What bothers me is that they couldn't give him a reason why he was fired out of respect, but had no problem doing so when it was out of spite.
Firing someone, that is giving up cash to not sign your agreement, isn't "going our separate ways". And standards which doesn't apply when it matters aren't very good standards.
"with regards to principles like Net Neutrality your idea that the tech industry doesn't need better political links to the US government is not well-grounded."
I said no such thing. Seems like you're the confused one now.
Your "argument" wasn't that good to begin with, since you don't say why political links to the US government would be a good thing nor why she in particular would be a good choice for making/maintaining those links.
"The haters would find something else to whine about"
Because people who don't agree with you are "haters that whine"? It's not exactly hard to find out what they want and that it's not primarily about the buses.
There's also plenty of reasons why the buses aren't good for people in the tech industry. Especially for entrepreneurs that want to compete with these companies.
> Since grellas' post was an argument about question #1, I hope people are able to recognize that and tailor their responses to the argument he is actually making, in the spirit of "colleagues trying to reason out the truth together".
I think grellas comment was tactless. He used his karma to publish a largely meta argument, ignoring the debate as well as the link and not responding to anyone else afterwards. This isn't "colleagues trying to reason out the truth together" to me. It's also indistinguishable from the type of comment you would post if you wanted to derail the more specific discussion. Often because your viewpoint lacks good arguments.
"with as much fairness and clarity as we can possibly muster"
When it comes to exercising authority less is more. If you've ever been "forced" to smile at lame jokes from bouncers when going in to a club you probably know what I mean. Your comments reads like passive aggressive lectures rather than "fair and clear" moderation.
With YC companies not solving hard problems in computing I don't see them suddenly solving hard problems in other fields. And with "hard problems" I don't (only) mean CS, I mean problems with the state of computing like security, robustness, cross-platforms tools etc. that could be huge enablers for other fields.
The only thing that really matters for YC is if the company can be acquired. With Google just buying a bunch of robotics companies and the belief in "geek exceptionalism" as high as ever I've seen worse bets.
Except that it doesn't seem to be original work. So how are you going to maintain that your derivative work was fair use, which relies on being non-commercial, while suing someone for damages? Especially when the one who "stole" your work seems to have a better case for fair use.
Firing someone, that is giving up cash to not sign your agreement, isn't "going our separate ways". And standards which doesn't apply when it matters aren't very good standards.
All management no leadership it seems.