Right. Reading the entire conversation shows the parent messaging is FUD.

I've just read it myself and was very impressed by Richard Hipp's calm, courteous and honest demeanour. I would recommend this to anyone as a paragon of how to respond to a difficult situation.

It's been a few years but my one and only interaction with Zed via an email exchange showed me he was quite unstable and prone to outbursts. Never meet your heroes, they say.

I had exactly one interaction with him, too, whereby he shared with me a very long list of companies that he knew of which were hiring at the time, this would've been around 2012 or so. I got quite a few interviews as a result, and quite a few offers, FWIW, though I ended up taking a job with a company that wasn't on this list.

I understand both that he is and why he is such a polarizing figure. Just wanted to put my positive anecdote on the pile, since they seem to be a less common when he comes up in online comments.

I believe it. Some people exhibit pretty extreme behavior. It sounds like that was extremely nice of him :)