That's a pretty sorry excuse for an apology, in my opinion.
First, he focuses heavily on how much stress the backlash has caused him. Then he tries to paint it as a "misunderstanding" on behalf of the users. None of this strikes me as the behavior of someone taking full responsibility for their actions.
Further, I keep seeing people trying to justify his actions with the pathetic excuse that he was probably just doing as told by his employer. Sorry folks, that's not how being an adult works. There's a reason virtually every formal code of ethics stresses personal responsibility. Take, for instance, 8-b from https://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics
Engineers shall not use association with a nonengineer, a corporation, or partnership as a "cloak" for unethical acts.
Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest. In particular, software engineers shall, as appropriate:
1.01. Accept full responsibility for their own work.
Just because we're in the comparatively-"lower stakes" profession of web development, that doesn't mean we can use the sorry-ass excuse of "my boss told me to do it." Unless they held a gun to his head, he had a choice, and his choice should stick with his reputation for better or worse. Now his name is going to be attached this dumpster fire of a PR mess because he didn't have the will or integrity to say no, and smart people within the community will have a very good reason to no longer trust his judgement, much less his future contributions.
First, he focuses heavily on how much stress the backlash has caused him. Then he tries to paint it as a "misunderstanding" on behalf of the users. None of this strikes me as the behavior of someone taking full responsibility for their actions.
Further, I keep seeing people trying to justify his actions with the pathetic excuse that he was probably just doing as told by his employer. Sorry folks, that's not how being an adult works. There's a reason virtually every formal code of ethics stresses personal responsibility. Take, for instance, 8-b from https://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics
Or the very first point from http://www.acm.org/about/se-code
Just because we're in the comparatively-"lower stakes" profession of web development, that doesn't mean we can use the sorry-ass excuse of "my boss told me to do it." Unless they held a gun to his head, he had a choice, and his choice should stick with his reputation for better or worse. Now his name is going to be attached this dumpster fire of a PR mess because he didn't have the will or integrity to say no, and smart people within the community will have a very good reason to no longer trust his judgement, much less his future contributions.