Coursera built its PR engine on the premise of bringing high quality top-university education to the world <i>for free</i>. They gave keynotes to large audiences, did press tours, and even used a .org domain. Very feel-good, and they capitalized on the resulting publicity and good will to raise a lot of money.<p>No one would have whined much about add-ons for a cost. But to restrict what was originally part of the core free experience - the experience they built their reputation on - is why any backlash now is entirely of their own making.