Maybe he's referring to the time before Spiral and the Human Rights Foundation granted the grant to us.
Some 1 to 2 years ago, we did embark on a "campaign" (if you can call it that) to email funds to ask for a grant.
  • Some replied, but the most common reply was either "No" or "What's in it for us?"
  • As a non-profit, we couldn't answer the what's in it for them part."
  • Then, through Leo's personal contacts (which I think is you), Spiral came to the rescue. (Thank you steve and Spiral)
  • A few months later, then Human Rights Foundation responded - the bulk of which went to EB, the security researcher.
As to attacks, we do not conduct negative interactions with wallet providers and we make it a point to try to fill the role of outreach as professionally as possible. Like how customer service would do it.
Most of the interactions were on twitter, and many were on the Gitlab or Github issue pages.
That is, to the best of my knowledge of it went.
The acrimonious relationship was stirred by non other than NVK and his cohort.
I do not know why - and I really don't want to dig in further to the reasons as it is not my concern.
I just know that there were allegations which were in now deleted tweets, about the licensing issues ColdCard. I can't recall exactly, but the license for the coldcard was previously GPLv3. I think ColdCard changed it later on, because of more deleted tweets concerning another wallet provider.
There was even a now deleted post about some person shouting on twitter that OPEN SOURCE LOST THE WAR OR BATTLE or something like that.