Gust chose to take management’s shit. He chose to take their shit for money. He chose to make himself a “victim”, when he could have walked out of that toxic environment at any time with no repercussion.
Yeah, the management are excretable scum wholly deserving of strychnine in their guacamole, and let’s hope they all go to prison someday for dirty double-dealing, but the only power they had over Gust was whatever power Gust gave them. Now I’ve got sympathy for that, cos I know all about bad judgement born from loss of perspective, and the mistakes and damage we can do to ourselves from that.
But then Gust chose to recruit his personal army for revenge, dragging others into his mess, and that is wrong.
So, sorry, but sympathy seeking self-martyrdom is up there with the messianic martinetism and barely concealed resentments in the grand hall of nerd dysfunctions and follies. Maybe if y’all got a broader experience of real life and all its people you might develop a more balanced sense of perspective. Because if you cannot tell if you’re being abusive yourself—which is what Gust was by the time OP wrote about it—then you’re part of the problem as well. And I can speak from first-hand there as well.
Gust wants to believe he’s the wronged party, and you want to believe that as well, because weaving that narrative suits you both. But the only truly wronged people I see here are OP and those OSS project developers, who Gust is now using and abusing just as his [belatedly] ex-management used and abused him; to serve himself.
Rule #1 of being a good person: knowing when you’re being a bad person yourself.