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Comment by ewoodrich | Hacker News Reader

I fail to see how a CEO facing criticism for personal political contributions to be evidence of some sort of "gay liberal agenda". He has every right to donate to Prop 8 or whatever cause he likes. He has every right to vocally advocate his position.

He does not have a right to be the public facing chief executive of a private organization. I would see no issue with a pro-gay rights CEO being forced to leave Hobby Lobby or something of that nature. It's not censorship to be unable to represent an organization that is expected to have a certain political/social/cultural alignment.

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I have a problem with the very idea that a mostly apolitical organization like Mozilla should have a sweeping political/social/cultural alignment.

If Eich were opposed to net neutrality, or against open internet standards, etc, those would be damning beliefs for someone in the Mozilla CEO spot. Gay rights, however, have nothing whatsoever to do with Mozilla. (I agree with you that Hobby Lobby would fire a pro-gay-rights CEO, but we probably shouldn't be taking lessons on reasonable behavior from Hobby Lobby.)

If Mozilla does represent any kind of broad social alignment, I would hope that it would be one in favor of diversity of opinion and free speech.

Bingo.

It seems that some Mozilla employees and members of the public deluded themselves into thinking Mozilla was some kind of political charity fighting for social causes, rather than being a technology company.

No one is deluded into thinking Mozilla is a political charity.

They most certainly are a technology company and everyone knows that, so are the companies behind Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. As far as I know none of the CEO's behind those companies are openly anti-gay marriage.

The public, and the employees of Mozilla have expressed that this is not an appropriate view for the CEO to hold and will move to other offerings if he is left. He used his freedom of speech to speak out with his wallet against gay marriage. Just as the consumers and employees have expressed that they will use the free market to go to competitors if he is not ousted.

> and the employees of Mozilla

More precisely, a few employees. A similar number of employees are clearly on record as saying they don't agree with Brendan's position but don't think it's incompatible with him being CEO. A vastly larger number of employees didn't say anything in public at all, not least because many of them (e.g. all the non-gay ones) could not do so without being accused of supporting the views in question.

Of course the employees who did speak out in favor of Brendan staying as CEO got death threats for their troubles (see bottom of http://www.twobraids.com/2014/03/the-mozilla-ceo.html for example), because that's apparently how debate goes on the internet nowadays.

free speech

Which includes the right of others to criticize your speech.

If I get up on a soapbox and preach something you don't agree with, so you get up on a soapbox of your own and preach your disagreement, I am not being persecuted or denied my freedom. Nor am I being persecuted or denied my freedom if your arguments convince a majority of people to disagree with or choose not to associate with me.

This is, ironically, a fundamentally conservative position, that maximizing individual rights to speak up is what produces the best results, by causing the best ideas/most persuasive arguments to prevail.

> This is, ironically, a fundamentally conservative position

Isn't it much more a libertarian position? Christopher Hitchens was a vociferous supporter of 1st Amendment rights, but you'd hardly call him a conservative.

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