I am not a fan of how the author uses Notepad++ as his soapbox. Yes, I am an unhappy user, and I ended up uninstalling it and got a full refund :) It is not just ideology, technically, it is not my favorite editor.

But that's entirely my opinion, as much as I dislike it, the author can do whatever he wants as long as it is legal, and I don't think he did anything illegal regarding Notepad++. I owe him nothing, and I have no reason to complain, it is not like the world is lacking text editors anyways.

However, I don't believe in the idea that because you didn't pay, you have no right to complain. The author of Notepad++ makes money out of it through donations, maybe in other ways, I think that how he makes a living. And even if you don't pay, you are making the software popular, which helps him getting more donations. Furthermore, if you are committed to it, switching is not easy, "just use something else" is not a great argument. You have the right to get your voice heard if you don't like the way it is going. What you have no right to is harass the author, but that's not because it is free, that's because you shouldn't harass people, no matter how much you paid.

One project I used to use the guy would get tons of random strange messages. He had the perfect way to handle it. I saw it probably several hundred times in a forum he managed for his software.

"oh that is a good idea I will add it to my list of features to add"

Then pretty much never do it and work on whatever he wanted to do.