It's hardly just their wishes. Plenty of us wish that any discussion about Node wouldn't immediately get dragged down into petty drama. Maybe we could, y'know, talk about the language and ecosystem for a change.
Hyperbole much?
"...to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent..."
That was (imo) the worst part of the blog post. You're comparing death threats from obsessed fans of a platform known for being filled with users of a younger age, to angry backhanded tweets and blog posts from professional software developers.
C'mon now.
Not sure what you mean by "... of a platform known for being filled with users of a younger age." Is this really true, or is it some kind of attempt at an insult?
I mean, it's not like they ought to apologize for the atrocious way they facilitated the virtual lynching of one of their core contributors. Better to just sweep it all under the rug.
[1] http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/12/03/bnoordhuis-departure/
EDIT: For the folks that say it's just "petty drama", I invite you to read another man's account of a very similar experience: http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/6/5075106/adam-orth-xbox-one-...
Internet bullying isn't just some thing that happens to teenagers. It's a stream of tweets, phone calls, texts, hate mail, death threats, and more. I can only speculate about how much of that Ben received, but a fair share of it was very public, and Joyent was a participant in that.
As the face of node.js it was Joyent's responsibility to defuse the situation and protect the people involved. Instead they threw gasoline into the fire, further inciting the mob justice that was already well underway.