> The idea wasn't to be _insulting_
Sure, I didn't really interpret it as you attempting to be insulting, more that you were accidentally insulting through your explanation of what you found.
> but rather to accurately and vividly describe the state of the code, as a motivating factor for the rewrite
Sure, but is any of that really needed beyond "there were numerous security problems we had to address"? When talking about shipping crypto, I think most involved would agree not shipping it is better than shipping something possibly exploitable.
I think the core of what I was trying to express is that words should be crafted with care when expected to be read in a public forum like this, just like any code expected to be used by many should be crafted with care. For the same reason it's useful to remove quadratic algorithms from places where the input is somewhat not entirely vetted, it's useful to take care with words to reduce the chance of misinterpretation.
That doesn't mean scour your statements for the smallest possible misinterpretation, but there's a lot of room to improve things like "I imagined strange Internet voices jeering, “this is what gives C a bad name!”" while still expressing your point constructively. The low hanging fruit is easy to pick, so you might as well pick it.
To be clear, I feel for you with regards to this situation. Nobody really expects weird accusations like you got from simple emails, and that's on Netgate, but a less extreme response that also publicly notes the soured relationship would also be a negative outcome from this in my opinion, if one of lower magnitude.