I’ll make an attempt…
Someone, namely Andrew Lee, is trying to claim ownership of the Freenode IRC network through acquiring ownership of the, extremely loosely related Freenode Ltd, an organisation set up for Freenode live events, entirely separate from the IRC network. The only thing they have in common is the name.
Freenode (the IRC network) has always existed solely by the grace of its supporters. Aside from the domain name Freenode doesn’t really have operational costs. The sysops are all volunteers, and all the server power is donated by various third parties.
The whole existence of Freenode is (or rather, was) based on the relationship of the staff with the sponsors (that being the people that provide the servers). Iow, if the staff goes, so does that relationship.
The idea behind Freenode was that it couldn’t be owned, because it doesn’t exist as a legal entity. This avoids agenda pushing (though, of course, the sysops are still humans, with everything that entails. Still it’s as much a meritocracy as is possible, certainly more than anything “owned” by a single entity) Claiming ownership of Freenode at the very least goes against the very idea behind the IRC network.
I can’t think of any good reason to want to “own” Freenode anyway, certainly none that are good. Some power-trip? Ability to silence “unwanted” speech, or people? Selling the user-data, potentially? (but really, what would the information in NickServ/ChanServ be worth?) Forcing the network in a specific direction? (this appears to be one of the reasons, based on some of the stuff Andrew has written)
It should also be noted that, unlike “modern” chat systems all the data you send to an IRC server is visible to said server. Trust in an IRC network is entirely based on the trust in the people operating it. Freenode now being hijacked means that some party with unclear intentions now has potential access to everything that’s being said on Freenode (which includes “private” conversations), among other data (like all the nick registrations with NickServ, which includes email addresses)