> Artistic would be a new color scheme or maybe a “support open source maintainers” message.

The author already did that, and complained about fortune500 companies mooching their work without giving anything in return.

The author stated that people should fork the repo if they intended to keep using it.

The author made said statements a year ago. Is a year enough time to take action?

Now the author decided to do a major version release with a protest version of his own work, and that makes him a villain?