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Comment by YorickPeterse | Hacker News Reader

If I remember correctly he didn't get fired for just not supporting gay marriage, he got fired for donating to some bill that was trying to prohibit gay marriage. That's quite the difference.

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Understandable he had to go. Not many people would feel comfortable supporting a product where the profits go in to restricting their human rights.

That's an entirely disingenuous way of putting this situation. Mozilla's profits are NOT the salaries of its employees - the profits are AFTER payroll. It was Eich's personal money, not Mozilla's money, and there is absolutely zero implication that Mozilla itself had the same opinions as its CEO - nor should there be. If you draw that inference, it is because you're acting as part of Cancel Culture, which is totalitarian liberalism in action.

He was forced to resign (the Mozilla board was actually in favor of having him stay on) for having donated to a group supporting an anti-gay-marriage bill 3 years before he became CEO. And, as far as I am aware, not giving any further indication of support in the intervening 3 years.

Hi jcranmer, please be careful. Prop 8 passed in 2008, almost six years before 2014 when I was CEO. Also, neither of us can say (for different reasons) whether I was forced, and if so, by whom. Mozilla is clear that it did not fire me, nor could it have legally:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22060643

Oops, sorry, for some reason I thought the changeover happened in 2011. Must be getting old...

Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22060643.

Saw another comment that was deleted that you grew up in Pittsburgh and MD. Where in MD? I grew up in Towson, Bel Air and now on the MD/PA line.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22060616

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061643

I don't see that as being very different. Why is him exercising his protected right to political speech in donation form subject to your judgement when it doesn't have any impact on the quality of the software he gives you for free?

Did he say "gay people can't use Firefox"?

> Why is him exercising his protected right to political speech in donation form subject to your judgement

Because it has an impact on whether I can marry my partner.

I think that it was less about the end-user as it was about the gay people working for Mozilla who felt uncomfortable working with a CEO who took the actions Eich took in his past. One cannot know peoples' private thoughts or biases, so folks often take what ever signal they can get.

Its exactly the same as avoiding a company which uses slave labor in some 3rd world countries. No one wants to be funding these actions.

You're seriously likening the inability of gay people to go through the motions of a marriage ceremony to children being subjected to slave labour? That's the falsest equivocation I have ever read.

I'm comparing avoiding a company because of human rights issues with avoiding another company because of human rights issues. Its understandable for a well adjusted person to not want to fund either of these things.

>You're seriously likening the inability of gay people to go through the motions of a marriage ceremony to children being subjected to slave labour? That's the falsest equivocation I have ever read.

I'm not too familiar with the US and it's laws but doesn't marriage have an impact on legal matters, benefits and taxation? I know for example that here I can't get a higher loan based on a higher percentage of my income because i'm single and the bank is limited in how it can lend out the money it lends from a state entity.

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