They didn't overreact immediately...

You're probably right, I'm just a not very interested outsider, so I might have gotten the
wrong impression (not going to scan the list again to double-check). But I can understand if
people get the impression that, after each reason was refuted, another one popped up or
wriggling happened (I'm not claiming that either of those actually did happen). So although
RMS stayed calm, he might not have given a very sincere impression.

As for the ensuing flaming, it's indeed very baffling that they react so strongly about
someone's opinion they don't really care about. But what interests me here is that it started
all right, and only later into the thread, after all points of disagreement/misunderstandings
were discussed, it went wrong.