He surely can do a lot worse, I have no doubt he will.
Warning to Github, really? The mighty Zed is not going to recommend it to anyone, how scary.
Yes. Regardless what you, I, or Github thinks of him, as a company their best move is to issue a public apology over this.
Imagine they get into a spat with him -- they start calling him names, he fights back etc. Then some customer has to make a decision on whether they want to pick Github, are they going to like seeing and hearing public spitting matches between them and Zed, is that going to look like mature, reliable company to trust the crown jewels (source code) of one's company to? -- No.
Let's say I am having a dinner in a nice quiet restaurant but there is some noisy, aggressive drunk at the table nearby. I'd be more than happy for the restaurant to lose that customer. Was it Sprint who ditched 10% of their customers who used to complain the most so they could spend less time arguing with them and provide better service to the rest instead?
Note, this is not to say, that any of these examples applies there but just to illustrate my first sentence.
They had an unhappy customer, and their staff felt the best way to handle it was to mock the customer publicly. That's juvenile bullshit, no matter what you think of the customer.
Thank you for the reminder that HN is now reddit.
P.S. Nobody's mind was ever changed by a sentence that begins 'you're an idiot'.
I'm having dinner in a nice quiet restaurant, but there's a table of noisy aggressive jerks at a table nearby, who happen to be restaurant staff and their friends, who're causing existing customers to leave and driving away potential customers.
?