Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software

I would not call you a conspiracy theorist. In fact, that's likely valid to some extend. If you see someone opinion as being wrong ( like I guess Mark have seen the one of Michael ), you will have a negative first mpression on what this person do later, and thus be biased on his initiative. That's human, Mark just act like all others person on this planet, and that's likely a subconscient reaction. See "confirmation bias" on Wikipedia, and various others bias.