And this really is the crux, isn't it:
1. a political campaign inside Mozilla
2. by some employees that interpreted risk that
3. his donations were an attack on what they perceived as their rights
4. and this made him unable to fulfill the role of CTO
That's a whole lot of one-side conclusions to get to "he's unfit to be the CTO". No wonder he left.
And outside too. I read that OKCupid invited Firefox users to switch browsers, and CREDO mobile gathered 50K signatures for a petition. So nothing specific to Mozilla in the end.
> No wonder he left.
He indeed wrote on his blog "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader" and he was probably right about this.
This was all discussed at the time: the campaign against his appointment was far from just being "inside Mozilla". And "what they perceived as their rights" are now actual civil and legal rights because US society decided that was the right thing to do.
But Democrats who run in elections and appoint judges seem to generally like being able to point to the courts as a risk, and show little interest in legally bolstering civil rights when they have the power to, so it'll probably stay as it is... until it doesn't, just like with Roe and Casey.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-expected-pass-b...
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8404