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.
You also wouldn't try to avoid a lawsuit if you believed (hypothetically) it was impossible to avoid a lawsuit.
You're assuming they even consulted the lawyers...
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.
>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.
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.
