I'm thinking about this a bit more.

It may be the case that Daniel and the project are so under siege that they need to take a hostile attitude toward some of the people they interact with as a matter of self preservation. They may have no other option. But taking this posture while also being fair to all of the people around them (i.e. some people who aren't actually attacking them) may be difficult or even impossible. I can see this behavior in myself sometimes. I just don't have the energy to be fair. "F U".

I wouldn't want to see friendly corporate slop either. I appreciate how down to nuts and bolts the communiques are on Mastodon and how deadly serious they take everything. That part of the communication style makes me trust them more.

I think a good step in the right direction might be acknowledging that being defensive necessarily leads to erring on the side of assuming bad faith rather than good, which leads to some mis-judgements. So far you said that GrapheneOS is open to all criticisms, which (though I haven't followed the space very recently so my memory on specifics is hazy) just does not seem to match my interpretation. I think that if we were having this conversation on Twitter or Mastodon, Daniel would have blocked me by now (if he hadn't already blocked me years ago).

People can accidentally be spreading attacks with loaded/presumptuous statements even when their intentions are pure. Unfortunately, pure intentions can still cause harm that needs to be countered.

Take your reply as an example, the GrapheneOS accounts are managed by multiple people, so the fixation on one specific project member may not even be accurate to the discussion. Having ones character attacked is immensely harmful on its own, but being attacked for something one may not even be doing is also immensely harmful.

The unfortunate reality is that people tend to believe the first thing they read, and without something countering it, will roll with it, intentionally or otherwise. So countering misinfo efficiently and quickly is vital.