Looks more like "Check that one developer at the company you're using hasn't angered another and decided that the most professional way to deal with this problem is to wax-childlike in your publicly available code" to me...

Whatever jimbob did wrong pales in comparison to that, IMHO.

Jimbob needs a lesson in the way he is expected to decide upon specifications before coding; Whoever wrote that in client's code needs to take a bruised arse down to the back of the queue at the local unemployment office.