He seems to be a good coder with poor judgment. But I think it would be wiser to manage him better than to fire him so long as he recognizes what he did was wrong. I'm a bit of a softie for the clueless, brilliant coders, though.
My bet is that he was reprimanded for this and then didn't back down, hes even in the comments here now arguing about it
He doesn't recognize it. He claims in the post he was fired because certain leaders were afraid of being disrupted.