What you wrote here is exactly what sprung to my mind upon reading the headline, never mind the story itself. But then after reading it I got to thinking of all the developers that I have met that are absolutely resolute in their belief that, for example, the whole project was done wrong from that start and needs to be written despite the fact that I think it is clear that the risk-reward for such a thing is a terrible trade off. And then there is the over-representation that I perceive in libertarian-types in the tech business.

I don't know, maybe there is something to the idea that spending most of your time engaged in total control over a virtual environment that executes pure logic turns people into activist-types or attracts them. I think the most important thing to being an activist is to be sure you are right and I have met no shortage of hackers that are sure they are right (often no matter how wrong they actually are).