It's interesting that I read the same reporting as you, and to me Moglen comes off as a zealot who is unable to see anyone else's point of view.
I think this is best shown by this exchange:
"Me: Well just for me personally right now, the utility seems to—
Mr. Moglen: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no! You see that’s not true....."
Maybe this is the reason. Some people are Result-driven, and would take anything "appreciate" to get the result. Even when the word "appreciate" is at it's lowest standard (Like, "The goal is reached, and no body is dead/jailed because of my action").
I said that because I'm a Result-driven person myself. And I (and many others, not rare, really) have this sociopathic ability to completely disconnect myself from other people's emotions while still remain rational. In that mode, I'm capable to say and do a lots of awful things without feeling even a slightest of guilt, in fact, I wouldn't feel anything emotional (That is, I can be yelling while completely emotionless). Of course, I can switch it back and immediately become empathic. For me, it's all by choice.
Trying to put myself into his shoes, I guess maybe he thinks it's OK because "Things still gets done", maybe it's a compatibility test on whether or not he will still be "Accepted" after all that, or maybe it's a warning to show the bar of his tolerance.
Personally, I wouldn't think too much of it, because the goal is reached (Oh wait...)
Eben Moglen had a nice office near Lincoln Center in NYC. Somehow on the way to the office, he had taken a look at our site and mistook something on it... by the time I arrived, he spent the entire time yelling at me and berating whatever he could find out about me. A very strange character.
Having said that, he did help me find out what I was after: how to make sure large corporations wouldn’t use my open source code while smaller ones could — we should use Affero GPL.
So, all in all it was a productive meeting. But still, it was pretty surreal.
Apparently he has done it with other people too: https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit...
There is more to this. A couple years prior he had encouraged four NYU students to start Diaspora, a similar project to ours...