I've seen the "coup" framing a lot I just don't see how that's justified. They're the board of directors! Hiring and firing the CEO is core to the job (as is maintaining mission alignment, in the nonprofit world).
It isn't justified, it's just misleading propaganda. Unfortunately through repetition and the enthusiasms of various fandoms, it's gotten lodged in the public mind.
It's not unusual to exclude people with conflicts from a decision. That's a typical part of a corporate conflict of interest policy, and for a charity nonprofit board (as the OpenAI board is) it's even more critical, since failute to do so risks the tax-exempt status.
> "We were very careful, very deliberate about who we told, which was essentially almost no one in advance, other than obviously our legal team and so that's kind of what took us to to November 17."
If that doesn't sound like a secret coup, I don't know what does. Like, yes, it is their job to hire and fire the CEO so it's not really a coup, but when you do your "job" in secret instead of in the open that's the vibe you give off.
I’d be curious if you believe differently how you feel boards usually advertise such an action?
For example, a lot of the pressure that caused them to reverse course came from Microsoft. Maybe if the board had discussed such a big decision without OpenAI's biggest investor, Microsoft would've been on board with the firing.
Like, is your argument really "you don't know how boards work" when this is a fantastic example of a board completely failing at the basics of the job?
People lie and cover things up all the time from oversight bodies like boards. The board isn’t some god like entity that either knows all or is incompetent. They’re a collection of humans operating off the information given to them. Once they realize the information is erroneous or incomplete it’s often their duty to replace that leadership. And if they believe further they can’t trust the principals involved these things are often done in secret.
Finally the for profit nature of the subsidiary is entirely irrelevant. The board is a non profit board which has an entirely different responsibility set and accountability than a for profit board, and the subsidiary being for profit doesn’t change the nature of their duty in the least - in fact to preserve their non profit status they have to be -extra- careful with how they treat business related to the for profit subsidiary to ensure a conflict of interest doesn’t invert the relationship between for profit and non profit missions. Informing outside investors of non profit board governance decisions likely inverts that relationship and jeopardizes the non profits charter.
Is a Board firing the CEO typically conducted differently?