...Marak didn't force anyone to do anything. He just orchestrated events to temporarily inconvenience those who thoughtlessly parasitized his work without a second thought. I'm amazed people aren't more up in arms about Microsoft locking him out of his own GitHub, or reverting it or something? NPM has always hosted old versions of things, so it was symbolic in that sense.

Microsoft are the ones who flexed power here, not Marak. Marak momentarily caught people who should have known better by surprise. Microsoft abused their privileged position to do self-interested damage control.