To be fair if the FTP was only there to transport data that was already public, and the integrity of the data was ensured by other means than the the transport,

To be fair if the FTP was only there to transport data that was already public, and the integrity of the data was ensured by other means than the the transport, the password would perhaps not be seen as very important. Still even with that in mind one should perhaps never assume that such things are less important.