In the woodworking community, SawStop was met with some interest, but a lot of skepticism. Everyone supports safety, but there were a lot of concerns about false triggers when sawing wet wood. There's a good reason for that concern, since SawStop is a totally destructive system -- the cartridge and the blade are both destroyed, and replacing them will cost a couple of hundred bucks, minimum. Assuming you aren't using high quality blades that cost that much themselves, of course.
When SawStop failed to persuade the free market, they tried to enlist the Consumer Product Safety Commission to mandate "similar technology" in every new saw sold. Since they owned the patent to the only "similar technology", they were seeking a monopoly. That's when then woodworking community went from curious but skeptical, to downright hostile.
To put it in gun terms, it's just like the inventors of various "safe guns" designs (fingerprint recognition, coded rings before the gun will fire, etc.) trying to get the government to mandate their product. Also in gun terms, no safety device can take the place of the Four Rules: if you don't want to lose it, don't put it in front of either a muzzle or a spinning blade.