htaccess sets wrong

When activating S2 member, my site goes away with a 500 error. The issue is in .htaccess

The file is changed to read as follows. “xxxxxxx” is the database name, not any path on the site!

# BEGIN s2Member GZIP exclusions
<IfModule rewrite_module>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase xxxxxxxxx
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|\?|&)s2member_file_download\=.+ [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|\?|&)no-gzip\=1
RewriteRule .* – [E=no-gzip:1]
</IfModule>
# END s2Member GZIP exclusions

editing the file to change RewriteBase to / fixes the problem:

# BEGIN s2Member GZIP exclusions
<IfModule rewrite_module>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|\?|&)s2member_file_download\=.+ [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|\?|&)no-gzip\=1
RewriteRule .* – [E=no-gzip:1]
</IfModule>
# END s2Member GZIP exclusions

https://wordpress.org/plugins/s2member/