Three of them resigned when Brendan joined the board. To say that the board never tried to push him out sort of glosses over that point.
One (Ellen Siminoff) had planned to leave at the end of 2013, and since she wasn't staying, she didn't want to vote to appoint me only to depart right after voting. That was a clean situation.
I'm bound by non-disclosure not to comment on the other two cases, but this much I'll say based on public info disclosed by others: John Lilly left the board rather than appoint me, as he implied with some tweets at the time. His leaving had nothing to do with Prop 8; he never mentioned it.
Here's what I think happened in the press: Alistair Barr of the WSJ was working on a story about Mozilla being in trouble because Google would not renew its search deal for Firefox, which was due to expire later in 2014 (a highly unlikely claim, but a good link-bait thesis); and also because Mozilla had run for over a year without a new permanent CEO since Gary Kovacs left (true, and a cause for concern among many).
Barr's story was under construction at least as early as February 2014, and it got hot and neared publication later in March as board members resigned. Those of us at high levels at Mozilla believed someone at or near board level who had recently left the company was sending rumors to Barr.
This WSJ story broke on March 28th, and it was summarized at that end of my first week as CEO as "board members resigned a week ago", but then one more week passed, and the Prop 8 story grew bigger due to okcupid, and the "week ago" became bogusly rewritten ("retconned") in many online accounts and comment threads as "three board members resigned over Prop 8".
That never happened. No board members resigned over Prop 8. Mozilla's FAQ on the whole affair says this plainly, and it's accurate on this point.
I'm all for freedom of speech and quite opposed to the recent college campus behavior of throwing huge fits over anything remotely politically incorrect. Anyone is free to think whatever they want about my marriage and that of others, but the law should always treat people equally. When Eich donated money (and thus most certainly voted) to literally strip existing equal rights away from a minority, it ceased to be about just speech and opinion, and instead became something quite vindictive and nasty.
I'm not going to get into whether it was right to pressure a company over a certain number of employees and/or when they reach a certain position in the company; I'm just going to say that I don't care for Eich's donation to Prop 8 (nor for his design of Javascript, but that's a separate discussion.)
Imagine your being ousted from your job for donating to the EFF, because the EFF supports encryption and is used by terrorists? Your donation to the EFF is literally killing babies.
Can't you see you're abusing the language of equal rights to demonize your political opponents? Donating to a mainstream cause is a perfectly normal thing to do. I hope that society never moves against any of your current positions and retrospectively calls you a monster.
You're absolutely perfectly fine talking about them. Anyone who disagrees doesn't value the freedom of speech. (And sadly, that's becoming quite common on college campuses these days. But I don't align myself with them.)
> vote against them, or donate to organizations opposing them, is sickening.
Voting to take rights away from consenting adults because you don't agree with their lifestyles is sickening.
I'm not sure how I'd feel about a donation to an organization opposing rights in general. But this was specifically targeted toward persuading voters (with shady, misleading and outright false advertisements) to vote to take away rights. Not quite the same as just saying "we oppose this."
This crossed the boundary from speech and became action. A very harmful action that demeaned 5-10% of the population.
> Imagine your being ousted from your job for donating to the EFF
False equivalence. The EFF isn't lobbying to strip a minority of their pre-existing rights, because "eww" or "religion."
Further, he wasn't ousted from his job. People complained, so he chose to resign. If it's freedom of speech for Eich to make that donation, then it's freedom of speech for people to protest that donation. You can't eat your cake and have it too.
> Donating to a mainstream cause is a perfectly normal thing to do.
Majority support does not justify what is right.
> I hope that society never moves against any of your current positions and retrospectively calls you a monster.
I've gotten into plenty of trouble and lost supporters over my positions against political correctness. I don't think I'll ever be in a position as powerful as CEO, though.
Still, I hope no one ever pesters me to resign from my job. However, I would never, ever vote to take rights away from a group of people I disliked, unless there were lack of consent issues (eg peodphilia) involved. So I don't believe I'll ever be in the same exact position as Eich.
In 2008, Eich's was the mainstream view. Even Barack Obama stated in 2008 that he believed marriage should be between a man and a woman.
It's ridiculous that someone should be considered an unacceptable type of person to be CEO because he donated $1,000 to a successful, mainstream proposition that passed, in a state of 35 million people, on an issue that Obama also agreed with! Nor did the bill "take away rights". Did all those people who quit the board or said nasty things about Brendan Eich vote for McCain-Palin in the 2008 elections? Highly doubtful.
Mr. Eich in fact stated that his personal views would not color his performance in a leadership position, and that he had nothing against homosexuality. When it became clear that he could not shake the controversy, he chose the high moral ground of resigning.
Losing this man, the inventor of Javascript and a key player at Mozilla.org for many years, was a real blow to the organization. It's never a good idea to politicize a technology organization whose mission is to create free and open tools for everyone, to be used all over the world by all sorts of people.
Oh, absolutely. No question. If not for the outrage, he wouldn't have resigned. My point is that he could have stayed on if he wanted to. They may have lost ~10% of their userbase, but they're hemorrhaging users at such an alarming rate these days that it'd hardly be a blip on the radar.
What is your alternative? Why is it free speech for Eich to donate to Prop 8, but not free speech for others to decry said donation? Should they have called for his job? Probably not, but as evidenced by Eich, people are allowed to say terrible things.
> In 2008, Eich's was the mainstream view.
Popular opinion is not a justification for discrimination.
The litmus test I go by is: "does it harm non-consenting living beings?", and if the answer is no, then I don't have to like it, but it's not my business to interfere.
> Even Barack Obama stated in 2008 that he believed marriage should be between a man and a woman.
Obama was for marriage equality in the '90s, but he was running for president in 2008. He knew he could lose the presidency if he said he supported it in 2008. I don't know how I feel about that, but I think I'll take it over McCain/Palin winning.
It's the same way we pretend every US president in history was a Christian. Yeah, and I have a bridge to sell you in New York.
> he chose the high moral ground of resigning.
The one thing I will give him definite praise for is his honesty: he could have easily donated $1000 to the HRC, said his views evolved, and the controversy would have vanished overnight. None of us could prove he was lying. I wish his views really had changed, and I would have forgiven him, but barring that, I respect that he's at least remained honest about all this.
> It's never a good idea to politicize a technology organization whose mission is to create free and open tools for everyone
In general, I don't like the idea of people being forced out of their jobs because of something they did in their spare time. (Especially around drug use.) I also understand that popular opinion could make the right thing to do that which would end up costing one their job. And indeed, almost no one called for his resignation prior to his promotion to CEO. I can sort of see the argument for how a CEO can represent the face of the company, but it's still a bit troubling. None of us are perfect, and a huge amount of people will protest absolutely anything you do.
But what I do know at the end of the day, is that people were absolutely justified in calling out what he did as completely unconscionable. And they had every right to boycott Firefox in response.
At least in my case, I never called for him to be fired. The damage to me was done when the board promoted him, knowing about this in advance as they did. I tried (and continue to try) to stop using Firefox, but Chrome is just so. awful. that I keep finding myself forced back. My kingdom for some real competition in the browser market.
How was that damaging to you? Did he take your job?
Your entire argument is based on a false assumption that just because he doesn't think redefining marriage is the only way to get those rights that he wants to take rights away.
There is a base assumption that anyone who disagrees with redefining marriage is unacceptably evil and wants to strip rights from a minority. This is false.
Redefining marriage is not a right, it's a tactic to give same-sex couples the same rights as married couples. Not everyone agrees with this tactic.
And guess what, the redefinition of marriage complete is now across the entire country and these people still don't have equal rights in many areas! Maybe he was on to something?
Don't assume someone is fighting against you just because he doesn't agree with a particular tactic.
John Lilly has since given statements that he resigned because of Eich's stance of Proposition 8. [2]
1. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-mozilla-lost-...
2. https://mobile.twitter.com/johnolilly/status/451816637113438...
The tweets you link to do not say Lilly resigned because of Eich's stance on Prop 8. Lilly said, "this was not about political values but about leadership when confronted with a difficult conversation."
A few points to ponder (from a non-American):
1. It was a bad precedent. How would you feel about pro-lifers hounding a CEO out because of a donation?
2. His opinion is/was not extreme or unusual. About half of the American population share his views.
3. Is it reasonable to expect the full-range personal of views (and voting patterns) of a CEO to be agreeable to every employee?
My personal take is that the episode showed that no one has spine at Mozilla. Around the same time, people were raising concerns about Condoleezza Rice being on Dropbox's board; Dropbox's response was "we value her, she's not going anywhere" - and that was the end of it.
I shouldn't have to say this, since what I said should stand on it's own merit: but I disagree with Eich's politics. However I don't think that it had any bearing of his capability and execution as a CEO. If my boss is professional & courteous when dealing with me, I couldn't care less if he were a KKK Grand Dragon.
This is difficult to compare. A donation to keep an existing right versus a donation to take an existing right away. For these to compare, it would have to be a donation toward a proposition that stripped women of the right not to have an abortion, which is nonsensical.
> His opinion is/was not extreme or unusual.
That's a horrible justification. There used to be majority support for slavery, segregation, anti-miscegenation, etc.
> Is it reasonable to expect the full-range personal of views (and voting patterns) of a CEO to be agreeable to every employee?
Like I said, I didn't want to get into who should be able to say what when. But if it's free speech for Eich to make that donation, then it's definitely free speech for people to protest against him for making it as well. Again, no one forced him out. He resigned voluntarily. The people complaining held zero power in Mozilla.
> If my boss is professional & courteous when dealing with me, I couldn't care less if he were a KKK Grand Dragon.
Even if you were a black employee? I'm not sure I could be so magnanimous, but kudos to you for that :D
Partisan politics and social justice causes have no place in a technology organization. Obviously that doesn't mean, injustice is OK. But freedom of speech and freedom to hold one's own views on a subject without fear of being fired or pressured to quit should be held sacred. Bye, Mozilla.
I know of no LGBT employees who worked for me and said they couldn't keep working for me. I had conspicuous support from some really good LGBT-identifying folks (who've all since left, if I'm not mistaken).
The Mozilla Foundation (not Corporation) employees who tweeted asking me to resign in the first week (on March 27, 2014) never worked for me. I don't know and don't care who among them identified as LGBT or anything. They too seem to have mostly left.
I was at Mozilla from founding onward for over 16 years, by the way.