Neil McGovern, Molly de Blanc: were they sacked from GNOME?
The long delay before GNOME announced their search for a replacement suggests they may have had somebody else in mind. This would imply McGovern was pushed out and then the replacement candidate subsequently disappeared leaving GNOME empty handed.
The two month gap between McGovern leaving GNOME and starting at Ruby Central and his attempts to set up a consultancy web site, Tenterfell.com also suggest he didn't know exactly where he was going next.
The GNOME vacancy is still open. They are openly offering a salary of $150k and one interpretation of this figure is that salaries are rising and this simply isn't enough money to get a developer who is willing to suffer the politics of an open source organization while still keeping abreast of the technical work.
Both Neil McGovern and Molly de Blanc had been very active in discrediting Dr Richard Stallman. Github activity suggests they were doing that during GNOME working hours.
Moreover, McGovern presided over the decision to hire de Blanc. It looks like de Blanc had been romantically involved with McGovern's Debian/DebConf world. Independent members of the GNOME community were always uncomfortable with the perception that McGovern hired somebody's girlfriend. McGovern gave de Blanc a big title, Strategic Initiatives Manager but there is no sign of what she actually did.