He just wanted to take an opportunity to "express [..] sorrow at having caused pain."
Eich does not regret his actions, he's just sorry that you felt pain because of the things he did. Classic business-ese non-apology.
Eich does not regret his actions, he's just sorry that you felt pain because of the things he did. Classic business-ese non-apology.
Apologising for how you vote, or what you believe, or what policies you root for is not democracy. And, yes, in a democracy you can also vote to restrict what other people can do. In fact, almost all laws are created for this very reason: to restrict certain actions.
He didn't do anything in his professional capacity that he should be apologising for.
If you don't regret your actions, don't torture language to issue a false apology.
This is about decency. What kind of person goes out of his way to oppress other people? Is that the kind of person I want heading an organization I'm affiliated with? No. Will it affect the Mozilla organization because others feel the way I do? It appears so. Given that, is Eich a good choice for CEO? Probably not.
It's a system of government that says you are entitled to your opinion and your vote. It's not just about how you put politicians in office.
>This is about decency. What kind of person goes out of his way to oppress other people?
The same kind of person who thinks that people who are against X or pro Y, should lose job opportunities because of opinions unrelated to their work behavior.
Nobody's denying Mozilla's right to hire him as CEO, just as nobody denied other companies' right to prop up apartheid South Africa. The fact is that actions have consequences, and those companies must weigh the benefits of their actions against the possibility (very real as we've seen in this case) that others will justifiably not want to associate with the business as a result.
I have serious questions about the sincerity of the motives of people who do it.
What an apology basically says is that if you had a time machine you would travel back in time and do something differently. What you would do differently, however, is crucially important for whether an apology is meaningful or not.
Are you sorry that you were found out? Or are you actually sorry for doing what you are criticised for?
That issue is never tackled head-on in this post and that is a very valid (and not poisonous) reason to be unsatisfied with this non-apology apology.
He is of course completely free to continue holding his bigoted views (and I certainly would never want him to lie about being sorry, that would be much worse than this apology), but as long as he only apologises for caused sorrow and not actually holding those views he should not expect to be excused from criticism.
Sometimes it is better to say nothing. This post should have remained focused on Eich's workplace policies and promises to staff.
I sometimes feel sorry that some of my actions inevitably cause pain to somebody. Firing an employee causes pain to the employee. I'm sorry for the pain, but not for the action.
Promising action to the contrary sounds a lot better.
And it's even further from "I'm sorry for punching you in the face. I was wrong to do that."
Saying you're sorry you hurt someone, is you taking responsibility for something you did. Saying you're sorry someone got hurt, sounds like the victim was wrong for getting hurt, and it's the victim's responsibility.
I can only ask for your support to have the time to “show, not tell”; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain.
I will rewrite this for him.
"I can only ask for your support to have the time to "show, not tell"; and in the meantime I want to show you my sadness, regret for causing you feeling distress and uncomfortable."
I replace express and sorrow with definition coming straight out of a dictionary.
Integrity is higher on my values list than many of the tech and community connections he can bring to the table. I would also disagree with his personal beliefs in being a snake-handler (if he was one) but would find no issue with his leadership ability as long as he didn't bring those beliefs to the organization.
Or: "Well, if you say yes, why? Is there some scientific explanation of why an arbitrary human custom should be offered to everybody as opposed to only some, based on the moral code one has?".