Hacker News Reader

To piggyback, there's an additional difference between being a public-facing CEO of, say, McDonald's, Exxon or Apple, and being the public-facing CEO of a non-profit which exists due to the donations of primarily liberal and libertarian internet people. The prior case might cost them a little revenue due to boycotts but if the person's effective, you can make a case for 'private views' and 'shareholder value'. When your whole company is an activist platform, it's a bit harder to say that political positions of the CEO don't matter.

"non-profit which exists due to the donations of primarily liberal and libertarian internet people"

Citation needed.

On the topic of being an "activist platform", I strongly suggest you read <http://incisive.nu/2014/thinking-about-mozilla/>, and in particular the paragraph starting "Several of my colleagues have called for Brendan’s resignation. I have not done so ..."

> When your whole company is an activist platform, it's a bit harder to say that political positions of the CEO don't matter.

I see the point that it's different for a non-profit than it might be for a for-profit, but I'd also think differences in primary focus matter too.

If I was looking at the conversation over the last week as a representative, I'd suppose that Mozilla is more of an LGBT standard-bearer than an open-web advocacy group.

One could argue that's a ridiculously narrow window to focus on, and that's probably correct, but it's no more narrow a focus than that turned on Eich's donations vs the whole of his behavior and what he had to offer as CEO.

I thought mozilla exists mainly because of google?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing

Pretty sure that is incorrect.

The Mozilla Foundation is funded by donations and "search royalties". Since 2005, the vast majority of funds have come from Google Inc....Mozilla Corporation [is] "a taxable subsidiary that serves the non-profit, public benefit goals of its parent, the Mozilla Foundation"

Mozilla =~= Google

>being the public-facing CEO of a non-profit

He was the CEO of the for-profit Mozilla Corporation, not a non-profit.

This is a terrific comment, and I couldn't agree more -- regardless of Eich's personal views and how they made people feel, the fact that he and Mozilla didn't have statements, interviews, and a PR plan in place for something so obvious is reason enough that he shouldn't be CEO. End of story.

He was CEO for two weeks. If Mozila would have statements, interviews, and a PR plan prepared, they would have to be done before he became CEO.

That's exactly what I'm saying, that these preparations should have been made prior the announcement. His consideration for and acceptance of the role happened prior to the announcement, presumably. This should have been a part of whatever transition plan they had in place.

They knew about his donation two years before he became CEO. It's not like it was discovered 5 minutes after his appointment - they had plenty of warning that this might be a PR shitstorm. There's no excuse for them to be this unprepared.

> It's obvious that a significant number of board members weren't happy

I'm aware of one board member that's true for. Note that the Wall Street Journal blog post that everyone has been quoting on the board member issue pretty much just got the story wrong. Two of the board members had been meaning to move on to other things for a while and just stuck it out to the end of the CEO search, since that's one of the board's key functions.

> It's obvious that a significant number of board members weren't happy with Eich's promotion on strategic grounds

How is it obvious? The board appoints the CEO. It's true that several board members left shortly after the appointment, and some outsiders have claimed that it was in protest, but I've not seen any confirmation of that. At least some of the ones leaving must have approved, because the remaining board members, I believe, do not have a majority.

I've seen other claims that these people had already planned to leave, and were just staying around to finish the CEO search. Some evidence for this is the fact that the people who left also announced their next major engagements. People who quite on short notice in protest generally don't know where they are going next.

> It's obvious that a significant number of board members weren't happy with Eich's promotion on strategic grounds

What makes this obvious? I haven't heard any statement to that effect from any of them.

I'm in 100% agreement. Moreover, I think that this was made worse by the fact that not only was there no pre-planning to address the PR issues, which they had to know about (and if they didn't when this already came up, the entire board needs to go, period, b/c that's just amateur hour), Eich's refusal to even explain his position made it hard to not see him as a hate-monger.

If he had defended or explained his position on the basis of religious beliefs -- this might not have ended any differently, but it would at least give the community context for why he feels the way he feels. Not having that context and his outright refusal to elaborate on it, only made it worse.

This is exactly how opinion worked in East Germany. You didn't have to be a communist, but if you weren't you would never work again.

We have the exact same protection for political expression as East Germany. That's freedom? "The Lives of Others" was a warning, not an instruction manual.

Eich has been with Mozilla since the very beginning, and before that he worked at Netscape, writing the first implementation of JavaScript among others. There was some uproar when his Prop 8 donation was revealed in 2012, but no noticeable calls for him to be fired as a Mozilla employee.

But it's obviously a totally different case when you become the CEO. You are meant to be the highest public-facing representative of the corporation. It was publicly known that Eich holds very conflicting views to what many consider a basic civil right, and per his interviews seems to still hold. I can fully understand how this is an impossible equation with leading a company that claims to be committed to equality and inclusiveness.

Do not confuse freedom of speech with lack of public accountability.

EXACTLY. Especially if that company has an ethos that runs counter to those views. There are plenty of companies -- even tech companies -- where Eich's position wouldn't be an issue. Mozilla is not one of those companies.

And just who decides that? As a Mozilla community member and employee with an ethos that runs counter to Brendan Eich's view, I was willing to give him a chance as a CEO.

> And just who decides that?

Presumably, Mozilla Corporation's board and its sole owner (Mozilla Foundation).

So now that he has resigned as CEO, assuming he takes or maintains a high level position with Mozilla, will the firestorm die down?

I would hope he would be able to maintain a good position there, he seemed to be a very valuable fellow to have onboard - he did create JavaScript (for better or for worse, but still - 10 days to create a language is insane). And as the CTO he cherry-picked Rust as a project worthy of devoting resources to – something I am extremely grateful for. I'm sure has done a great deal of other good things at Mozilla too – those are the just the ones I am most familiar with.

That's not to say I wasn't uncomfortable about the CEO appointment though.

You have confused the right of free association with government oppression. OKCupid has a right to not be associated with Firefox. That's rather the opposite of what the Stasi did to dissidents in East Germany.

You have confused the general concept of oppression with government oppression. There are no laws specifically against black people in America, but our society nonetheless still has some big issues around race.

The government derives its authority from the people. If the people go right ahead and oppress you themselves instead of going through government processes, you aren't any less oppressed.

Then I oppress people all the time. I oppress students of mine who cheat during tests. I oppress people who talk too loudly when I ask them to be a bit quieter. I oppress the guy who almost ran me over last week when he quickly drove across the sidewalk to park and I yelled at him.

All those who participate in a boycott are of course also oppressive. So are those on strike.

Do you really think this is the exact same as East Germany?

It's tough to bear, but we do allow private clubs to discriminate on the basis of race. That's part of what freedom of association means in the US. (For that matter, in most states, if I am a business owner and I have two employees, then I'm still allowed to discriminate in the workplace on the basis of race, religion, etc.)

Your point can be valid, if there is widespread inability to get work when publicly holding a minority viewpoint. That does not seem to be the case here. All evidence is that Mozilla would have been able to continue in some fashion with Eich as CEO, and that Eich could easily get work elsewhere.

> Then I oppress people all the time. I oppress students of mine who cheat during tests. I oppress people who talk too loudly when I ask them to be a bit quieter. I oppress the guy who almost ran me over last week when he quickly drove across the sidewalk to park and I yelled at him.

If you mean you form an angry Internet mob to try and force someone's employer to fire them just because they talk too loudly, you're crazy. If not, I don't think you're making a fair comparison here.

> Do you really think this is the exact same as East Germany?

No, I think it has much more in common with the Red Scare in 1950s America. "This guy holds a political opinion that would abridge my liberty if it took over the country. Let's get him fired."

> Your point can be valid, if there is widespread inability to get work when publicly holding a minority viewpoint.

The fact that these people aren't consistent in trying to get Prop. 8 supporters fired doesn't change the fact that, if they were consistent, "there is widespread inability to get work when publicly holding a minority viewpoint" would probably be the case. The lack of consistency in putting their beliefs into practice doesn't really make me like the philosophy of personally targeting your political enemies any better.

You tell me how an "angry mob" is different than a boycott or picketing, then I'll let you know if I mean to "form an angry internet mob". I support that people organize and participate in boycotts and pickets. I think they are part of protected free speech in the US. Do you?

As to the Red Scare reference, see my comment in the sibling thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526405 , which starts:

> "I don't want to do business with a company which has Eich as a CEO" is rather not the same as the Stasi. It's closer to US sentiment during the Red Scare of "I won't do business with any company which employes a member of the Communist Party." (The US still has a number of anti-Communist laws still on the books that I consider reprehensible.)

(I then point out a couple things which I think are even closer.)

Even then, there was several decades of government involvement, from state representatives to Congress and the president. That's not the case here. And without that high-level government involvement, we likely wouldn't have had the Hollywood blacklist and laws to prevent Communists and leftists from being able to work.

As to your consistency point, you propose that the issue is "trying to get [all] Prop. 8 supporters fired". You haven't shown that to be true. It could be limited mostly to non-profit organizations which promote community development and "doing good." (Mozilla.org says "Doing good is part of our code".)

Nor might have you shown it's a universal goal. As Sarah Silverman once said "If we can send a person to the moon, we can send someone with AIDS to the moon, and then someday we can send everybody with AIDS to the moon." Clearly a partial goal is acceptable even if a universal goal isn't.

There are also strategic goals. If I boycotted apartheid South Africa am I inconsistent for not boycotting other countries with deep racial, religious, and caste segregation? Perhaps. Or perhaps I realize that South Africa is a special case where a boycott might work.

Well, at least you didn't mention Hitler.

Mozilla made a business decision that the guy was a liability for a public non-profit. That's capitalism, not totalitarianism.

The East Germany comparison made sense and your comment about capitalism also made sense. Mozilla itself might very well have simply made a reasonable business decision. Many comments in this thread, though, say that it's fine to have an unpopular opinion as long as you don't mind the consequences. It's fine for the people who disagree with you to punish you for having your opinion. That certainly invites the comparison with East Germany.

The Hitler thing is uncalled for.

"I don't want to do business with a company which has Eich as a CEO" is rather not the same as the Stasi. It's closer to US sentiment during the Red Scare of "I won't do business with any company which employes a member of the Communist Party." (The US still has a number of anti-Communist laws still on the books that I consider reprehensible.)

Or even closer to people in Northern Ireland still who will choose or avoid a Catholic/Protestant-owned store because of strong Unionist/Nationalist beliefs, even when the store itself has no basis.

Or a boycott on a chain of stores in the US where the owner contributes to anti-immigration policies, even when the chain itself has taken no political stance.

These later ones fall squarely under a right of free association. The East Germany comparison does not. That's why this comparison is malarkey.

I'm curious why you think the East German and US situations during the Cold War were all so different from the perspective of what the comparison was talking about.

The Stasi was run by the government.

With the Red Scare (which started decades before the Cold War), the government was involved early on, and at a high level. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare for some of the details of what happened in the 1920s. Senator McCarthy of course used the bully pulpit to push anti-communist policies. The House Un-American Activities Committee played a key role in starting the Hollywood blacklist.

Of course there were certainly non-government pressures as well. People were anti-bolshevik and worried that the US would be overthrown just like Russia was. Others saw anti-Communism as a way to frighten people, and use that freight as a way to gain power. But without the government we wouldn't have had laws like the Taft–Hartley Act, which for 18 years prohibited union leaders from being members of the Communist Party. The Communist Control Act of 1954 is still on the books.

With Eich there's absolutely no government involvement, and the opposition is based on the right of association. Some Mozilla employees, some volunteers, some citizens, and some organizations don't want to associate themselves with Mozilla.

With East Germany, the police wanted to be involved in the actions of dissenters, and had the power to do so. With the Red Scares, the US government also used their power to force others to not associate with Communists. But with Eich .. what power do the dissenters have other than their right of free association?

That's why these cases are very different.

It's a public perception and media job. Being popular is literally the job description. We're not talking about some poor persecuted office worker who just happens to hold unpopular views and now can't hold a job anymore.

Mel Gibson ruined his career with unpopular statements, Tom Cruise nearly did, and nobody started talking about the Stasi then. The Stasi comment was completely uncalled for itself, a Godwin rejoinder was begging to be made.

> "Many comments in this thread, though, say that it's fine to have an unpopular opinion as long as you don't mind the consequences. It's fine for the people who disagree with you to punish you for having your opinion. That certainly invites the comparison with East Germany."

Eich went beyond merely having and expressing an unpopular opinion. He took action to support the effort to have his opinion forced upon others by the government. He couldn't restrain himself to respectful disagreement, and that's why he's suffering more severe consequences.

For a long time, "equal rights" for gay people was an unpopular opinion. Through action, gay rights have been forced upon others by the government. Why didn't gay people just restrain themselves to respectful disagreement?

You are advocating a double standard. Why is it ok for people to support "gay rights" being forced upon others by the government, but not ok for people to support traditional marriage values being forced upon others by the government? In either case, there are people who do not want the government to force those opinions upon them. So, if the majority is going one way, you're saying the minority should do nothing other than "respectfully disagree"?

The East Germany comparison is actually quite appropriate here.

That's not analogous. Brendan Eich materially supported a current threat to freedom. A few decades ago it would be as if you were writing checks to an anti-miscegenation organization. At time, plenty of people would have said "What's the big deal? It's a valid opinion." and yet it is just as clear that's wrong.

Plenty of people on this forum have radical political philosophies, ranging from anarcho-capitalist to communist. Some of them are probably far more radical than Brendan Eich, who might be utterly mild in his politics otherwise. And yet because they are not speaking out against individual rights, all these bomb-throwing radicals coexist.

Deleted comment

Dude, no offense, but this thread is packed full of overheated hyperbole. This comment seems like a minor one to pick out of the herd.

Fair enough and no offense at all. I'll delete it.

I'm commenting on this thread because it's the only one I can comment on.

Whether or not it's appropriate for the duplicates of a controversial thread to be deleted, you've effectively squashed all productive conversation on a massive, contemporary topic.

You would have an excellent point if the conversation were productive, but it's the opposite of productive. Nor has it been "squashed".

Such conversations predictably and egregiously violate all of Hacker News' values, especially those of intellectual substance and personal civility. Pinpoint interventions, like I've been making in less inflamed threads, have no hope of working on these, so we have to do something else. Doing nothing is not an option; neither is killing discussions outright on subjects that are, after all, on topic for HN.

If the community were capable of discussing this kind of subject maturely, we wouldn't think of intervening. But it's been so painfully clear for so long that that isn't so, that in my view the thing we can perhaps be faulted for is taking so long to deal with it. That's a measure of how reluctant we are to intervene.

My opinion is that it should have been all contained to the first big thread, which should have been moderated such that it stayed on the front page.

This is a major topic, with major ramifications for tech, and it's going to be discussed.

True, most of the discussion isn't productive, but it's still better to let it happen, and to focus it all in one place instead of it being scattered around.

My opinion is not all that far from your opinion. When that thread fell very low in rank, I lightened its penalty for that reason. There's no fine-grained control over rank, so it's a bit hard to calibrate.

Nobody's going to stop discussion from happening, but discussion that repeatedly, predictably violates HN values can't be handled the same way as isolated comments. If I try to respond everywhere that the HN guidelines are violated in those threads... well, it's impossible. I actually tried in one place, and someone immediately asked "why here?"... which was such a good point that I just deleted it. (Edit: oh yeah, it was this very thread!)

Yeah, it was me, the same person in both instances. :-)

I agree it's it a tough call. There's a ton of inflammatory comments on both sides of the issue, and it's both predictable and impossible to moderate on a practical level.

Often I get annoyed at the obvious flamebait political stories on the front page. They usually have a lot of back and forth that's just people talking their side, saying nothing that we haven't all heard before. Not much plus to offset the minus of the flamewar.

This one felt different, though, since it's one of the biggest people in tech and one of the biggest companies. And I personally feel it will have ramifications for years to come in the tech business world.

I don't know. What can you do when a topic really does merit discussion on HN, but most of it will be a flamewar?

Maybe fencing it all in one place is the best of no perfect choices...

This one felt different, though, since it's one of the biggest people in tech and one of the biggest companies

Yes. That's what I didn't get at first, and needed feedback in order to see. It seems obvious now, of course. But I'm not really reading the stories or threads for content—I'm thinking about the site, and don't have the time and/or the brain cells to do that as well as process the news itself the way I used to. This is a bummer—especially when the "news" involves kdb+ or a new paper on JIT compilation—but it's ok, as long as we can actually make HN better. In this case, though, it caused me to miss something that actually mattered for HN. Dang, as we say!

Could you simply freeze it and allow the users to make their own decisions?

I don't know what you mean by "freeze it". Could you explain?

Leave it on the front page but disable commenting.