And? Either his data is correct and forthright or incorrect and misleading. It's quite possible to be biased as fuck and still report objective fact. Until such time as the data skews, I don't particularly care what flag he flies.
It may not be "murderer" or "child molester" evil, but it's still pretty unethical and it's unethical behavior done in the name of "FOSS". We have a right and responsibility to police our own.
The reason PJ is respected here and in other places is because more often than not... she's right (especially from the perspective of helping programmers understand the foreign and alien legal system).
PJ is consistently correct in ways that are good for software development. It has less to do with who pays whom and more to do with who is correct.
The distaste is magnified when someone is paid to be wrong but the ultimate source of the distaste that they are wrong.
Florian's hand was ultimately forced because it is impractical to keep consulting for multiple large companies a secret.
So far, no one has ever found any evidence that PJ is anything other than what she says she is -- a Linux user and former paralegal. Even when Maureen O'Gara thought it'd be a good idea to stalk her and publish everything to the world, no evidence of any kind came to light.
You are proposing a criminal (yes, criminal, perjury is a crime, and sworn statements as to PJ's lack of involvement with IBM were filed in the SCO case) conspiracy spanning at least multiple large public companies, a well-known law professor, and several prominent tech journalists.
He was an honest fellow who got hit with a bunch of lawsuits from a troll who didn't like being called a troll and ended up in a mess because he commented on a case he was a party to and ended up resigning. He was outed after a troll put a bounty on his identity, no less.
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Groklaw-The-blog-that-...
It would certainly have been impractical for long stretches of Groklaw's history for PJ to have a day job.