I find it unfortunate that Schneier chose to underline the XZ maintainer’s mental health issues (literally—he linkified it) as the reason he’d slowed down on the project, which then led to being open to taking on the malicious co-maintainer.

Schneier then follows that linkified fact up immediately with a parenthetical that Collin isn’t to blame. But then why call out that very potentially stigmatic thing at all, with sources to boot?

That explanatory note from Collin was buried in a mailing list and was at most a footnote to this story. Now it’s going to be part of the public accounting pushed by a famous security pundit with international reach, and with very little other context given to mitigate.

Either Schneier was trying to make a point of some kind, in which case he sure wheedled around it, or he should’ve been considerably more careful with essentially the only personal fact he chose to highlight about Collin. Either way, I’m disappointed.