I am not sure I understand, or at least I disagree here. Many people (at Mozilla, and outside) were highly offended by Mitchell's brief obituary of a long-time employee, for reasons that are apparent to most on a simple reading. As a follow-up, I picked the worst phrase in the obituary as an example, but there are obviously more. But the entire point of the criticism are those, to many, highly offensive sections, not the anodyne remainder of the obituary.

I only skimmed the article but it seemed to me that you were cherry-picking a phrase that only appeared at the end and was not the main thrust of the piece.

HN has another guideline for this sort of situation: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, I respectfully disagree, both that it was a cherry picked part of the In Memoriam, (see the below, which I believe is similar, and 20%+ of the piece), and that it was not incredibly notable for such statements to be made in the specific context of a memoriam of a long term (originally as a volunteer) employee who died in such a terrible and anguished way leaving behind a widow and children.

When there is ambiguity, I assume the best. I don't believe that applies to the below. I encourage you to read this reaction (in my original post), which articulates my feelings far better than I could.

https://lwn.net/Articles/762345/

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Eventually Gerv felt called to live his faith by publicly judging others in politely stated but damning terms. His contributions to expanding the Mozilla community would eventually become shadowed by behaviors that made it more difficult for people to participate.

...

Gerv’s default approach was to see things in binary terms — yes or no, black or white, on or off, one or zero. Over the years I worked with him to moderate this trait so that he could better appreciate nuance and the many “gray” areas on complex topics. Gerv challenged me, infuriated me, impressed me, enraged me, surprised me. He developed a greater ability to work with ambiguity, which impressed me.

Gerv’s faith did not have ambiguity at least none that I ever saw. Gerv was crisp. He had very precise views about marriage, sex, gender and related topics. He was adamant that his interpretation was correct, and that his interpretation should be encoded into law. These views made their way into the Mozilla environment. They have been traumatic and damaging, both to individuals and to Mozilla overall.

...

To memorialize Gerv’s passing, it is fitting that we remember all of Gerv — the full person, good and bad, the damage and trauma he caused, as well as his many positive contributions. Any other view is sentimental. We should be clear-eyed, acknowledge the problems, and appreciate the positive contributions.

Just reading it now (from another post that linked it so not biased by your comment) it was quite touching. A more than charitable attempt I'd wager.

I ran Dr. Daniel Soper's sentiment analyzer over the entire text, which yielded -64 on a scale of -100 to 100, where -100 is as negative as possible.

The sentence was selected from the concluding paragraph that's doing its usual job of summarizing a viewpoint.

The interesting thing about this article, after all, is that it starts out sounding like a memorial and ends as an indictment of a person's character.

With all due respect, I don't think that this is a proper application of that rule. Sometimes, a single line changes the entire substance of a piece, and I believe that this is one of those times. I think that to trash talk someone while ostensibly writing a eulogy for them is grossly inappropriate and deserves criticism, even if it is a small part of the piece by volume.

It isn't just one statement in the article. It's basically the tone of the entire article. Examples:

"Eventually Gerv felt called to live his faith by publicly judging others in politely stated but damning terms. His contributions to expanding the Mozilla community would eventually become shadowed by behaviors that made it more difficult for people to participate."

"Gerv’s default approach was to see things in binary terms — yes or no, black or white, on or off, one or zero."

"Gerv’s faith did not have ambiguity at least none that I ever saw. Gerv was crisp. He had very precise views about marriage, sex, gender and related topics. He was adamant that his interpretation was correct, and that his interpretation should be encoded into law. These views made their way into the Mozilla environment. They have been traumatic and damaging, both to individuals and to Mozilla overall."

"To memorialize Gerv’s passing, it is fitting that we remember all of Gerv — the full person, good and bad, the damage and trauma he caused, as well as his many positive contributions. Any other view is sentimental. We should be clear-eyed, acknowledge the problems, and appreciate the positive contributions."