There’s really no nice way to tell someone to fuck off from the biggest thing. Ever.
1) a confirmation of the dates of employment
2) a confirmation of the role/title during employment
3) whether or not they would rehire that person
... and that's it. The last one is a legally-sound way of saying that their time at the company left something to be desired, up to and including the point of them being terminated. It doesn't give them exposure under defamation because it's completely true, as the company is fully in-charge of that decision and can thus set the reality surrounding it.
That's for a regular employee who is having their information confirmed by some hiring manager in a phone or email conversation. This is a press release for a company connected to several very high-profile corporations in a very well-connected business community. Arguably it's the biggest tech exec news of the year. If there's ulterior or additional motive as you suggest, there's a possibility Sam goes and hires the biggest son-of-a-bitch attorney in California to convince a jury that the ulterior or additional motive was _the only_ motive, and that calling Sam a liar in a press release was defamation. As a result, OpenAI/the foundation, would probably be paying him _at least_ several million dollars (probably a lot more) for making him hard to hire on at other companies.
Either he simply lied to the board and that's it, or OpenAI's counsel didn't do their job and put their foot down over the language used in the press release.
Even with very public cases of company leaders who did horrible things (much worse than lying), the companies that fired them said nothing officially. The person just "resigned". There's just no reason open up even the faintest possibility of an expensive lawsuit, even if they believe they can win.
So yeah, someone definitely told the lawyers to go fuck themselves when they decided to go with this inflammatory language.
I wouldn't put money on the last one, though.
Of course the press release is under scrutiny, we are all wondering What Really Happened. But careless statements create significant legal (and thus financial) risk for a big corporate entity, and board members have fiduciary responsibilities, which is why 99.99% of corporate communications are bland in tone, whatever human drama may be taking place in conference rooms.
You also wouldn't try to avoid a lawsuit if you believed (hypothetically) it was impossible to avoid a lawsuit.
>I'm not patronizing you
(A)ssuming (G)ood (F)aith, referring to someone online by their name, even in an edge case where their username is their name, is considered patronizing as it is difficult to convey a tone via text medium that isn't perceived as a mockery/veiled threat.
This may be a US-internet thing; analogous to getting within striking distance with a raised voice can be a capital offense in the US, juxtaposed to being completely normal in some parts of the Middle East.
How is the language “we are going our separate ways” compared with “Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI” going to have a material difference in the outcome of the action of him getting fired?
How do the complainants show a judge and jury that they were materially harmed by the choice of language above?
OpenAI's board's press release could very easily be construed as "Sam Altman is not trustworthy as a CEO", which could lead to his reputation being sullied among other possible employers. He could argue that the board defamed his reputation and kept him from what was otherwise a very promising career in an unfathomably lucrative field.
This has to be a joke, right?
Really they should have just said something to the effect of, "The board has voted to end Sam Altman's tenure as CEO at OpenAI. We wish him the best in his future endeavors."
You're assuming they even consulted the lawyers...
Unless OpenAI can prove in a court of law that what they said was true, they're on the hook for that amount in compensation, perhaps plus punitive damages and legal costs.
I recognize that the above para sort of sounds like I think I have some authority to mediate between them, which is not true and not what I think. I'm just replying to this side conversation about how to be polite in public, just giving my take.
The broad pattern here is that there are norms around how and when you use someone's name when addressing them, and when you deviate from those norms, it signals that something is weird, and then the reader has to guess what is the second most likely meaning of the rest of the sentence, because the weird name use means that the most likely meaning is not appropriate.
When you're a public person, the bar for winning a defamation case is very high.
The commenter above doesn't mean that any reference to someone else by name ("Sam Altman was fired") is patronizing.
1) The comments are meant to be read by all, not just the author. If you want to email the author directly and start the message with a greeting containing their name ("hi jrockway!"), or even just their name, that's pretty normal.
2) You don't actually know the person's first name. In this case, it's pretty obvious, since the user in question goes by what looks like <firstname><lastname>. But who knows if that's actually their name. Plenty of people name their accounts after fictional people. It would be weird to everyone if your HN comment to darthvader was "Darth, I don't think you understand how corporate law departments work." Darth is not reading the comment. (OK, actually I would find that hilarious to read.)
3) Starting a sentence with someone's name and a long pause (which the written comma heavily implies) sounds like a parent scolding a child. You rarely see this form outside of a lecture, and the original comment in question is a lecture. You add the person's name to the beginning of the comment to be extra patronizing. I know that's what was going on and the person who was being replied to knows that's what was going on. The person who used that language denies that they were trying to be patronizing, but frankly, I don't believe it. Maybe they didn't mean to consciously do it, but they typed the extra word at the beginning of the sentence for some reason. What was that reason? If to soften the lecture, why not soften it even more by simply not clicking reply? It just doesn't add up.
4) It's Simply Not Done. Open any random HN discussion, and 99.99% of the time, nobody is starting replies with someone's name and a comma. It's not just HN; the same convention applies on Reddit. When you use style that deviates from the norm, you're sending a message, and it's going to have a jarring effect on the reader. Doubly jarring if you're the person they're naming.
TL;DR: Don't start your replies with the name of the person you're replying to. If you're talking with someone in person, sure, throw their name in there. That's totally normal. In writing? Less normal.
Also, as long as you are a public person, defamation has a very high bar in the USA. It is not enough to for the statement to be false, you have to actually prove that the person you're accusing of defamation knew it was false and intended it to hurt you.
Note that this is different from an accusation of perjury. They did not accuse Sam Altman of performing illegal acts. If they had, things would have been very different. As it stands, they simply said that he hasn't been truthful to them, which it would be very hard to prove is false.
Surely, at some level, you can be sued for making unfounded remarks. But then IANAL so, meh.
No, in the UK it's unambiguously the other way round. The complainant simply has to persuade the court that the statement seriously harmed or is likely to seriously harm their reputation. Truth is a defence but for that defence to prevail the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove that it was true (or to mount an "honest opinion" defence on the basis that both the statement would reasonably be understood as one of opinion rather than fact and that they did honestly hold that opinion)