Hacker News Reader

Comment by chc | Hacker News Reader

> A great many people temporarily couldn't get married because that one man paid good money to make it so.

That is not remotely true. There were thousands of people stumping and many people donating tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Eich's donation wasn't even a hundredth of a percent of Prop. 8's support.

View on HN

Okay, that's fair, I'm clearly exaggerating.

But that actually makes the comparison even better! Lots of people pushed for prop 8, which in turn affected lots of people. Lots of people complained about Eich, which in turn affected... Eich.

Yet the GGP is focusing on the masses who tried to pass a constitutional amendment to prevent Eich from being CEO. Wait, no, I must be confused.

I'd say Eich's deposition affects a lot of people ... the users of all Mozilla software. We've discarded the technical brilliance and direction of this man because a few noisy people disagreed with his political beliefs, which he expressed politely and quietly, never intentionally inflaming anyone. He was "exposed" by witch hunters for supporting a very mainstream and normal political position. If we're going to throw away the technical expertise of anyone who disagrees with us, we're going to have a bad time.

I have strong emotional investment in Mozilla, because they fight to do the right thing, not just do whatever's mainstream and normal. Prop 8 was emphatically not the right thing. Eich has fought some of the battles I sympathize with, and I certainly hope he keeps doing that, but I'm not comfortable seeing him as head of the company.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com