I think this is an example of Wanstrath kow-towing to a small, outspoken subset of GitHub's employees to avoid bad PR. This has happened before. At some point a group of GitHub employees were offended by a rug that said something to the effect of "United Meritocracy of GitHub." This rug strikes me as being not at all divisive - not even subtextually, not even under an extremely charitable reading of the argument. I'm very familiar with knee-jerk reactions of this kind - I went to an extremely politically liberal, East Coast university that reacted to every conceivable slight with a blizzard of sometimes phony outrage, the kind that makes even people who agree with them (such as myself) completely unsympathetic to their argument.
Interestingly, the "divisiveness" of this rug was apparently turned into an issue by none other than Julie Ann Horvath.
Now I absolutely think that Preston-Werner's wife and Preston-Werner himself acted extremely inappropriataly towards Horvath. But, since it appears that Horvath's other claims do not seem to have a basis, she has yet again taken a situation where she had a legitimate point to make and completely blew it out of proportion.
Wanstrath will learn eventually that he sometimes just has to say no more. There are more important goals for his organization to accomplish than to be accommodating to every single grievance.
Interestingly, the "divisiveness" of this rug was apparently turned into an issue by none other than Julie Ann Horvath.
(http://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocra...)
Now I absolutely think that Preston-Werner's wife and Preston-Werner himself acted extremely inappropriataly towards Horvath. But, since it appears that Horvath's other claims do not seem to have a basis, she has yet again taken a situation where she had a legitimate point to make and completely blew it out of proportion.
Wanstrath will learn eventually that he sometimes just has to say no more. There are more important goals for his organization to accomplish than to be accommodating to every single grievance.