As Antirez says, VMware were formerly a sponsor of Redis, and he now works for Pivotal (as do I), who are the current sponsor of the project. Either way, I'm highly skeptical that anyone at either company did such a thing.
I have a background in ethics and law so I've seen too much to make apologies for being suspicious. :) In fact, this sort of suspicion is a good reason NOT to establish a track record of litigating away freedom of speech (as VMWare notoriously threatens to do if someone publishes their benchmarks). But again: nothing to do with Redis, if (as you say) VMWare is no longer a sponsor.
