Funny, I never took it to be nose-thumbing so much as fellatio.  He's the Pied Piper of Hamelin who led a small army of open source programmers straight to their language and APIs just when the townsfolk were at the peak of panic that they were losing the mindshsre of developers. (...developers, developers, developers,...) That's an act of deep love, not defiance.<p>Well, as deep as as a quid pro quo seeker might feel, anyway.  He certainly never came off as an idealist.