Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might be experiencing a form of survivorship bias / confirmation bias here. If you work at Linode, presumably people would come up to you asking about something they then couched to you as a Linode clone. That doesn't mean it's how people were talking about DO when not directly speaking with someone at Linode.
I don’t understand how that impacts my point at all. If an opinion is only held in one context it’s not actually held? Is that what you’re saying? I’m sorry, I don’t follow. Before DO VPS was (and somewhat remains) a community even among competition. I’m not basing what I’m saying solely on the example given.
EDIT: s/general public/others