It wasn't long ago that comments were shouting that this was the absolute most qualified person to lead Mozilla when others were questioning having a lawyer lead a tech company. Someone with at least a little hands-on experience in building a product really should be something companies look for in leadership.
I mean, sure, Baker's done plenty for Mozilla, but Mozilla has been absolutely lost as to what they're trying to be this past year. It's not a clear cut software company anymore and that's a problem.
> t wasn't long ago that comments were shouting that this was the absolute most qualified person to lead Mozilla when others were questioning having a lawyer lead a tech company.
I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. But he resigned (he wasn't forced out, though it might have come to that, contrary to various strong assertions in this comment thread, both Eich and the board are on the record about that). I can't imagine there isn't anybody to be found who is more qualified than Baker but the window of opportunity for turning this around is closing rapidly. FF usage is the only thing that keeps the whole circus alive, when that goes Mozilla will have officially failed in their mission, no matter what the balance on Baker's personal savings account.
> I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other.
I have a problem with characterizing Brendan Eich as a bigot for donating to a non-fringe political group. IIRC, the proposition campaign he donated to had close to a 50/50 split in support for/against. Eich's ouster crystalized in my mind that Mozilla wa no longer focused on its core mission (the signs were already there - dropped Thunderbird, had an oversized IoT dept). I am speaking as a person who was a vocal Firefox evangelist since the 2.x days
The leader of a large tech company was the government to ensure his gay and lesbian employees can never legally get married, despite straight employees enjoying all the personal/financial benefits of marriage.
I don't care if it had 50/50 support. It's dead wrong. 50 years ago there were places in the US where interracial marriage had 50/50 support or less. Still dead wrong.
There was no forcing. People voluntarily expressed their desire.
* Some people no longer wanted to work at Firefox if he was their lead
* Some people no longer wanted to use Firefox if he was their lead
Now, the organization can easily take any position here. They could say "Yeah, I guess you can't work here, employees who can't work with Brendan Eich. And yes, I guess you have to stop using Firefox, users who can't use product led by Brendan Eich" or they could say "Brendan, looks like you leave or we lose these people" or anywhere in the middle.
This is just people freely expressing their views and advertising how they will act. It is pure liberty and I love it for that.
Because they are supposed to lead those very employees. If you are going to square off over something like this in the workplace then it will - obviously - impact your ability to do your job.
How could he support gay marriage without negatively impacting his ability to lead his devoutly conservative employees?
I’m in favor of equality in marriage and broadly the rights of individuals to live true to themselves and free from discrimination, but if a divisive topic is 50/50, it’s hard to see how supporting one side or the other wouldn’t alienate some portion of your employee base.
Obviously, never taking a stance on any issue is the most middle of the road, career-lengthening tactic to take, but that’s not exactly the world I want to live in either. I don’t have to (and do not) agree 100% with my CEO’s political views; that doesn’t impact his ability to lead nor my ability to execute.
>How could he support gay marriage without negatively impacting his ability to lead his devoutly conservative employees?
There’s no point in making this argument. Mozilla is company headquartered in San Francisco - and AFAIK, has the most “out” LGBTQ employees I can remember of most tech companies.
Just like I wouldn’t be surprised if Mitt Romney got raked over hot coals for not supporting a RBG replacement, I’m also not surprised Eich got kicked out for not supporting gay marriage. It was incredibly deaf on his part.
I think this is a fallacy: either way you're making someone unhappy. It's fundamentally a flawed argument: giving rights to someone it's not taking them away from someone else.
You're not making the "50%" of the people that are conservative unhappy. You are impacting a minority of those, the ones who can't live with the fact that somewhere there is a married same sex couple.
On the other hand you're telling the other 50% that they do not deserve a right. All of them.
So - that "some portion" it's not the same in size.
<rant>And if you ask me, which I admit: you didn't, the portion that believes that they should be able to deny other people a right they benefit from, can pack up an go. The inability of emphasizing with others would make them horrible software designers and developers.</rant>
> On the other hand you're telling the other 50% that they do not deserve a right. All of them.
This sounds compelling, but what happens when you apply it to other issues? What will you say to the "taxation is theft" camp when they demand the right to the fruits of their labor and don't want them to be used to wage unnecessary wars?
Or are you fine with capitalists firing anyone who advocates for taxes to continue to exist?
Are you seriously equating slavery (human right) with voting on definition of marriage (social construct)? Do you think being against brothers marrying their sisters also dead wrong?
> Human rights don't depend on how many people support them.
This is _absolutely_ true! However, the con 50% in this argument argued that "marriage as the union of M persons who X each other" (the pro side doesn't agree on what `M` and `X` should be) isn't a human right, but that "marriage as the union of two persons who are of the kind of persons that can procreate with each other" is. Only one side can be right as to what the basic human right is.
Marriage is a state sponsored contractual arrangement between two natural persons. It has nothing to do with procreation, gender or sexuality in terms of its state sponsored advantages.
Reference to the historical record shows that marriage in feudal times was a merger of families and was not practiced by those without economic power to protect.
My personal belief is that if any number of people wish to form a communal partnership for mutual benefit, they should be free to do so.
The government has chosen one particular arrangement, that of two individuals, and has pre-defined contractual rules regarding the mutual benefits, the protection of assets and of the results of pregnancy (ie children, inheritance etc) of either party to the contract.
It also imposes responsibilities on parties to that contract, in particular their responsibilities for those children.
Other laws, in particular, basic law, says that natural persons are, to quote one popular document, "are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights". That same basic law embodies the encapsulation of additional axioms, one of which is that "all people are equal under the law".
All of the rest of the "marriage debate" is irrelevant to the underlying legal situation.
And there we come down to the root of the issue - you define marriage as "a state-sponsored contractual arrangement between (at the moment) two natural persons". I define marriage as "a union of a man and a woman that establishes a family and which precedes, in time and in causality, the state". As I said, only one of us can be correct.
If law is the application of rightly-ordered reason to the task of achieving the common good (as I hold) then the _nature_ of marriage determines and limits what kinds of benefits, advantages, limits, and restrictions the state may place upon people. If I'm right, then what marriage and family _is_ matters a lot (and where we should focus our discussion). If we only care about marriage as an act of power carried out by those with the most capability for force, then obviously this is all academic and whatever happens is whatever happens and why get hot under the collar about it?
In the workplace, employees have (broadly speaking) a _legal_ right to be free from discrimination on the basis of protected grounds. If your boss (or their boss, or their boss, etc.) makes it clear they don't support that: that's not a political statement, it's workplace discrimination / harassment.
That a stance against marriage equality happens to overlap with political fault lines is _entirely beside the point_.
>If your boss (or their boss, or their boss, etc.) makes it clear they don't support that: that's not a political statement, it's workplace discrimination / harassment.
I am going to speak plainly. I don't think people in the Valley really believe this argument. Political opinion is a protected class in California yet people feel free to create a hostile work environment for Trump supporters. It feels like there a set of right answers and you can say the right answers or shut up.
> I don’t have to (and do not) agree 100% with my CEO’s political views; that doesn’t impact his ability to lead nor my ability to execute.
If it was only views, I might agree with you. However, it wasn't just views. It was action. And it's easy to see how action can impact a CEOs ability to lead a team of people. Furthermore, we know for a fact in this case, it did literally affect his ability to lead and execute. This isn't a debate. It happened.
Simply put, he could not do his job effectively. So he stepped down. Others will say he was fired, but you can only think that if you think Eich lied.
Well, and yet here we are in a thread that is essentially about how Mozilla collectively failed to do their job under Eich's replacement. It may be obvious that a CEO with a political stance that is anathema to some subset of employees will impact productivity negatively, but it is far less obvious that this negative impact would have been worse than the negative impact of the CEO they wound up with (and who it stands to reason was chosen on the criterion of not being close to Eich politically, rather than anything else).
This only makes sense if you start with the assumption that anyone with any conservative views is fundamentally broken as a human being and they need to be 'fixed' before they can be treated equal to the other 'normal' people.
But do you and all your colleagues agree on everything with all your bosses? If so, how do you know?
What if the boss eats meat or prefer cats over dogs, while you (or other employees) do not?
Please don't reply with "are you comparing [X social cause] with eating meat?", because for some (not me), eating meat might be more important than [X social cause].
One could make an equally (actually more) compelling argument that anyone supporting (state-subsidised/recognised) marriage is being very discriminatory towards asexuals, polygamists, people who for any reason are unable to form a monogamous partnership.
George Bernard Shore:
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature.
I'm still a FF evangelist though it is getting harder by the day.
Eich should have realized that his actions as CEO of a highly visible entity would be viewed in a different light than if he were merely just another nobody. Missing that was his crucial mistake, he could have made the donation anonymously, but decided to do it in his own name making it a given that this would be associated with Mozilla. That was stupid.
But as it was he could have simply apologized and hunkered down, I suspect (based on board members' and Eichs' own statements) that it was the pressure from the employees that made him decide to resign.
Whether a proposition has a 50/50 split or not does not matter, if half your country is made up of bigots that doesn't mean that it isn't bigotry, it just means that you have a very large problem.
He wasn't CEO when he made the donations in 2008, of course. Nor was he CEO when the donations came to light in 2012. Everyone at Mozilla knew about them when he was appointed CEO.
> I suspect (based on board members' and Eichs' own statements) that it was the pressure from the employees that made him decide to resign.
I worked on Firefox from 2000 and full time from 2005 to 2016. Your suspicion is completely wrong. All employees I knew, mostly on the engineering side, were happy with his appointment or at least didn't express any wish for him to step down. That includes the gay employees I knew.
The only Mozilla group that I know of who expressed a desire for him to step down were a handful of people in the Mozilla Foundation (who would not have been part of Brendan's org since he was CEO of the Corporation). They went public with it and got a big PR splash, which I think spawned this meme that there was a clamour of Mozilla Corp employees demanding Brendan's resignation. There was not.
You have posted many comments in this thread but apparently you weren't there and you aren't aware of basic relevant facts. Please show some humility.
The basic relevant facts that I'm aware of are those as reported in the various media and written up from the statements of the participants on the matter.
If those are not to be taken as authoritative then I think we may as well shut down HN because there is nothing that can be debated past that point.
I'm sure there are interesting and probably quite relevant details to be had but your word - an anonymous HN contributor to me - does not weigh as heavy as Eich's own statements on the matter.
Maybe it is you that should show some humility? Or maybe you should attach your name to your profile to show that you actually were in the board room at the time that this was decided. If Eich wanted to record a different history then he was entirely free to do so.
I clearly remember his statement of regret at the time, it seemed sincere as far as I could see and I think that he should have been given a fair chance, but I also understand how he may have decided to step down.
There are lots of stories about what happened in that boardroom meeting, all of them more or less plausible, until the participants speak up to contradict it I will stick to basing my views on the official version.
Eich wouldn't say he wouldn't do it again. He said he was doing a great job as CEO after days on the job.[1] He expressed "sorrow at having caused pain" not regret or apology. He said he wanted to be held accountable but not how.[2] I can understand how it was too little too late for some people.
Fair point. I've updated my HN profile. I'm Robert O'Callahan, formerly a Mozilla Distinguished Engineer. I wasn't on the board, but my claims are not about the board.
Pleased to meet you digitally, and thank you for that.
There are some articles which I've linked elsewhere which quoted some Mozilla employees at the time, which seemed pretty strong evidence to me (names, dates). Of course that is a fraction of the workforce there and it could have easily been blown out of proportion but there were at least some employees who thought like that.
Yes, I replied to your comment in which you linked to such an article. That is the "only Mozilla group that I know of" I referred to. It is worth noting (again) that those people were employees of the Foundation, not the Corporation, and so were not employees under Brendan ... a distinction that seems important, but was (misleadingly, I think) elided by press coverage and the comments of the employees themselves.
Thank you for retelling your 1st-person experiences. I had mistakenly assumed parent was at Mozilla since they spoke with authority, without using reported speech.
It's unfortunate that Brendan didn't get as robust a defense from his board as Ms. Rice got from Dropbox's at roughly the same time (and I'm no fan of Condoleeza Rice, the Bush IIs administration in general, or the "War on Terror". I believed then as I do now, that it was a wrong precedent to set)
> Missing that was his crucial mistake, he could have made the donation anonymously, but decided to do it in his own name making it a given that this would be associated with Mozilla. That was stupid.
So I guess this means no Mozilla leader should be making any private political donations at all, because if they do, Mozilla is at risk of losing half of its (US) leaders in red or blue states.
I sure hope the employees still have jobs, and if not, they have vetted their new board & CEOs past donations.
> Whether a proposition has a 50/50 split or not does not matter, if half your country is made up of bigots that doesn't mean that it isn't bigotry, it just means that you have a very large problem.
Do those employees/volunteers feel equally strongly about their "bigoted" user base? Or are they more morally flexible since that directly impacts their incomes?
> So I guess this means no Mozilla leader should be making any private political donations at all, because if they do, Mozilla is at risk of losing half of its (US) leaders in red or blue states.
That's part and parcel the strategy of the left, shifting the Overton Window of what you're allowed to support publicly until anything representing traditional conservative values is safely out of range.
> That's part and parcel the strategy of the left, shifting the Overton Window of what you're allowed to support publicly until anything representing traditional conservative values is safely out of range.
I strongly disagree: political polarization is not limited to the left. The right has used similar polarizarion and smear campaigns for decades in order to turn out single-issue voters: any politicians who is remotely pro-choice becomes anathema, regardless of the rest of their platform. Hillary Clinton was so effectively smeared, in 2016 a lot of voters disliked her, but couldn't articulate why. Since Reagan, the political Overton window in the US is has been sliding rightwards - not left.
Wow. I am surprised to see someone here such misleading and uncharitable claims. What is your definition of mass murder? What evidence do you have that the right has a strategy of it aimed at black people?
Also, I assume you are objecting to restricting abortion which is a very narrow procedure to broaden to making healthcare illegal.
Trying to hold onto racism, misogyny, and homophobia as “traditional conservative values” is the problem here. There are plenty of conservatives that aren’t in that particular boat.
> Trying to hold onto racism, misogyny, and homophobia as “traditional conservative values” is the problem here.
Repeatedly framing opposing views as "racist", "misogynist", "homophobic" is a perfect example of this. Let's not speak up lest we get labeled with one of those.
I'm not aware of anything in this thread that has anything to do with race and yet that's the first word in the triumphant trio of your counters.
> I'm not aware of anything in this thread that has anything to do with race and yet that's the first word in the triumphant trio of your counters.
They tend to go together. I'll be happy to bet that a large fraction of the Eich defenders in this thread are just using him as a proxy because they sympathize with his viewpoints, and that you will find a disproportionally large overlap with the other viewpoints mentioned above.
>They tend to go together. I'll be happy to bet that a large fraction of the Eich defenders in this thread are just using him as a proxy because they sympathize with his viewpoints, and that you will find a disproportionally large overlap with the other viewpoints mentioned above.
That's as may be. However, as someone who is significantly to the left of the Democratic Party on many issues, not least being that no one has the right to tell other consenting adults who and how they should love, I was left feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the firestorm over Eich's financial donations to a particular cause.
I'll expand on this as I don't wish to be misunderstood. I vehemently disagree with the idea that the government should restrict how, and with whom, we create and maintain relationships. That applies to all relationships, whether they be romantic, platonic, familial or business.
Given that Eich's donation to an anti-Prop 8 group goes against that belief, you'd think that I would applaud Eich's humiliation and ouster.
But I don't. While I certainly wouldn't invite Eich into my life or home because he is clearly not on the side of liberty and individual rights, I do not believe he should be judged on those stances in his professional life.
There is a difference between the personal and the professional, although they have been blurred (both incidentally via social media, and deliberately by those who seek to dehumanize those who disagree with them -- and that's not a right/left thing) in recent years.
Eich's performance as CEO of Mozilla should have been viewed by his statements/actions as Mozilla CEO. And unless he took steps to incorporate his personal biases into the management of Mozilla, they were of no relevance to his job as CEO.
And so, no. I completely disagree with Eich's personal homophobia. At the same time, our professional lives should be judged by our professional actions and statements, not our personal and political actions, unless there's overlap between the two.
I have no doubt that there are those who will disagree with the above. And I'm glad you do. In fact, I'd really like to hear your arguments as to why I'm wrong.
Because I believe that we, as humans, need to have our ideas, viewpoints and opinions challenged on occasion. Even more, just because someone disagrees with me, doesn't make them my enemy or a bad person.
IMHO, demonizing/dehumanizing those who disagree with you is not a reasonable response. Engaging in discourse so that the best ideas can rise to the top, ala Mill's Marketplace of Ideas[0] is a much better response.
In that light, please feel free to disagree with me. When you do, I'd only ask that you keep in mind that I'm human. With my own thoughts, ideas, biases and experience. I don't need to have everyone agree with me. Rather, I want others to consider what I have to say, just as I consider their thoughts and ideas.
That's a pretty balanced viewpoint, the only reason I disagree with it is that Mozilla went out of their way to appear as a progressive employer and player in the marketplace, to then hire a CEO as Eich makes light of that commitment. If Mozilla were any other ordinary tech company then I would agree with you. But this would be a bit like the CEO of Greenpeace going on a whale hunt for sport.
>Mozilla went out of their way to appear as a progressive employer and player in the marketplace
A fair point. Although I'd say that if Mozilla was actually being progressive, they would focus on Eich's professional decisions, not his personal ones.
Perhaps I misunderstand the term "progressive," but I see it as moving us forward in the context of our current culture/society and not as punishing anyone who refuses to conform. The former attempts to bring positive change, while the latter seems to be focused on stifling personal expression.
>But this would be a bit like the CEO of Greenpeace going on a whale hunt for sport.
I think that's a poor analogy for several reasons:
1. Mozilla is a software/technology organization, not an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. Eich's personal political views are irrelevant to running a tech organization, while Greenpeace is specifically focused on the species diversity and the environment. Apples and oranges, IMHO;
2. Not only was Eich not CEO when he made such donations, I am unaware of any anti-LGBTQ+ actions by him in any of his working capacities at Mozilla (please correct me if I'm wrong). Or that Eich ever brought his thoughts about same-sex marriage into the office;
I may be way off base here, and have no experience working at Mozilla and don't know Eich at all (although the ideas behind the Brave browser disgust me, and as such, perhaps I should just pile on and demonize him just for that).
It's pretty easy to find quite a few publications from Mozilla about their high standards and commitment to workplace diversity, they go out of their way to advertise this, one anecdote in this thread has an interesting bit from a person interviewing with Mozilla that I have never seen or heard about in any other company. They're a pretty large outlier in this respect compared to other businesses, though I suspect that Google and Apple are pretty similar in general but without the shouting it from the rooftops component.
> So I guess this means no Mozilla leader should be making any private political donations at all, because if they do, Mozilla is at risk of losing half of its (US) leaders in red or blue states.
They can, but they had better think this through. Note that money in politics is a problem to begin with, and that your regular votes are anonymous. If you decide to do so in a public way on a controversial subject then you take a risk.
> I sure hope the employees still have jobs, and if not, they have vetted their new board & CEOs past donations.
Writing this from liberal Europe, the American stance against gay marriage is very puzzling, though even here in the EU there are countries where this sentiment is still alive.
> Do those employees/volunteers feel equally strongly about their "bigoted" user base?
They typically don't know. By advertising it the rules were changed, and that was optional.
> Or are they more morally flexible since that directly impacts their incomes?
How many of the HN folk are in the MIC? How many of them are against anything other than heterosexual relationships? How many of them are racists?
We do not know. We do occasionally get a glimpse when someone deliberately or accidentally outs themselves as such and when they do so in the name of a company that tends to reflect badly on that company. Eich made his own bed and chose to walk rather than to lie in it.
Personally I think the bigger problem with Mozilla/FireFox is the lack of focus and as long as that isn't addressed it does not matter who is in the wheelhouse the only thing that it will affect is the rate at which the ship is going down. The way things are going there won't be another Google payday for Mozilla because there won't be a FireFox userbase left.
He wasn't CEO during the prop. 8 campaign. I don't think we want everyone in tech permanently abstaining from politics just in case there might be a leadership role years later.
It was close enough that it mattered, four years to be precise. If it had been decades ago it likely would have been a different matter.
Dutch proverb: High trees catch a lot of wind.
If you become a high tree, in politics or as a CEO then your past will come under scrutiny, and what is found there may very well have a direct effect on your present day life.
It's "close enough" only because you're trying to save face from your incorrect implication/claim you've repeated several times across different comments in this thread that he was the CEO when he did the donation.
It's also worth pointing out that public opinion has swung decisively and dramatically in that intervening time period--at least 20 percentage points IIRC.
It's close enough because right up until his apology Eich did not indicate in any way shape or form that he had changed his views on this. Only after it all blew up did he come with his apology. Sure, he wasn't CEO at the time he made his donation but when he stepped forward to become CEO he was well aware of his own position regarding this and knew that to effectively lead Mozilla would be impossible given his - apparently strongly held - views. At least, I'm assuming people do not donate to political causes they do not feel strongly about.
> Eich should have realized that his actions as CEO of a highly visible entity would be viewed in a different light than if he were merely just another nobody. Missing that was his crucial mistake, he could have made the donation anonymously, but decided to do it in his own name making it a given that this would be associated with Mozilla. That was stupid.
You do realize that all political donations in the US are not allowed to be anonymous right? This was years before citizens united, the only way to donate was through your own name.
Nothing you’ve said in this entire thread has made any sense, please reconsider demonizing someone you don’t know about issues you don’t understand with arguments that are false.
>Whether a proposition has a 50/50 split or not does not matter, if half your country is made up of bigots that doesn't mean that it isn't bigotry, it just means that you have a very large problem.
Morality (or what is "bigoted") is not a law of nature or an absolute, it's a societal convention (even murder is not an absolute "bad" - the US or Chinese or Saudi society deems capital punishment as immoral for example, whereas mine does not. Same for drug use or sale, and tons of other things, heck, even incest - not a big deal moraly in ancient Egypt, Westeros, and/or some parts of the rural South).
>even incest - not a big deal moraly in ancient Egypt, Westeros, and/or some parts of the rural South).
Actually, the only places in the US where incest (between adults) is legal are New Jersey and Rhode Island.[0] Which isn't exactly the "rural south," no matter what the bad jokes say.
No, it does not matter. If you are on the wrong side of history the size of the company you keep is irrelevant.
The US has no problem with capital punishment last I checked (nor do they have a problem with life imprisonment without a trial), maybe not the best example?
So basically, one shouldn't have wrong opinions, especially if they're publicly visible persons. Or rather, one is allowed to have wrong opinions (in private), but voicing them or goodness forbid, acting according to those, ist verbotten und un-Amerikane.
No, it is fine if you have wrong opinions. But be prepared to get the flak associated with those.
Nobody forced Eich to make a donation, but doing so publicly set him up for a confrontation with a substantial chunk of Mozilla's employees further down the line.
Just like a 'mild case of rape' could trip up a supreme court justice nominee. (Or at least, it should have.)
>No, it is fine if you have wrong opinions. But be prepared to get the flak associated with those.
That's not different than Stalinist Russia, the Inquisition, Nazi Germany, McCarthyism, some conservative backwater, etc.
If having "flak associated" with having wrong opinions is acceptable by your book, then those examples were all about free speech too. Their victims just got some heavy flak for their opinions.
Or is it bad only when it involves an execution? Rest assured than in most cases in those regimes an execution wasn't needed either. Most were just fired, or beaten up, or ostacized, or disallowed to advance etc., so that's ok I guess.
Doesn't even have to be the state to give "the flak". In the case of the Inquisition it was the church. And in other cases it has been an angry mob.
> If Prop8 had won, would it have been on the right side of history?
Prop 8 did win. I don't know if it is still on the books; it was rendered inoperative due to a later Supreme Court decision based, so far as one can tell, on neither the text nor the intent of the Constitution. In other words, whether one agrees with the decision or not, it was unconstitutional.
Right, fair point, but I mean, the "wrong side of history" narrative tends to presume that either in the long run, whatever side is right will win, or that whichever side wins will be the right one. I think that's a very dangerous assumption either way that should really not be made into the core of a moral argument. Argue from universal principles, argue from universal emotions, argue from social health, argue from self-interest. But don't argue from your eventual presumed victory as if that's a reason in itself.
>No, it does not matter. If you are on the wrong side of history the size of the company you keep is irrelevant.
Sorry, that sounds like something Nazis or the Maoists in the "Cultural Revolution" would say. "Wrong side of history" is historical determinism and teleologism.
Who is on "the wrong side of history" determined by consensus itself. And it can be as fickle and temporary as anything.
> But as it was he could have simply apologized and hunkered down
Apologize for what? Exercising his right to political speech? His views represented the views of 52% of the Californian voters, i.e. the majority of voters. He's supposed to apologize for, literally, "agreeing with most people?"
If employees were revolting, perhaps him stepping down was the right choice. But suggesting that he should "apologize" for having political views some employees disagree with is completely unreasonable and indicative of a bullying power play.
Eich acknowledged he hurt people.[1] He didn't just hold a view.
52% of Californian voters didn't ask Mozilla employees to trust them with their livelihoods and the culture of the company. A lot of them changed their minds by 2014 too.
Eich expressed "sorrow at having caused pain" which is not the same as acknowledging having "hurt people." This is pedantic but if we're going to talk about what someone else said, we should be precise.
I don't understand your point about 2014. Did Eich make more "controversial donations" that year?
> He declined to say he wouldn't do the same thing again.
Was he presented with a loyalty oath that he refused to sign? What do you mean he "declined to say"? Was he asked to say "I won't do this again" or do you think he should have volunteered such a statement?
In the post you linked he acknowledges having "caused pain" & affirms that Mozilla is a 100% inclusive company. Do you think he should have done more than this?
For my part, I find loyalty oaths odious & refuse to ever participate in them. I support gay rights, gay marriage etc. but if you demanded that I state my support for gay marriage upon your command, I would tell you to get lost.
CNET asked him if he would donate to a Proposition 8 cause again. He said he hadn't thought about it and didn't want to answer hypotheticals.[1]
Eich claiming he wouldn't discriminate against anyone doesn't mean much. He also claimed stripping marriage rights from same sex couples wasn't discriminatory.
I think Eich should have thought about it in the intervening 6 years like many of his fellow Californians. He should have expected his promotion would be divisive since he got a preview of the backlash in 2012. He should have felt remorse for contributing to a campaign that demonized LGBT people even if he still believed they didn't deserve equality. He should have apologized. And he should have explained how he would be held accountable like he claimed he wanted.
I wouldn't want him to pretend to apologize if he didn't mean it. He should have expected the backlash though. He could have withdrawn from consideration and just been CTO.
> Eich should have realized that his actions as CEO of a highly visible entity would be viewed in a different light than if he were merely just another nobody.
You do realize that the donation occurred years before he was appointed CEO, right?
The sequence doesn't really matter though, does it? Eich felt strongly enough about the issue to donate money to it, then moved to become CEO of a company whose main charter is diametrically opposed to such a stance. I don't see how he would have been able to do that without it coming to a head sooner or later.
Also, and this is just a general observation, whether Eich would have been a good CEO or not is a complete unknown.
The other context that's important here is that it's a political topic where popular shifted massively in the same timeframe--circa 20 percentage points IIRC.
You're basically faulting him for taking a position which was reasonable and well within the center of public opinion at the time, which had subsequently become unpopular. And completely discounting the statement he made in the meantime showing that his opinions had, in fact, evolved over time, just as it had for a large fraction of the population.
(Another thing to point out is that the board was aware of the political contribution when he was appointed CEO, and did not feel it was any obstacle.)
Sorry, but no, it being a common opinion does not necessarily a reasonable one.
And one board member did resign over this prior to his appointment.
For us here in NL (where 90%+ of the population supports gay marriage) the whole idea that this is even worth arguing over seems strange, about as strange as coming out pro-slavery would be.
I do realize the exact timing, Eich was CTO when he made the donations, was proposed to the CEO role when this was already known, accepted the nomination, one board member resigned in protest and then it all blew up and Eich resigned from Mozilla entirely 11 days later. Clearly, he did not make the donations in those 11 days.
I could have worded that comment a lot better but the intention seems pretty clear to me: Your actions as a CEO (even past actions) are going to be viewed in a different light than your actions as just another employee, even a co-founder, and what wasn't a problem before the CEO nomination quickly became a real problem, both for Mozilla the progressive entity as well as for Eich himself. Whether the donations were made several years, months or weeks before his tenure as CEO are not important.
The one thing I did get completely wrong - and which I will also acknowledge - is that I thought Eich could have legally made those donations anonymously (it was argued quite strongly during that time that this should be a possibility). I did not realize that this was illegal.
Your original comment is right there for everyone to read. In effect, what you've managed to argue here is first that the sequence of events is very important (your whole argument being that Eich "as the CEO" should have made his donation anonymously), and then, when called on that, that the sequence of events matters not at all.
Sometimes the best response to a rebuttal is just "TIL".
I'm sure Eich is smart enough to figure that one out. He could also have chosen to simply not donate given his position as CEO of a very visible entity.
He must feel pretty strongly about this subject given the fact that he could have recanted but he chose to walk instead.
Fair enough, at the time he was 'just' a co-founder of Mozilla and had not yet made the play to become CEO in 2014, but as recently as 2010 he made another such donation, and there is zero evidence that he had changed his mind at the time.
The term "bigot" is highly loaded, ambiguous term and we seem to be using it in some random cancel-culture way that only applies to selective beliefs and ascribing some sort of "evil" property to the individuals we throw it at. I'll even go out and say that I am a bigot because I am unreasonable about a lot of different topics and points of view that I disagree with.
Here are a bunch of variations of the definition, for your perusal.
Oxford: "a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions."
Merriam Webster: "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices. Especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
Cambridge: "a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who does not like other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life: "
Dictionary.com: "a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion."
Collins: "Someone who is bigoted has strong, unreasonable prejudices or opinions and will not change them, even when they are proved to be wrong. "
Oxford Learners: "a person who has very strong, unreasonable beliefs or opinions about race, religion or politics and who will not listen to or accept the opinions of anyone who disagrees"
bigot : a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions (google definition).
So maybe half of the country is made up of bigots but they are from both side. The other half are those that don't have strong opinions or simply don't care.
> Free Software is an extremely left wing philisophy
That's revisionist history. Free software, and the greater "hacker" community, has historically been libertarian. It's only recently that authoritarian leftism took over.
No. Anyone should be able to support any political cause at any time.
In a free society, we do not rely on force to produce morally correct behavior, except by force of state. We rely on law instead, which conversely requires complete freedom to participate in the democratic apparatus. Anything that messes with that messes with the very heart of a liberal democracy.
Corporations do not have unlimited freedom of association anyways. For instance, we already acknowledge that corporations can't refuse to associate with people on the basis of skin color. Saying that they could, say, fire a black CEO because otherwise their KKK customers would walk out, already doesn't fly; I don't see why it should have with Eich. I think racial equality is important, but political neutrality is at least equally important, because if that fails then liberalism is fucked, and liberalism is the best guarantor of racial equality as well.
Mozilla employees, volunteers, and others used their freedom of speech to say they would exercise their freedom to dissociate from Eich if he continued to support discrimination. Eich dissociated himself from Mozilla so the others wouldn't.
Okay, let me explain that one. I know he says that, and I know Mozilla says that, but "I've decided to leave of my own accord" has simply become such a cliche that it can no longer be distinguished from firing.
In any case, this mostly just supports my view that people don't understand liberalism and why we need it. When an atheist and a christian can sit down together and have a peaceful family dinner without talking about politics, despite the fact that at least one of them thinks that it's a matter of utmost moral importance that the other change his mind, this is a miracle of social cohesion that is crucial to keeping society together. And we're losing it.
Prop 8 banned gay marriage but not gay domestic partnerships. It's a highly technical issue more nuanced than you are saying, despite the unnuanced views of many of its supporters.
If you have a country where half of the population disagrees with the other half, and each half "cancels" the other and refuses to do business with them, the country will grind to a halt.
But we are all witness to the fact that it doesn't, at least so far.
The reason why it does not is that people don't typically wear their politics on their sleeves though the divisive nature of present day politics is not helping with that. So in fact, you may be prophetic, time will tell on that one.
Life in the US is fine. I have no idea what you're talking about. I have lots of friends saying controversial things on Twitter and social media and they're not only alive but have fulfilling and happy jobs.
You are aware that they only reached that number after placing armed guards at the polling places, with large parts of the opposition in prison, missing or exile? Hitler wanted to win that "election" with a majority by any means possible, getting 43% despite all the steps he took were a slap in the face.
Then go back a year to the election of Juli 1932, before the NSDAP got into power. Despite Nationalsocialists and Communists battling it out in the streets, the voter turnout was very high at 84.1%. The NSDAP doubled its previous result and became strongest party at 37.3%.
> Then go back a year to the election of Juli 1932, before the NSDAP got into power.
And by the November elections that same year they had already lost several percent.
> Despite Nationalsocialists and Communists battling it out in the streets
Paradoxically Hitlers campaign at that time ran less on antisemitism and more on restoring law and order as well as fixing the economy. Communism and the near endless pool of unemployed it could recruit from was the great enemy of the moment.
That's a hell of a controversial claim, it's still pretty hotly debated among historians. You could perhaps say that people used the treaty as a scapegoat, but as for Versaille being the actual cause, not so much.
> I have a problem with characterizing Brendan Eich as a bigot for donating to a non-fringe political group
Bigotry is not how, and never has been, a fringe position in the US. If you have a problem acknowledging that...well, it doesn't make it any less true.
That's great, but those of us who were directly affected by his actions—funding a group specifically intended to focus on ensuring we were prevented from accessing certain rights—will probably just dismiss this rather privileged view.
> a bigot for donating to a non-fringe political group. IIRC, the proposition campaign he donated to had close to a 50/50 split in support for/against
What?
What does people's support for a proposition that denies rights to homosexual people do to make it less discriminatory? What if it's worse? "You're not being discriminated against, because 80% of the population are in support of you being discriminated against". This makes no sense.
>I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other
Who asked Mozilla to be a "flagship of diversity"? What we wanted off them, and what their mission statement was, is a FOSS browser that supported the open web.
Plus, one can be/believe whatever on their personal life, as long as they don't bring it to the office.
Not to mention that penalizing people because they supported one side in a public vote is anti-democratic.
Let’s say that I’m a top notch software engineer working at Mozilla being paid half as much as I could be making at any other Big Tech company because I believe in the mission. Would I believe in the mission if my leadership opposed my fundamental right to be with the person I loved or would I go to one of the other tech companies that are always screaming diversity and pay more?
What side of the fence do you think Eich landed on when it came to health benefits for same sex couples?
Actually there is an "equal except for". Isn't that a pretty trivial concept for a software engineer?
Here's pseudocode that can be expressed in tons of languages:
func compare(a, b) {
if typeof(a) == "marriage" and typeof(b) == "marriage": return false;
return true;
}
Ironically, as we're speaking of Brendan, here's a trivial real-life example where this is the actual behavior: in JS all numbers are equal to themselves, except NaN.
> typeof 1
'number'
> 1 == 1
true
> typeof NaN
'number'
> NaN == NaN
false
In any case, it's quite possible for someone religiously motivated to think of marriage as some "holy" union that is only allowed between men and women because the Bible said so or whatever -- but otherwise have no issue with gay civil rights and would be ok with some civic contract with the same exact terms and rights, as long as it's not called "marriage". Marriage being one of the "sacred mysteries" in many versions of christianity and so on.
Well, if he believes that sane sex marriage is a “sin”, it’s his prerogative not to marry someone of the same sex. But why force his religious views on other people?
>But why force his religious views on other people?
Because religion is also a theory about how society should live, what is sacred/holy/profane/immoral/etc, not just what someone believes for themselves.
Plus, in a sense, he doesn't force his religious views on other people. He asks other people not to step on his religious concept (the marriage as a specific sacred mystery / holy union with specific rules, etc).
Now his objection might be outdated, but it's not some outlandish idea the "beyond the pale" kind, like being in the KKK. Just a few decades ago (not in some ancient ages) most of the US (not to mention the global population) would have agreed with this, including many progressives otherwise. Heck, it wasn't even one of the major demands of gay activists themselves back in the day.
Not allowing same sex marriage steps on some people's religious concepts. Allowing mixed race couples or heathens to marry steps on some people's religious concepts.
Should a priest be allowed to refuse to wed gay couples? I think so. They can go find another priest, so it doesn't mean I am against gay marriage. I just don't see why we should force people to do certain things in their religious ceremonies. Other than that marriage is just a join table, it means nothing so there is no reason to forbid anyone from doing it.
Instead of arguing about whether priests are forced to marry gay couples now (they are not, and this is an easily verifiable fact), I think a more interesting question is - what principle is it that says it's ok for priests to deny marriage to same-sex couples?
In other words, can you please explain why priests should not be forced to marry gay couples? "Force" is a loaded word, of course - I'm not necessarily talking about armed agents going into a church and demanding that a priest perform a marriage ceremony, but rather referring to the full range of coercive actions available to the federal government. For example, if a church refuses to perform same-sex marriages, why should they get tax-exempt status?
Nobody asked, but Mozilla took (and still takes) that role. Witness plenty of comments on HN from Mozilla employees reinforcing that.
I'm all for the FOSS browser company, the 'support for the open web' is already a step in the direction of losing focus. Just keeping up and having a viable alternative browser out there keeping Chrome at bay is a major job (and one they are currently miserably failing at).
> Not to mention that penalizing people because they supported one side in a public vote is anti-democratic.
Actually, it isn't. Actions have consequences, if Eich wanted to be a contributor to that cause he could have done so silently. By doing it in a publicly visible way as the CEO of a large company he made it a political statement and action begets reaction. Eich very explicitly brought his views into the office in a way that a substantial fraction of Mozilla's employees did not want to be associated with.
Besides that, money in politics is anti-democratic.
I've broadly agreed with you in this thread, mostly, but I have to say that last year one of the interview questions I was asked in a Mozilla interview was "What are you personally doing to encourage diversity?"
I felt that that was just a bit hamfisted. All my adult life I've been a feminist [insomuch as a man can be one] and supported this cause. But I had no idea how to answer that question, or I'm pretty sure my answer wasn't satisfactory to the person asking.
I would not work for Mozilla for that reason alone. I don't think such a question has a place in a job interview. I also would never ask such a question of an applicant. TMC is a pretty diverse group but we are so by accident, not by design and we take people on merit, not on their level of activism.
> "What are you personally doing to encourage diversity?"
What? Are you serious? After browsing through the comments, this here is what really ticks me off and solidifies that mozilla/firefox is in a rotting place right now. sad.
Yeah, serious, I mean I don't disagree with the overall goal of improving diversity in our industry. It's not really improving on its own. But as an established white male who is just an engineer, not a manager or HR staff or director of any kind, etc. almost anything I say in response to that question will just come across as patronizing ("some of my best friends are woman or minority engineers!")
I suspect the right answer could be: get out of the way. I did, they hired someone else. I dodged a bullet.
I don't think this embrace of social justice stuff has much to do with Mozilla's rot, BTW. Any business without a clear profit/success model and a reasonably sized workforce will just crumble under empire building and competing agendas. The "SJW" stuff is only notorious in our community because of the way the Eich stuff went down.
I would have been willing to work for half of what I am now to help make the open internet succeed (well, also to work from home, and to get to work with some friends, and with Rust, and other perks). But that whole interview really soured me. I dodged a bullet anyways.
> Actually, it isn't. Actions have consequences, if Eich wanted to be a contributor to that cause he could have done so silently. By doing it in a publicly visible way as the CEO of a large company he made it a political statement and action begets reaction. Eich very explicitly brought his views into the office in a way that a substantial fraction of Mozilla's employees did not want to be associated with.
He didn't bring his views into the office. He had them outside and the alphabet mob lit them as a Molotov cocktail and threw them into the building.
Those employees could have quit and worked somewhere else too. In a lot of ways that would have been great as they could have cut down on a couple of the pointless projects.
By your standard it's impossible for anyone to both have public views that disagree with your own and be the head of any large organization.
> Besides that, money in politics is anti-democratic.
Money in politics is the great equalizer. It's as democratic as it gets.
Otherwise you end up with a handful of media and tech oligarchs controlling all messaging.
> He didn't bring his views into the office. He had them outside and the alphabet mob lit them as a Molotov cocktail and threw them into the building.
He made a public donation in his own name to a very divisive cause. That is a political statement if there ever was one and set the stage for a confrontation with at least a sizeable fraction of the company he as supposed to want to lead.
> Those employees could have quit and worked somewhere else too.
Yes, they could have. And they might have had Eich stayed on.
> In a lot of ways that would have been great as they could have cut down on a couple of the pointless projects.
Contrary to managements' viewpoint programmers are not fungible, and you can't just drop them into each others projects on a whim. What if the bulk of those that left had worked on FireFox?
> By your standard it's impossible for anyone to both have public views that disagree with your own and be the head of any large organization.
Why do you think CEOs are normally speaking quite careful about such public statements? Precisely because there is the possibility of backlash.
Surely this isn't news.
> Money in politics is the great equalizer. It's as democratic as it gets.
Abject nonsense. Money in politics means that wealthy people get to vote many more times than poor people. An equalizer should make everybody more equal, not less equal.
> Otherwise you end up with a handful of media and tech oligarchs controlling all messaging.
> Contrary to managements' viewpoint programmers are not fungible, and you can't just drop them into each others projects on a whim. What if the bulk of those that left had worked on FireFox?
Salaries are paid in dollars and all dollars are fungible. That money could have been saved for a future date, which is coming sooner than they think, when search referrals will no longer pay the bills.
> Abject nonsense. Money in politics means that wealthy people get to vote many more times than poor people. An equalizer should make everybody more equal, not less equal.
Oh but it does. The issue you seem to be having is that you do not want anyone to hear opposing view points. If your ideas are so great they should be able to stay standing when the masses learn about alternatives.
Or are you scared that it might actually change their minds?
>> Otherwise you end up with a handful of media and tech oligarchs controlling all messaging.
> Yes, like Rupert Murdoch for instance. Oh, wait.
Yes exactly. And also like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai...
At least with the free flow of money someone working in a non-media industry can channel the fruits of their labors to pay to spread their message.
Without that ability you're limited to whatever your media masters decide to let you hear.
> Salaries are paid in dollars and all dollars are fungible.
Dollar donations made to political causes are not fungible when done in the name of the donor (as per the law). And that's the root cause. Whether or not employees would have walked or not you can not know, they very well might have because Mozilla made a big point of attracting those very people.
> Oh but it does. The issue you seem to be having is that you do not want anyone to hear opposing view points. If your ideas are so great they should be able to stay standing when the masses learn about alternatives.
I think you have your parties muddled up here and I think that you are not so much arguing for Eich's benefit as you are arguing for your own and your own views which you have made plenty visible on HN in the past. The people that don't agree with you are 'leftists'.
For instance: "That's part and parcel the strategy of the left, shifting the Overton Window of what you're allowed to support publicly until anything representing traditional conservative values is safely out of range. "
Traditional conservative bigoted values are what they are, if you want to publicly associate yourself with those then you are opening yourself up to - at a minimum - ridicule.
> Or are you scared that it might actually change their minds?
No horse in the race, so not scared. Why would I be?
> Yes exactly. And also like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai...
In other countries it is called bribery, in the USA it is normal. But that is an aberration, one that is hard to fix because both of the powerful parties in the USA are benefiting from this and effectively manage to keep out any outside contender that does not manage to take over one of the parties (like what just happened to the Republicans).
Or do you honestly believe that Trump embodies 'traditional conservative values'?
> At least with the free flow of money someone working in a non-media industry can channel the fruits of their labors to pay to spread their message.
Which effectively limits the speech of those not so privileged that they have money to spare, who - coincidentally - also happen to be the ones disenfranchised by tricks like Gerrymandering, voter identification, roll purges and a host of other strategies.
Fairness doesn't enter into it.
> Without that ability you're limited to whatever your media masters decide to let you hear.
I read manufacturing consent the year it came out.
> Dollar donations made to political causes are not fungible when done in the name of the donor (as per the law). And that's the root cause. Whether or not employees would have walked or not you can not know, they very well might have because Mozilla made a big point of attracting those very people.
And they might not have cared and moved on with their lives as well. The point of the exercise was to get a scalp to scare anyone else in an executive position from making a public donation. The end result was losing a competent executive.
>> Oh but it does. The issue you seem to be having is that you do not want anyone to hear opposing view points. If your ideas are so great they should be able to stay standing when the masses learn about alternatives.
> I think you have your parties muddled up here and I think that you are not so much arguing for Eich's benefit as you are arguing for your own and your own views which you have made plenty visible on HN in the past.
I'd argue you're doing the same in reverse.
> The people that don't agree with you are 'leftists'.
> For instance: "That's part and parcel the strategy of the left, shifting the Overton Window of what you're allowed to support publicly until anything representing traditional conservative values is safely out of range. "
You also manage to both quote my reply and misquote me back to back. I did not say, "leftists", I said, "the left", which is a standard term to refer to that side of the political aisle. Just as "the right" is a standard term to refer to the conservative side.
> Traditional conservative bigoted values are what they are, if you want to publicly associate yourself with those then you are opening yourself up to - at a minimum - ridicule.
You're free to have whatever opinions you'd like. I really don't care. If you want to label everyone that disagrees with you with terms like that it's your prerogative.
> No horse in the race, so not scared. Why would I be?
You're arguing that anyone that who disagrees with you and has the means ($$$) to promote those disagreements should not be able to do so.
People who are confident that their beliefs will win out in the market of ideas tend not to act that way.
> In other countries it is called bribery, in the USA it is normal.
So buying advertising is bribery now but operating a newspaper at a loss to continue to publish a liberal agenda is somehow perfectly fine?
> But that is an aberration, one that is hard to fix because both of the powerful parties in the USA are benefiting from this and effectively manage to keep out any outside contender that does not manage to take over one of the parties (like what just happened to the Republicans).
Interestingly Donald Trump spent less on advertising in the 2016 primaries than his opponents. IIRC, Jeb Bush spent something like $120M for 3 primary electoral votes and Hillary Clinton spent $1.2 B (yes billion!) in the general election (double Trump's amount). Now that is trying to buy an election.
> Or do you honestly believe that Trump embodies 'traditional conservative values'?
Ha! Not at all. But I believe he's done more to promote conservative ideas and ideals than any other politician of the past thirty years.
In particular reshaping the federal bench and the SCOTUS will have a lasting impact for the next 30-40 years.
> Which effectively limits the speech of those not so privileged that they have money to spare,
Breaking news, people with money can spend it more freely than people without it!
They also get to eat better food and live in safer neighborhoods. There's a lot of advantages to having money and there's not necessarily something wrong with it.
> ...who - coincidentally - also happen to be the ones disenfranchised by tricks like Gerrymandering, voter identification, roll purges and a host of other strategies.
Okay so now that you've given up on arguing against freedom of expression you're trying shift the topics.
> I read manufacturing consent the year it came out.
>You also manage to both quote my reply and misquote me back to back. I did not say, "leftists", I said, "the left", which is a standard term to refer to that side of the political aisle. Just as "the right" is a standard term to refer to the conservative side.
Except what you term "the left" in the US is actually center-right on the political spectrum.[0]
I'm all about freedom of expression and personal liberty. However, I believe that government (because government is the people) has a valid role to play in creating equality of opportunity and assisting those who are, for whatever reason, having difficulty surviving in our society.
> Contrary to managements' viewpoint programmers are not fungible,
In any reasonably written project they actually are. If your experience is that they are not then you have worked with badly written and badly documented projects.
> and you can't just drop them into each others projects on a whim.
Indeed you don't want to mix and match too much. Programmers need a ramp up time and teams need time to have cohesion.
Essentially programmers are replaceable but there is a non zero cost to replacing them.
> if Eich wanted to be a contributor to that cause he could have done so silently.
He did not deliberately publicise his donation. It was not publicly known until 2012 when someone dug up the records.
> Eich very explicitly brought his views into the office in a way that a substantial fraction of Mozilla's employees did not want to be associated with.
> should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other
Is it ridiculous to suggest we should just ignore what people think and do in their private lives?
I both fully support gay marriage and couldn't give a rat's ass about what the maker of my browser thinks about it (Eich donated 1000$ to Prop 8, 12 years ago). The real problem is that you can pay to have laws changed!
These "acts of protest" like OkCupid's banner need to stop. Most likely they care as much as I do (= not), they're just preemptively trying to get on the right side of the argument, trying to win the social justice olympics, to avoid the same fate as Eich.
It's not about you and me. It is about Eich's ability to effectively lead Mozilla while being on the record about this stance regarding gay marriage. How many of Mozilla's employees are gay and/or in favor of gay marriage? If you alienate roughly 55% (possibly much more) or so of a group you are supposed to lead you have just made your life quite impossible. Eich probably did the right thing to resign, he would have had to either come around on the subject (which he did not) or he'd have to walk.
OkCupid is not a part of FireFox, they were simply trying to virtue signal at Eich/FFs expense, and the empire behind OkCupid (not the original founders) has done a lot worse than anything that Eich ever did.
That would have been easy enough to ignore. But the Mozilla employees were another matter.
Money in politics is a problem in and of itself, that doesn't mean that CEOs living in glass houses should not be aware that if they start throwing stones there will be consequences.
That is the problem, the inability of a lot of people to disagree with each other. This completely good/bad classification of people. People can be wrong about gay marriage, abortion, climate change, immigration and a lot of different issues and still be right about a lot of other things and have other virtues and be good persons overall.
Of course. But as a CEO if you decide to wear your politics on your sleeve (which nobody forces you to) then you are making a statement which will likely beget a response.
If a dutch CEO would come out to vote for Geert Wilders' PVV (our ultra rightwing populist party) I'm pretty sure that would have an immediate effect on the company and on its remaining employees.
Employees as a rule want to be associated with companies and CEOs that they feel have their interests at heart. Plenty of them can be 'bought', which is why so many terrible companies with terrible leadership flourish. But Mozilla made it quite plain that they weren't going to be 'that sort of company' and if you say that loud enough and often enough then there are certain things you should not do.
Brendan Eich chose to apply for a leadership position in an organization which wears its stance on diversity issues on the proverbial sleeve. For some Mozilla folks that I know, this stance was a contributing factor in deciding where to work. Going on public record with an opposing stance on this was obviously controversial.
Given that access to health care is a major pain point for queer people in general and health care benefits are employer provided in the US made the matter even more pressing.
So yes, if you choose to apply for a position in an org that has a public stance on an issue, choosing to wear the opposing flag on your sleeve may not be the best move. You’re however, absolutely entitled to your opinion - you just have to deal with the results of your statements.
To be clear, the blacklisting was not, in theory, over "political leanings": it was for belonging to an organization that explicitly advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. There were a lot of issues with the McCarthy era, but this detail is important and generally glossed over.
I see your point but seen in historical light, if he would have more successful (than current management) in bringing Mozilla profit, the same employees might still have their jobs.
The 'argument from alternative universe' is not one that can be won from either side of a debate. What happened happened, this is where we are. All the people here arguing that Eich should not have been ousted are making an argument that might have held up but we will never know. Maybe half of Mozilla would have resigned and then they would not have had those particular jobs either, maybe Eich would have come around after a discussion with employees that were directly affected by his donation.
But we'll never know so this is not a fruitful branch of the discussion.
>Funny you think giving gays and lesbians the same rights as everyone else in this country
I'm a straight, white male with a long-time significant other. We never got married because marriage is a religious ceremony, and we don't share those values (for example, the church's views on gay marriage). At least in my country, being married doesn't give a person any more "rights".
> Is it ridiculous to suggest we should just ignore what people think and do in their private lives?
The problem is that Eich was supposed be leading a team that prides itself for being supportive of the causes that Eich donated against. Bridging that gap became impossible once he was on public record for that.
Having any leadership position requires at least a fundamental trust of the people you’re supposed to be leading.
That is one of the core problems Mozilla has to solve. Are they a browser manufacturer or some 'force for good' (or just there to fatten Bakers' piggy bank on the way down).
It was this event that actually led me to stop caring about Firefox and allow myself to default to Chrome, and I downloaded Phoenix from Blake's blog the day he posted it.
The root of Firefox's problems start with San Francisco. It's inflated salaries and political sideshow have caused an existential threat to Mozilla.
If your opposition to gay marriage was enough to get you to throw away the benefits of Firefox, I think you're not necessarily the target market that Firefox evangelists are.
None of the code of the browser changed when Eich resigned. It still had the same pros/cons, didn't it?
I mean, sure, Baker's done plenty for Mozilla, but Mozilla has been absolutely lost as to what they're trying to be this past year. It's not a clear cut software company anymore and that's a problem.