It’s disingenuous to assume people are acting in bad faith. The developer tried to turn his users computers into a botnet. The thing that made him change course was that other people noticed and said something. Public criticism and not a sense that spider runs counter to his users interest is what people are objecting to.

The idea that, at some point in the future, the developer will make a token effort to notify his user base before doing something against their interest is enough to make me not want to use this developers software.