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Comment by Aqueous | Hacker News Reader

The link between any particular issue and what Eich's day-to-day responsibility would have been can be made as tenuously as we want. I could argue six-degrees-of-separation-style that every belief he held is relevant to his position. The basic point remains: we shouldn't be punishing people for holding beliefs that we disagree with, or coerce them into renouncing their disagreement in order to remain in our good graces. That's not democracy and it's not how you win a policy argument. No matter how right or wrong the belief in question is, such policing creates a hostile environment where people are afraid to argue, debate, and say what they really think.

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> No matter how right or wrong the belief in question is, such policing creates a hostile environment where people are afraid to argue, debate, and say what they really think.

What if his belief was the blacks should not be allowed to get married? would you have the same opinion on this then? Would there even be a discussion?

Yup, same belief. Because that archaic thinking is going away. I don't care if he donated $1000 to the KKK. If it isn't affecting his role as CEO, then who cares. But I support gay marriage and I still eat at Chic Filet, so what do I know.

What if his belief was something that you agreed with, and he got fired for it? Would have you the same opinion then? Would there be any discussion?

That is the problem with the ad hominem culture in America. Just because a person is racist/whatever doesn't necessarily mean that s/he is a bad person. We should actually be open to people who have these ideas. We don't have to hurt people to change them.

An environment where people are allowed to debate over even the most atrocious ideas is much more productive and inline with what the ideal democracy is.

I would have loved if Mozilla had an internal, open, philosophically rigorous, discussion that employees would participate in. Brendan would be forced to change his mind, not by force, but by reasoning.

Unfortunately, this is just my rosy way of thinking.

The real question here is whether democracy (i.e. the vote) is taken after influence games have been played out and resolved, or before.

I think the vote should be taken after influence has been applied, because I think part of what defines a person is their influence (it is perhaps the most important part, especially in questions of politics like this one).

I'm not sure that punishing is the right word here. people who did what they did, whether it be his board leaving, or people uninstalling firefox,or op-ed letters or forum comments. All that is not punishment, that is nobody was deprived of anything. Negative public sentiment is a tough thing. But I think that it actually represents democracy quite well. Democracy can do the morally wrong thing, it can keep a minority enslaved for example.

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