“As a part of an unannounced switch to a different IRC daemon, the Freenode staff has removed all channel and nickname registrations.”
Freenode staff wiped every channel and nickname registration in one unannounced move. Gentoo’s channels got taken over, including ones the project hadn’t moved to Libera.chat yet. Anyone can now register a departed developer’s nick and talk to users who trust it. That is what happens when a community network is treated as an asset to be bought.