'm talking about.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27287039