Funny you'd mention this. I installed Audacity a few hours ago and much to my dismay the application informed me upon starting it for the first time that update checks were enabled by default - in other words, Audacity had already called home and I couldn't have done anything to stop it from doing so.

So yes, they deserved the abuse.

First off, nobody deserves any sort of abuse.

Secondly, the Sneedacity incident was abuse targeted at a fork of the Audacity project, not at the original 'hostile takeover' project itself. The fork was intended to remove said abuse you feel is deserving of more abuse.