Freenode, the organization, wasn't in a tight spot. The head of Freenode staff at the time, Christel, sold assets to Andrew Lee without disclosing the terms to the rest of the Freenode staffers. Andrew Lee is one of the people who benefited from the MtGox collapse and basically could intimidate people with lawyers until he got his way.

The whole of the Freenode staff, minus Christel, basically saw no option but to walk away knowing the kind of person Andrew Lee is. And now everyone else knows for we can see what he did to Freenode itself when it was entirely in his hands.

Libera is where they walked away towards and it's doing just fine.

For her troubles, Christel is now a CCO at PIA, one of Andrew Lee's former companies.

Freenode wasn't in trouble until Andrew decided it was his.