Your use of the word "our" is too liberally applied, he was no hero of mine. I believe history will have a very different view of Altman, "Open"AI, and AI in general.
idk, it seems a lot smarter to me to keep one's mouth shut or express a general level of surprise without making a public endorsement until facts become clearer.
Because getting fired like this (both so abruptly, and with the unusually frank statement from OpenAI) suggests some sort of ethical issue. There's plenty of amicable divorces in the business world where teams just diverge on vision, goals, or methods, but they're the sort of thing people generally see coming. This HN post has collected thousands of votes precisely because it's such an unusual and surprising development, so it seems to me there's at least a 50% probability that it is something bad.
I don't expect Eric Schmidt to have general foresight about Sam Altman, but as a former CEO himself he must understand its not a decision a board would make lightly.