> looks an awful lot like bad-mouthed rumours

Really? So if we look at the Git repo commit history, we'll see the transition commit on April 1st (https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/commit/bc4b7fc4ea17c8...). I'm pretty sure we can consider his first commit as demonstrating his intentions if it departs significantly from previous project direction. And it does - the very first commit after the transition was to start soliciting donations (https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/commit/f256801344a517...). Git repositories have some reviewable history to them, but I guess that's all just rumours, right?

> Seeking for donations is especially a good idea since the original developer left the project because it was too much work -> counteract that work with money.

Perhaps. But in that same flurry of commits on his first day of project ownership, he linked to a personal donation account (https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/commit/31a4a522814f06...). All that's said on that page (https://gratipay.com/~chrisaljoudi/) is that he works on uBlock. Part of the drama was that it previously implied more than just working on it - it was his. His wording has since given more recognition to the contributions of others, thankfully. But Day 1 - he's looking for donations, and its his project. Perhaps not terrible on any other day. But taking an open and free project, slapping personal donation buttons all over it, and removing attribution from other developers by manually committing changes (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9449876) - this behavior turned a lot of people off to his project and leadership. He's since talked about sharing those donations, which I think is good. I still think it would be better to not solicit them, but I don't personally value his contributions that highly any more. That's probably my own bias.

> https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock mentions gorhill and ublock origin in a positive way

Those changes are more recent, and came after a lot of public criticism. We can see from the commits that those came in a month and a half after the transition (https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/commit/823778274bfd47...). Roughly 2-3 weeks after the video you linked. His first approach was publicity, and then he took a less aggressive approach. Let's not whitewash things when commit history shows that it's only 19 commits back (three of those from other people) from the current mainline on Jun 7th. Normal procedure when taking over project maintainership is to maintain - not reinvent the image for donations.

I personally think he saw the opportunity to get some cash for not a whole lot of work, which is a really attractive offer as a high school student. I don't think it was malicious, but I also don't think it was appropriate behavior to take something that was created for free to help others and personally monetize it the moment you got some authority over it. He found out that these things are considered unethical and changed. That's good - and we don't have to lynch him. High school kids do dumber things, and there's still room to learn and grow. But they're not rumours - these things actually happened.

There's a reason people prefer the the gorhill fork. I don't think Ajouldi's a bad kid, but I don't fault people for not trusting him after his very public missteps. I think he'll do much better things in the future - and I think part of that is him directly experiencing the fallout of a poor decision before he's gotten a career that could be affected by it. I won't crucify him, but I won't pretend he never did anything wrong just because he apologized.