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> The only reason why Brendan Eich's contribution should be an issue is because he's now the CEO of Mozilla and people are afraid that his personal beliefs on the matter will affect Mozilla.

What proof do we have that his personal beliefs will affect Mozilla? Guilty until proven innocent I see.

Mixing "people are afraid" and "proof" doesn't exactly work. This isn't a criminal court; there's no need to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not even a civil court, so there's no need for a preponderance of evidence.

This person donated money to a campaign to remove from them one of the basic civil rights of man, and they're understandably worried about what might happen because of that. Additionally, they're unhappy with having a person who has done so in such an important and visible position of something they love.

And, in response, they're conducting a campaign to remove from Eich one of the basic civil rights of man - free speech (including political speech). You don't lose that right just because you become a CEO.

No government is restricting Mr. Eich's freedom of speech. In fact, no one is, at all. People are using their free speech to counter his. This is the system working as intended.

(Also, people desiring or acting to remove him from a position as CEO is not an issue of freedom of speech. There is no right to being a CEO.)

It's really kind of interesting how in the last few years people with shitty opinions get all mad and indignant if they get flack for it, as if "free speech" is really "freedom from criticism of speech".

> And, in response, they're conducting a campaign to remove from Eich one of the basic civil rights of man - free speech (including political speech).

No, they aren't. Eich exercised his free speech, and advocated that other people exercise their right to vote in a particular way.

They are exercising their right to free speech, and advocating that other people exercise their right to free association in a particular way.

They don't like the way Eich exercised his right to free speech, or the action it advocated, but they don't argue that he should not have been permitted to exercise that right.

Well, this isn't a court of law. This is about attempting to predict his future behavior, and how said behavior will materially affect the lives of thousands of people (both Mozilla employees and community members who are affected by Mozilla's role in the community).

Personally, I'm willing to give Eich the benefit of the doubt. But I also think that his actions as CEO during the next couple of months should be watched carefully, and held to a higher standard than if the CEO was someone who had done nothing at all with regards to gay marriage. Eich did something 6 years ago that negatively impacted a lot of people, and he needs to show that this action does not reflect his behavior as CEO, and the best way to do that is to be proactive about making things better. That doesn't mean maintaining the current health care benefits for gay employees (as he promised to do). This means implementing new policies to improve things for gay employees, or performing some form of community outreach related to this goal, or even publicly supporting a gay rights organization.

> Well, this isn't a court of law. This is about attempting to predict his future behavior

It has been like two weeks? I think we need to stop predicting. Since IAC is boycotting Mozilla Firefox browser by displaying message to Firefox user, will IAC now fire these employees? Will managers be forced to not to promote these employees? That would be against labor law but also hypocrite coming from the company that's blocking Mozilla Firefox, wouldn't it?

Let's stop the arguging. I can find someone among the gays who don't support abortion at all and if he or she is placed as CEO the pro-choice community will scream at him/her. This is now a never-ending drama.

Huh? We don't need to stop predicting yet; it hasn't been long enough yet to draw any conclusions about how he's guiding Mozilla in regards to this issue.

As for IAC, I don't understand your comment at all. Why would IAC penalize employees whose personal beliefs disagree with this public action? There's absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that a company requires all of its employees to hold the same beliefs that the company is publicly promoting.

Why would IAC penalize employees whose personal beliefs disagree with this public action? There's absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that a company requires all of its employees to hold the same beliefs that the company is publicly promoting.

You just made my point. Isn't a CEO also an employee? Just because he is the most powerful figure in the company doesn't mean he has to hold the same beliefs that the company is publicly promoting, which is equality and openness to all as a private citizen. He will have to hold the same belief as Mozilla as a CEO. Mozilla and its community accepts there are people who believe and disagree on marriage equality.

Huh? We don't need to stop predicting yet; it hasn't been long enough yet to draw any conclusions about how he's guiding Mozilla in regards to this issue.

Set a deadline. I'll give you a month to talk about this. Then? What's next? Exactly. It won't change anything. He's the CEO. He won't step down. Mozilla will continue to function. People will keep an eye on Mozilla. That's it. So tell me, what good is your prediction? More articles and speculations and rants and wars?

Why should you or anyone draw any conclusion? What conclusion? What good is your prediction to this non-stop no-win situation? Just as I said I can find a pro-life person to manage the company will receive the same doubt: what good is you or anyone continue to make "prediction"? If your prediction only causes more useless non-stop repeating arguments, that kind of prediction is just noise simply because nothing new will ever come out.

I get the feeling you haven't actually bothered to read anything I've said on this subject, because you're arguing as though I'm calling for Brendan Eich's head, when in fact I've said multiple times that I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and wait to see how he actually acts, rather than draw conclusions based on a personal action he took 6 years ago.

When you have a CEO who openly believes that a class of people (whether that's gays, women, hispanics, etc.) are inherently "bad people", there's cause for concern about how that might affect the running of a large organization (whose employees are bound to include people openly belonging to that group). His stance and position alone could be enough to alienate potential talent. Nobody can say he's "guilty of adversely affecting Mozilla" at this point, but the situation does raise those types of questions.

In any case, OKCupid has taken public actions (e.g. their message to Firefox users) that indicate that, as a company, they come down in favor of gay marriage.

I don't think that's quite true. Rather, what it seems is that they're being opportunists by milking a controversy so as to make themselves appear as if they have the moral high ground.

Telling people to boycott a free software browser that has been the result of over a decade of labor by large numbers of contributors and has been responsible for many advancements in the web, over the actions of one person (even if the CEO), the reasons of which are still unclear, is not what I'd call supporting gay marriage.

There's plenty of other much better ways to express support. What's even more interesting is that they have selected Firefox as the product to boycott, and not the rest of the Mozilla Foundation's projects. I guess actually targeting the root cause (Eich, and consequently JavaScript) is too much to swallow.

I think their recommendation of boycotting Firefox is wrong. But the point is that OKCupid has made a public statement that, however misguided, indicates support for gay marriage.

> I guess actually targeting the root cause (Eich, and consequently JavaScript) is too much to swallow.

Firefox is probably the only thing they can target that makes sense. JavaScript is probably the only other Mozilla project that the majority of OKCupid visitors would even recognize, and most of them probably don't use JavaScript at all and have no way to boycott it (not to mention that it's pretty hard to boycott JavaScript anyway, because it's the assembly language of the web).

Also, the only indicating factor they have to decide if they should even show the message is that the user's browser is Firefox. Showing this message to everyone would definitely be too much.

Well, it sends the message that, if you oppose gay marriage, they're going to find a way to make you pay. That may be of some value to the battle for gay rights, but it's a horrible way to do it.

Even if you frame this as a civil rights battle, you don't win civil rights battles that way. The black right to vote was not won by eliminating the KKK's right to free speech.

IF his beliefs lead to policies inside Mozilla that disadvantage gay employees THEN will be the time to protest. Otherwise he is entitled to hold his own private beliefs no matter how much we/I may disagree with them.

You are entitled to your opinions, but you have no say in when people are legally able to protest, regardless of how much you disagree with their right to do so. They can protest any time they want.

They haven't taken public actions that indicate that they come down in favor of gay marriage, just that they come down in opposition of Brendan Eich.