This happened right after Freenode banned IRCCloud users following IRCCloud staff statements suggesting users to migrate off Freenode and the launch of competing bouncer services.[0] Regardless of your opinion of IRCCloud, banning all IRCCloud users right after launching a competing service and hearing criticism is not a good look.
Now that most channels are dead and direct users to other networks despite staff's best efforts to quell any criticism (channel migrations+topic-renaming, banning users, etc), I guess they decided to wipe everything and start over to more easily remove any references to Libera/OFTC. In fact, it removes any every reference to anything at all.
If you had a bot that directed users to the actual location of your community, you should check to make sure that it survives this migration (this was probably part of the intent).
If you use Matrix and have left Freenode channels, the IRC-Matrix appservice bridge might still be keeping you connected. To leave Freenode, send a "!quit" message to the Freenode bridge appservice user, @appservice-irc:matrix.org.[1][2]
More context: they are in the (slow) process of shutting down servers one at a time and bringing them up running InspIRCd with new Anope services, with none of the old channel or nick registrations.
Even more context: they no longer have staff that understands the IRCd that they're currently running (because they quit and started Libera) and they no longer are in the good graces of any of the other folks who could help them: https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1404383392154726405
So I'd bet that they don't have the technical skill to migrate the registrations, whether or not they wanted to.
It seems there are currently 3 Freenodes: half the old one (still up with services), the other half (no services), and the new one (the only one on the DNS rotation).
Given the current state of things, I'm pretty sure they have no idea what they're doing.
There are two uses of the word "network". One of them is about the nodes that are all interconnected -- the people and the communities. That's all basically moved over to Libera.chat.
The other is the physical infrastructure. Actually, most of that has _also_ moved over to Libera, and the new Freenode folks are standing up their own in place. Until this wipe, the silent and very professional migration of equipment from Freenode to Libera has been going on essentially unnoticed, and without drama. That's a credit to the former Freenode, now Libera staff, IMO.
But yeah. When this all began, there were two reasonable hypotheses: that the (now) Libera folks were reactionaries, or that they had valid complaints with the new management. If the former, you would expect a tempest in a teapot, and then things would get back to normal. If the latter, you would expect continuing shitstorm.
Now that most channels are dead and direct users to other networks despite staff's best efforts to quell any criticism (channel migrations+topic-renaming, banning users, etc), I guess they decided to wipe everything and start over to more easily remove any references to Libera/OFTC. In fact, it removes any every reference to anything at all.
If you had a bot that directed users to the actual location of your community, you should check to make sure that it survives this migration (this was probably part of the intent).
If you use Matrix and have left Freenode channels, the IRC-Matrix appservice bridge might still be keeping you connected. To leave Freenode, send a "!quit" message to the Freenode bridge appservice user, @appservice-irc:matrix.org.[1][2]
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210612224853/https://nitter.ni...
[1]: https://matrix-org.github.io/matrix-appservice-irc/latest/ad...
[2]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/wiki/Bri...