For me the smelliest part of this is the timestamps. The C&D is dated April 3. The InfoWorld article is timestamped 8:49 AM PDT, the same day, and the files called out in both places are the exact same five. There is no way I can see that the article wasn't just a rehash of a draft C&D provided to Matt Asay before it was even delivered to the OpenTofu project, and without either HashiCorp or Asay giving OpenTofu a chance to respond. Even if the C&D were 100% justified (and it's clearly not), that is extremely dirty pool.
"Update: Since this article was published, HashiCorp sent OpenTofu a cease-and-desist letter on April 3, 2024, expressing in greater detail the concerns raised in this post. On April 11, 2024, the OpenTofu maintainers responded with a detailed analysis of the claims made about the removed block. Based on these documents, it appears that the OpenTofu community did not misappropriate HashiCorp’s intellectual property."
It's been updated, but frankly they need to put out an entirely new article discussing how this first article came out in the first place. If this is something Hashicorp pushed to them, and they decided to publish it without seeking comment from OpenTofu first, that's really inappropriate and needs to be disclosed. Further, they owe it to everyone involved to give the same amount of attention to the OpenTofu response as they did the initial accusation, which means more than just one paragraph.