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Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by matt4077 on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:34AM (#14927025)
> a founder's ex-spouse (who had no direct participation in the startup)

Since both you and another comment so quickly zero in on the divorce aspect in this story, it's worth pointing out that Barbara Mikkelson was, in fact, a proper co-founder when snopes.com started, and worked alongside her husband for 20 years.

This situation is no different than any other founder leaving the company and selling his stakes. HN will have to find another way to blame this on women.

And, yes, there are mechanisms to prevent such problems. First among them would be the right-of-last-refusal: Before you sell, you have to offer the stock to the other co-founder(s), at the exact same terms you're offered. But that's not automatic, and has to be established early on.

Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by matthewmacleod on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:57AM (#14927112)
This situation is no different than any other founder leaving the company and selling his stakes. HN will have to find another way to blame this on women

I think you’re letting your own bias leak here where you implicitly assume all founders are male and their spouses female :)

That’s a glib way for me to make the point, but it does feel like you are jumping to conclusions. I would argue that divorce-related acrimony between founders is still at least somewhat interesting, in the sense that it’s a valid question whether or not there are standard ways to avoid problems in such complex and unpleasant situations as divorce. No matter the gender of the people involved!

Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by ClassyJacket on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:49AM (#14927076)
The comment you are replying to literally did not mention women or sex or gender at all. You brought that into it.

It seems like you're the one assuming it'd be a given that the woman didn't contribute. Nobody else said anything about them.

Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by kyberias on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:53AM (#14927096)
But OP wrote: "ex-spouse (who had no direct participation in the startup)" => woman didn't contribute. Even though she did.
Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by matthewmacleod on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:01AM (#14927130)
My interpretation of that was the more charitable “hey, this made me think about divorce generally”. I can see how it could be interpreted otherwise though.
Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by ClassyJacket on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:14AM (#14927177)
That's still you saying that an ex spouse that didn't contribute can only possibly be a woman.
Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by tangus on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:25AM (#14927211)
Come on. The spouse in this case is a woman. Ok, OP already said s/he wasn't referring to this case, it "just made him/her think about divorce generally". Let's leave it already.
Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by ubernostrum on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:50AM (#14927273)
The comment saw a story in which the woman did contribute, and rather than discuss that jumped to a hypothetical in which a "spouse" did not contribute.

It is valid to ask if this shift from talking about the actual story to talking about invented hypotheticals, and hinting at the danger a spouse might pose to one's company, would have been as quick or as easy or as likely had the spouse in question been male.

And the reason that people always "bring gender into it" or in other cases always "bring race into it" is simple: although to you it may seem that these factors are completely unrelated, to other people the whole experience of their lives is of gender/race being forced on them as a factor. The lack of that experience on the part of a minority of the population (white men, mostly) is not equivalent to gender/race not already being "brought into it", but rather an indicator of the ways in which biases and double standards, once deeply-enough embedded into a society, cease to be seen as such and instead are assumed to just be the default neutral state of affairs.

Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by notzorbo3 on Friday August 04, 2017 @05:04AM (#14927330)
> The comment saw a story in which the woman did contribute, and rather than discuss that

Nobody is under any obligation to discuss that aspect of the story. It's not even what the story was about.

> shift from talking about the actual story to talking about invented hypotheticals

You're not the Discussion Police nor are you the arbiter of the actual topic of the story.

This is starting to border on thought crime, and I think it's incredibly dangerous.

Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by makomk on Friday August 04, 2017 @05:38AM (#14927437)
Incidentally, David Mikkelson apparently did have such a right but simply didn't want to or couldn't afford to buy his ex-wife's share at the price it went for. Also, leaving this top comment unchallenged would play into his narrative that he's the sole founder of Snopes, a claim he used in the recent fundraiser which raised two thirds of a million dollars. (I'm still astounded that more Snopes readers didn't spot this, but I guess since Snopes confirmed it....)
Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by Digit-Al on Friday August 04, 2017 @03:51AM (#14927089)
Absolutely. Barbara's name comes up over and over again as the author of articles on Snopes.
Re:Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over financ... by briandear on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:37AM (#14927247)
Did anyone actually mention women? Calm down please. You will need to find another way to promote your sexism meme.