What you're saying is that the OSR basically gained strength through negativity. I've never seen that. In fact, most of the OSR blogs and messageboards had a few posts/threads about 4e right after it first came out and everybody was talking about it and then dropped the subject to focus on the games that OSR people actually care about.
The OSR is based on people who think the old games are still awesome and who still have fun playing and writing about them.
The problem is from what I've seen, the OSR is not just about "being positive". Even in the early days of Dragonsfoot there is a lot of put-downs and angry vibes, such as people who are immature enough to use the terms "threetard" and "fouron", use terms like TETSNBN for 3e, etc. I mean, if you think edition wars are bad here, just go to any OSR. (And now there are forums who consider Dragonsfoot "too liberal" for their edition conservatism).
There can be a serious amount of bitterness and mean streak to the OSR at times, which I think corrupts the movement. It's sort of the shadows around the light of playing games that turns me off a bit.