> Eich was hounded out of his job. It's absolutely clear from the sequence of events.
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.