Misdirected, not over the top, it's very appropriate especially when it was a sponsored project and they were getting called out as if Ben was their employee and they were cosigning whatever Ben's views were.
Regardless how you feel on gendered pronouns, if you're writing documentation regarding all users it seems like a no brainier to actually involve all users in the language, something which Bryan puts great significance into. Bryan's talks[0] usually involve tone and messaging (as well as being triggered and raged) as key points.
But back to the drama issue. The problem about this whole thing isn't about the pronouns really, it was the actions that Ben took even after it was explained and the hard stance Joyent felt it needed to take on the issue in the aftermath.
Ben, if we're giving him the benefit of the doubt (because he isn't a native English speaker) to word something 'wrong', is a simple fix, who cares.
- The real part of this whole mess was because he tried reversing a commit that was made by the project lead after it was worded to include more users. Ben was the main agitator in this almost 6 year old mess regardless of his amount of contributions.
[0] https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc
