Secondly, I'm not criticizing you for standing up for yourself. Don't try to frame this as if you're a poor victim of the internet. This is a discussion forum. I'm not an anonymous troll, my identity is in my profile.
You dramatized things in the first place, not by standing up for yourself. The beer offer still stands.
Given that you responded in such a dramatic fashion to something that genuinely didn't involve you in any way whatsoever, why are you criticizing Zed for reacting strongly to a far greater provocation?
I think it's just built up over time. I've never met Zed. I don't quite understand how he's built such a following -- it's quite possible it's because he's a nice guy who helps people. It strikes me from what I've read by him and about him that this SEEMS unlikely, but again, I do not know him.
The opinion that drove my response was that this was a monstrous waste of resources for github. Zed has influence and his blog post provoked a reaction that was unnecessary. We don't know how widespread this problem is on github. This is the first time I, or anybody I've spoken with, has even heard of anyone having this problem. Running a startup (I imagine), especially one with as much success as github, is almost certainly incredibly difficult. Reading a blog post rant by someone with influence has got to be a real bitch. And they handled it with grace and patience. Which is more than I can say about myself and Zed.
Oh, because then he wouldn't get any publicity. Doing support and keeping a startup in a good position despite outspoken users (who don't pay for the service) is a completely thankless job. I give github a ton of credit for responding well over a holiday weekend to what amounts to a screaming child. Not many other companies would do that.
That's why github rocks.
I read your post and pretty much all I hear is a vaguely undirected bitterness and some jealous whining, and I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY.
Seriously, Dont worry yourself on their behalf.
If Github didn't want to implement that feature, they wouldn't have done it.
Zed has about as much power over them as I do over you.
Whatever other characteristics he may have, Zed certainly has a knack for bringing forth the shrieking sister in a certain type of personality.