Eich is free to express his opinions and free to suffer the consequences. CEO is a very political position and he made a politically bone-headed move. I don't see how it could have ended any differently.
This self-righteous bickering is indicative of more character flaws than Eich displayed with his opinions.
No, that is not what happened. Political activists inside companies have gained power as a result of the 'long march through the institutions [1] which they have been using to enforce their ideology in rigid fashion. This started in the lunch rooms but eventually reached all the way to the top. Eich, like many other CEO's was replaced by a political activist - in this case Mitchell Baker - who used her position to further her ideological goals while simultaneously enriching herself. She is only one of many who is guilty of this type of fiduciary breach of confidence.
The fact that these 'champagne socialists' strut their virtue while filling their coffers - in Dutch this this is called 'links lullen, rechts vullen' (talk left but hoard right) - only makes it all the more galling and clear that their ideology is only a thin veneer over a lust for greed and power [2].
[1] https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/scholarship/2020s/2022-kimba...
[2] That same ideology sees everything in the world as an eternal power game between the oppressive and the oppressed and calls for a permanent revolution against the powerful - i.e. against themselves.
What did you think was going to happen?
If "the market" truly were king I'd expect those who come with plans to rake in the most money for the least effort to take over, i.e. the thing which those same activists tend to point damning fingers at for being the evils of 'capitalism'. I'd also expect companies which are taken over by activists to fail in the market since they produce less efficiently given that part of their energy is used to further the cause of those activists instead of focusing on 'shareholder value'.
Meanwhile, around the same time, Bill Gates was meeting with Epstein, and that received less than 1/10th of the media coverage. He was sending emails about "staying late into the night" at Epstein's house with a woman and her underaged daughter. But that's ok, because he's on "our side".
It's not like his career has been destroyed. He's still incredibly wealthy, and has a new browser company. People can use that, and work there, if they want.
Something which a majority of Californians in 2008 voted for, so your many people were the minority.
But even were that not the case, where should the line be drawn? Even if Eich's view were held by 1% and not the 52.24% that voted for it in 2008, should Eich have been fired for holding that position? Yes or no?
Same sex marriage simply wasn't a thing legally at the time, and was an issue the american public was discussing. It was not something in the process of being criminalized. The population of California voted not to allow it in the year we are talking about here, just to give you some perspective. Barack Obama opposed it politically.
Not just most Californians.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both agreed with him at the time.
Oddly, neither of those people has been hounded from public life.
Where have anti-homophobes said that "Bill Gates' behavior is okay because he's 'on our side'"? Do you have a single example?
This became obvious in the coverage of Trump and then Russia's war on Ukraine. If everything I've read for years was true, both Trump and Russia would have been finished long ago. But they're clearly not.
> Should half the country "suffer" as well just for voting Republican?
In the past, probably not. With today's Republicans? Absolutely. You don't get to knowingly vote for a fascist and his corrupt sycophants and face no repercussions. If your politics are "I don't give a fuck about democracy unless I win," our world views are entirely incompatible and I don't want to give you an iota of support.
This is not allowed on HN, regardless of which politics you're for or against, or how right you are or feel you are. We have to ban accounts that post like this and I definitely don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop posting like this, that would be good.
If “political and ideological battle” is not allowed, then why not ban these topic entirely?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
If you look over that material and still have a question that hasn't been answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
The short version is: (1) some political overlap is inevitable* and ok, but (2) even in those threads, battle-style or flamewar-style comments are not ok, and (3) using HN primarily for such purposes is not allowed and we ban accounts that do. Your account has been on the wrong side of both (2) and (3), which is why I replied to you.
It's a common perception that "HN is getting more political lately" but I think that's an illusion which goes back a long way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869. It's a product of sample bias plus random fluctuation.
* Btw, that is the answer to your question "why not ban [political] topics entirely"—it can't be done. For one thing, there's no agreement about what counts as "politics"; for another, many stories that are clearly on-topic for HN have political aspects. Trying to exclude the political altogether would actually be a surefire way to intensely politicize this place, as we discovered when we once briefly (for a couple days) tried an experiment in doing so. That was quite a learning experience.