On board resignations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10654651
On "curtail civil rights" canard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721928
"Curtail civil rights" is exactly right, though. Prop 8 didn't nullify existing marriages, but it did prevent new ones. Whatever philosophical reasons you had for supporting the measure, its language and effect were specific.
"Civil rights", if the phrase meant anything at stake in 2008, meant positive rights under state law that were protected by CA's domestic partnership section of its family law code, which an earlier generation of allies (including me) had supported. You could reframe now (post-Obergefell) in federal civil rights terms, but that tells a revisionist account of the history. Back in 2008, state-guaranteed rights were not the issue in front of the citizens of California, and federal bad law (DOMA) was beyond state power to affect.
Remember Obama was also at that time in favor (he said; maybe he was strategically lying but we don't know) of the conjugal definition of marriage.
Yes, I know people find Obama's position then defective and wrong, and some (few) even said so at the time. But I don't see anyone going around arguing that Obama thereby curtailed civil rights, since he supported civil unions or domestic partnerships. If he got off the hook for the "curtailing civil rights" charge by evolving many years later, then what does the phrase mean? It's not a historically or legally accurate description. It's just a rhetorical club to beat up enemies and spare friends.
"Curtailing civil rights" means simply this: marrying someone of the same sex was legal in California, and then it wasn't. A right previously recognized was taken away. It doesn't matter if you disagree with how that right was recognized. It doesn't matter that domestic partnerships provided most of the same benefits within California as marriage. Most isn't all. Even if those deficiencies had been repaired, "separate but equal" isn't equal.
Obama "got off the hook" because he opposed writing his claimed personal beliefs into law. Even in 2008, he spoke against Prop 8 and advocated repealing DOMA. You aren't my enemy, and he isn't my friend; he just had a better position on this issue.
I realize it's easy to speculate unintentionally but I try to draw a bright line around things like speaking for someone else, saying they "declined" an offer where you weren't involved and didn't actually see any offering or declining.
In the link I sent about board resignations (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10654651), I wrote "Alistair Barr of the WSJ was working on a story about Mozilla being in trouble". Barr was getting the "need CEO with mobile experience" line from someone, possibly an ex-executive, even a (soon-to-be-ex) board member. A number of people thought it might be Gary Kovacs, but no one knew for sure.
For my part regarding getting the appointment, I can only say that "mobile experience" line did not come up. Doing Firefox OS (for all its problems) did get us a lot of mobile experience and good partner contacts. I'm engaging with some of those contacts at Brave, so I think the ding from whomever leaked to Barr was not material re: me, then or now.
On where law comes from, why CA voters can override the CA supreme court, see "status quo" on at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721928.
Obama had no skin in the game in California, but he did say (to Rick Warren in public) that he supported the conjugal definition of marriage. He did not explain how he squared this with being against Prop 8, as far as I know (references welcome). It sure looks like strategic lying to me, and nothing against Obama -- I voted for him in the 2008 CA primary. Politians do this kind of inconsistent fence-sitting all the time.
Thanks for writing back.