Comment by htrp

It's a true power struggle. As a software engineer I have actually fallen into the trap of thinking that because of the law or a contract something would happen. It is a softer power than I expected.

The board wants to make money, that's why they hold shares and positions. If Mullenweg has the power to destroy value, that will be powerful leverage over them. If his employees side with him, if he holds the accounts, they'll have to negotiate carefully.

Of course, you would need a lawyer to determine when this crosses from a civil dispute to a criminal dispute because at some point him using the keys when he's not authorized could be a crime and if they can get the cops involved that certainly changes the dynamic.

Reminds me of that story of the CEO of ARM China was fired but refused to return the chop which meant he was still in power.

Eventually someone is 'root'

Up until recently (and my intervention) my work had multiple aws accounts tied to individual people, where they had inherited a personal account into the billing org.

There are also, in business use, some domains where an executive personally owns the registration but has delegated DNS into the company. There is no written agreement.

A former employer completely lost access to a couple of social media accounts (twitter/$company, etc) after laying off enough people.

Possession is 9/10ths of the law.

That reminds me of the San Fco "network administrator" who would not provide the passwords to anyone in city gov't and brought things down to a standstill. Eventually he capitulated and provided the governor the passwords to their networks. Some people!

If he really did this, he's going to prison, but not for a few years. Defrauding shareholders is one of the worst things you can do, because it attacks the system directly.