[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-ex-ethereum-foundation-lead-sues-over-firing-and-sword-pledge":10,"sections":38},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":24,"tags":25,"sources":30,"feedback":37,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":37,"total_tokens":37},12671,"ex-ethereum-foundation-lead-sues-over-firing-and-sword-pledge","Ex-Ethereum Foundation Lead Sues Over Firing and Sword Pledge","A fired team lead alleges disability discrimination and retaliation after declining to sign a mandate that included a ritual suicide oath.","A former Ethereum Foundation employee is suing the nonprofit, alleging disability discrimination, retaliation, unfair employment practices and interference with her federal medical leave rights. The case, Fulton v. Ethereum Asia Pacific Limited et al., turns on how the foundation handled a 38-page internal document that included a pledge to die by the sword.\n\nKayleen Fulton, a Protocol Support lead earning $195,000 a year, seeks unspecified damages. The document in question, called the Ethereum Foundation Mandate, laid out a vision for the next 1,000 years and went to roughly 250 employees in the first quarter. Page 11 carried the \"Source Seppuku License.\" It asked anyone working on the software to keep the code and documents free and public, and to \"take his or her own life with a sword upon failure to uphold any of the pledges in this license.\" A cartoon cat illustrated it.\n\nEmployees had to pick one of two boxes: commit to the mandate, or request a settlement payment and leave. About 80 people voted against the pledge when it circulated as a draft in late February. It survived into the March final version, moved from the body text into the illustration. The foundation has since called it part of the mandate's artwork, and founder Vitalik Buterin said it was not meant literally.\n\nFulton helped lead a letter signed by 53 people that endorsed the document's direction but declined to tick either box or resign. She and one co-organizer were fired. Buterin reportedly said you should not \"reward making a stink with outcomes.\" Fulton had disclosed an ovarian cancer diagnosis on March 24, about two weeks before her firing. By September, eight senior employees had left, and most of the 53 signers had resigned or been terminated.\n\nThe oath is the memorable part, but it is probably not the legal core. Whether it was a joke is a question of tone. Whether firing two organizers, one recently diagnosed with cancer, was retaliation is a question of timing and documents. Open-source licensing has a history of in-jokes, such as the JSON license's demand that software be used for good, not evil, and those clauses tend to cause trouble for lawyers rather than for the authors. 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