It's always useful to try to think through why things happen. In this case, I cannot believe that Sean could be sacked without the personal approval of Klein. Anyone lower down the food chain would be inviting disaster to sack someone who may well be the second or third biggest money-spinner not just for iStock but for the whole Getty empire.

So what will Klein have taken into consideration? Obviously Sean has been pesky, highlighted the Google deal needlessly (and therefore is a loose cannon, and "not a team player"),  encouraged damaging behaviour against the company by releasing the deactivation script, takes it on himself to criticise senior management decisions and acts as a lightning rod for those malcontents. His record shows that he has no intention of amending his behaviour, in fact the Greasemonkey script shows he is getting ever more out of control. Sacking their leader would be the biggest signal iStock could give to other troublemakers that bad behaviour will no longer be tolerated. So he should go.

But what will the cost to the company be? He brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but that could just be redistributed among other submitters. His portfolio had a considerable following, so if he goes some major clients might transfer their accounts to wherever he goes next. He's in touch with the Stocksy operation, so getting rid of him will dump one of iStock's biggest assets straight into Bruce Livingstone's lap, making that danger far worse than it is already. Or he might go to SS and the others, who are stripping away iStock clients already, causing additional erosion of the bottom line. Once he's gone, he'll be able to snipe from outside and there's nothing that can be done about it, but since iStock's managers have completely failed to keep him in line, that probably doesn't matter much. Getting rid of such a major industry figure cannot pass without comment in the trade press, which could be damaging (memo to self, book major advertising campaign in trade magazines and tell them we don't want a big fuss over this) and it might spill over into the newspaper business pages, which would be a nuisance. The internet will just be a mess, so all in all the company's image will take another hit.

Cost of sacking Locke? Probably several million dollars a year in lost sales, bad publicity and transfer of business to rivals. Cost of keeping him? Continued meddling in the company's business, attacks on our policies and general troublemaking.

He can go, it's worth a few million dollars or even a few tens of millions  to get rid of him and give ourselves the freedom to do deals without being embarrassed in front of important partners. (Sheesh! The way that guy from Google spoke to me last week!) There are a lot more deals we can do that we don't need him to be highlighting and criticising.
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That's how I see the thought processes working, anyway