Someone who's been 27 years at IBM[1] sending threats to an Open Source dev over email?

It's definitely relevant.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/roncraignc

Just as calling the maintainer's offer extortion is not correct, I think it's also to call the email a threat is not correct. It's at worst entitled and slightly aggressive in the part that we saw.

It's pretty shocking that someone in the industry so long thinks that OSS maintainers owe him anything though, or that he didn't think to simply fork his own version - he must know this is an option. He's probably read the MIT license at some point in his career - has he never stopped to think about what to provide something 'as-is' means? His position suggests that he has the resources available to do a lot of things that were far less embarrassing than asking someone who owes him nothing to make his job easier.

I don't think the person was important but the employer might. It seems to be IBM which is not surprising I guess, although I'd hoped that RedHat would influence how they work with open source somehow.

> although I'd hoped that RedHat would influence how they work with open source somehow.

From all the RedHat news lately it seems to be the other way around. Not unexpected as that's usually how acquisitions go.

I don't think the person matters that much, but it's useful to see the context around the comment

Especially the fact that the issue is already resolved and "waiting" for release.

IMHO, asking for the next release date is ok. He even added sorta justification as to "why" he asked it.

Proposing consultancy services is also ok, just like answering "we don't have a release date" would also be ok.

But the email... Can't choose between this guy thinks he is "The Guy Working At IBM", or he sucks at communicating.

Their IBM email address is.