Modern Solution would have claimed that the password wouldn‘t have allowed access to important data.
So be it. Publicly disclose the vulnerability and stop doing business with them.
He didn’t do business with them, his customer did.
And publicly disclose that the publicly available software contains the password in plain text could have been construed as aiding a criminal offense.
He was ordered by his customer to look into logging problems.
He found the password in plain text, looked into a database he thought contains only data of his customer and found it‘s data of other customers too.