Brendan Eich, We’ve Failed You. I’m Sorry. | Hacker News Reader

Brendan Eich, We’ve Failed You. I’m Sorry.

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154 pointsanotherhacker246 comments

We haven't failed him. While the old "may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" trope gets used here, it doesn't mean you need to protect people from the consequences of their speech.

Brendan Eich can donate to whatever causes he wishes, and rightfully so, but there is rightly no protection from the public opinion based consequences arising from those donations. Equally, justifications such as "meritocracy" imply that being a CEO is a very narrow thing - it isn't, it's a position of authority and leadership, and if you can't (near universally) inspire confidence in the people you're intended to lead, that is a problem with your ability to function as CEO.

Thank you for stating this in a polite and straightforward manner – that is also my take on this issue.

I struggle with the opposition to this move when the reaction against Eich's position is de facto evidence that he would not have been able to perform in the role.

But the (feared) reaction against gays in the military was taken as argument for denying them entry. It is a bit of a circular argument.

I agree that people shouldn't be protected from the consequences of what they say or do, and I don't agree with Eich's point of view.

However, I feel like the reaction to his becoming CEO and trying to get him to step down were unjustified.

I believe that someone shouldn't be judged on his political or religious affiliation when being considered for a new job or a new role. I have political convictions which are perpendicular to some of my colleagues ideas, and guess what, we get along just fine at work.

I fail to see how his opinion on same-sex marriage (or his sponsorship of conservative politicians in general) would be a problem for guiding Mozilla forward. As long as he doesn't use Mozilla as a tool for his personal agenda.

Some opinions are very difficult to separate from behaviour. When you hold the view that someone is less entitled because of their sexual orientation, it is probably difficult to prevent that from affecting your relationships with some members of your workforce, however well-intentioned you may be, however hard you might strive.

What about if Eich had donated money to an organisation trying to stop black people getting married? Would you still think him entitled to be the CEO of a commercial organisation, without dissent?

I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch. Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on. The fact that he feel marriage is a bond between two members of a different gender does not necessarily mean he's going to actively discriminate members of the LGBT community in a professional environment.

It's of course possible that he might, but several things make me feel like he should have been given a chance to prove himself: * He made a public statement clarifying his personal beliefs would not affect his work at Mozilla. * He is being accused of discriminating at Mozilla, while as far as we know, no such thing has happened (yet). * Given the amount of backlash he has suffered because of his 6 year old contribution to some campaign, I'm sure he's smart enough to handle matters in which he might be strongly biased by delegating them to someone else.

I was outraged when his contribution came to light a few years ago, but I honestly feel like he's getting too harsh a treatment for what he did.

"I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch."

Why?

Because, as he wrote just after that: "Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on. The fact that he feel marriage is a bond between two members of a different gender does not necessarily mean he's going to actively discriminate members of the LGBT community in a professional environment."

People had (and have) a lot of strong and often (from my point of view) old fashioned views on ethnicity.

If I said that I don't think a black employee should be allowed to have the same voting rights as me (something which was historically the case and was felt to be reasonable by - for a long time - the majority), how much faith would you have in my not activity discriminating against them in a professional environment?

Less than I would have if you had spoken about marriage rights.

The difference being that to deny a group voting rights, it means you have something against that group specifically.

Whereas for marriage, it could just be that your notion of marriage as a custom (how you think marriage should be) is incompatible with the group performing it.

OK, let's make it direct then.

If you found a minister of a non-specific religion who refused to marry to black two people just because he just didn't see marriage in his faith as something that happened between black people, how much faith would you have that he had nothing against black people, that it was just about he saw marriage?

Well, if his religion stated so, then I would have no reason to doubt him.

Religion can have any arbitrary rule. No marriage for X group. No priesthood for Y group. That doesn't necessarily mean that it also sees Y group in a specific light otherwise.

And what if members of his religion has mixed views on the subject?

This is part of the problem with it as a religious argument - most religions don't have a unified view of the subject. To bring it back to the matter at hand there are plenty of Christian's who have no problem with gay marriage so is it really a Christian view, or just a view held by some Christians (which is a somewhat different thing)?

Oh, and religion may have any arbitrary rule but that doesn't mean we have to accept it. There is more biblical justification for stoning than for homophobia yet we're not on side with stoning.

> I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch.

How, apart from perhaps ease of concealment, is there any difference between the two?

The Mozilla Manifesto (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/) talks about openness, equality, community and an Internet for All Humans.

The public head of contributed to a campaign aimed at removing rights from a significant part of the population. This wasn't off-hand remark or ill-received joke, his intentions cannot be misinterpreted in this case.

If you can put yourself in LGBT shoes, can you imagine working for Mozilla? What if it had to be closely with Mr. Eich? Could you be his PA?

Maybe if gay rights weren't at the forefront of public opinion right now, this could have slipped by unnoticed for a while. But especially now that it did, do you see a company with that manifesto keeping a CEO like Mr. Eich onboard?

Team Rarebit, two developers who are a gay couple, have made several blog posts about how support for Prop 8 affected them from an immigration perspective, which of course had both personal and professional consequences.

They also posted about how Eich's resignation is not their preferred outcome, and they would have preferred to see him acknowledge that his past actions had an impact on the Mozilla team and community that extended beyond personal feelings http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/04/03/a-sad-victory/

"Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on."

One of those "old-fashioned opinions" has historically been an opposition to "miscegenation".

On the flip side, I would expect a vegan who donates money to organizations trying to stop state subsidies to meat production still be working fine with carnivores.

Definitely some very significant differences here; I'll just mention the most significant of all: people choose to be vegan.

Also, few people in Western countries got persecuted, ridiculed, bashed or killed because they were godless carnivores. In recent history.

People don't choose to have homosexual sexual relationships, or choose to redefine marriage to embrace non-hetero pairings?

Because Mozilla relies on donations of time and labour and open source contributions. If you can't get people to contribute, Mozilla is in trouble.

Actually, they make most of their money from referral traffic.

"The majority of Mozilla’s revenue is generated from search and commerce functionality included in our Firefox product through all major search partners including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, eBay and others."

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2012/f...

If people stop contributing, Mozilla is financially fine. If they stop using the browser, Mozilla is in trouble.

[Edited for clarity]

If those partnerships were suspended, Mozilla would be in trouble. But that's not going to happen... moot now that Eich is out.

Notice I said "donations of time and labour". Not financial donations. Is most of mozilla's programming, bug tracking, promotions, evangelizaing, tech support, done by people who are salaries employees of Mozilla Corp? Or the wider "open source community"

Andrew Sullivan (who can hardly be accused of being a gay basher) put it quite succinctly and very eloquent:

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/04/03/the-hounding-of-br...

I have to agree.

It's pretty well established at this point that those who scream the loudest about how important "tolerance" is often prove to be among the most intolerant in practice.

The same is holding true for those who are against "discrimination". They'll often have absolutely no qualms about using one form of discrimination in their quest to bring retribution to somebody else who may have engaged in something they consider to be discriminatory behavior.

Could you please provide facts and citations that support your claim that "those who scream the loudest... are the most intolerant in practice"?

Well, this whole incident involving Eich is a pretty good example.

If the only thing that is not tolerated is intolerance, intolerance will cease to exist.

How exactly do you figure that? The act of not tolerating intolerance is itself intolerance. It will always be around, if we take your approach. The only way to full tolerance is to be tolerant of intolerance.

Are people still blowing this whistle?

Tolerance for people is not the same as tolerance for speech, or tolerance for actions. You are not a victim if people disapprove of your bigotry - your speech may be protected, but you are not protected from the consequences of your speech (and that includes the opinions of others).

People will find any reason to view themselves as victims when something they do or a person they agree with is criticised. That people are crying about "discrimination", because someone who actively worked to oppress people was rightly criticised for those actions, quite frankly astounds me.

Besides which, people aren't just criticising him for seeking to strip one the basic and fundamental liberties a modern society gives its citizens, purely on the basis of who they are (which he is entitled to do). They're criticising Mozilla, a company which strives towards the principles of openness and inclusiveness, for picking someone to represent them who doesn't represent the values of the organisation.

So you show your inclusiveness by ousting those whose conscience conflicts with your political views?

Inclusiveness means not discriminating against people based on who they are. It's the very simple idea that white people, black people, gay people and straight people are all people - they are entitled the same rights and the same protections.

Inclusiveness doesn't mean that you have to tolerate a person's actions. Damn right I'm going to criticise someone whose actions hurt people - they're not entitled to have me agree with their "conscience", nor are they entitled to my support for their actions.

Do you understand how discrimination against a person and condemnation of things that a person does are separate concepts?

This is really something when you consider Sullivan's previous writing about Prop 8. Just one example I quickly googled: [1]

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/10/the-mo...

I read the Sullivan piece but Sullivan (and you too, presumably) seem to think this is a First Amendment issue. I'm not understanding where his right to speak, or to act, have been limited in any way. Please explain.

Are you and Sullivan thinking that the First Amendment gives you the right to free speech and, additionally, also guarantees no response? Or maybe it guarantees that the response must be along the lines of, "oh well ... you have your opinion and I have mine ... now we'll just go on with each of us having our separate views." Does the First Amendment prevent me from having a particular response, even if the response is what you personally would consider viscous and outsized.

Again, please explain how this is a First Amendment issue?

This is a bollocks piece of writing that makes no argument or substantive point bend saying "I'm disgusted by this." Please don't promote it.

The idea that Eich has been "scalped" is ludicrous. He received a bunch of public pressure because of his controversial (for the community and post) views, he failed to deal with it, and he resigned.

Sullivan and yourself seem to imply that no public figure should be subject to pressure because of unpopular personal views, which is obviously not achievable or desirable.

The story is different when it comes to open source. OSS projects are communal in nature and much more democratic than their non-OSS counterparts. It should be no surprising to see the dynamics of state politics, such as examination of unrelated actions from actors, apply to OSS communities.

On that note, you can only be the dictator and force everyone to look at the bits alone, when you have something people need or you have endless patience to outlast your competition. This would be the Linus strategy. I dont think Mozilla has this option. ALSO, both consumers and employees in non-OSS establishments are making on CSR and meta-politics an priority. This will continue to increase in significance.

Wrong. As far as I know, he has not divulged his religious or political views. We do not know if he is Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, atheist or pastafarian. We do not know if he is a Democrat or a Republican.

We do know, however, that he was so incensed by the ideas of gays getting the right to marriage that he donated a very large sum of money to help fight the legal battle against it.

That speaks volumes about his personal bigotry. He was not being attacked for his religious or political views. He was attacked because he wants to discriminate against an entire class of people.

He's donated extensively to his local Tea Party candidate and to Pat Buchanan, so we do have data on the political question.

... and in USA there should be no free right to political association? Are you going to have a vote on this or is democracy a no-no in USA now too?

I was answering the question.

Arguably. He could just put more weight in one category than every other category combined, and Buchanan might match that category better than any other candidates.

Unless Eich actually makes a statement on his political views, we don't really know anything.

How much money did he donate?

Barack Obama was so incensed at the idea of gays getting the right to marriage, that he 'stood' on a national stage, while running for the highest office in the land, and declared that marriage is between a man and a woman - an open declaration of bigotry. Not all bigotry is treated equally apparently.

Not all constituencies are created equal. That bigotry is still accepted from a US president does not mean we should excuse it in other circumstances.

"Incensed", "personal bigotry"...

Calling names is calling names is calling names, nothing else. It adds nothing to the conversation, it subtracts everything (and by the way, suggest that the person using them has not much of a clear idea how to defend his ideas, and I am not saying that you suffer from this problem).

By the way, it was the State of California that carried out the poll. Is the state 'bigot'?

I guess it should be illegal to do that if the vote were straightaway against someone's basic rights. Or am I missing something and if enough people deem it right one could get a poll on 'the right of colored people to go to University'?

"I'm for peace after we kill or imprison all the bad people."

"I'm for democracy after everyone agrees with me."

Soon in order to have a referendum on the ballot it will need to be voted on (to get it on a ballot) of which a simple majority must approve it. But, if "it should be illegal to do that if the vote were straightaway against someone's basic rights" were implemented then the referendum vote to get it on the ballot would become illegal too.

By the way, who defines "basic rights"? The majority? A minority in "power"? The who get to define "rights" are the ones that can defend their claims. Those that can defend their claims require weapons. This is what Kings did. They made claims to rights. Like, "I claim the right to the land you live on!" To which another king or the people would say "Bullshit!" Then if they couldn't amicable resolve their claims they went to war and defended their claims (whether their claims were moral or not). The outcome would speak for itself: the victor's claims were correct because they were able to defend their claims.

Our country was founded on protecting minorities not the majority. The greatest minority is the individual. I think we should be protecting individuals from tangible HARM not protecting "rights" and privileges which change over time depending on the whim of the majority or society.

Yes, we all have the right to choose to be sexually monogamous with another individual, pool our resources, and take care of and raise our offspring. We don't have a right to demand tax breaks or that third parties take care of our spouses and children. Get government completely out of marriage.

Also all the insulting shows that the possible vision of 'marriage as a social institution' has not entered into their heads.

The example of 'property' is good because it is also a social institution and it is something which one cannot take for granted (there are societies ---hippies--- which deny the existence of it). When some minority claims their right to property (for example, the 'poor') or claim that the 'right to property' is harming them, what shall we do?

Are we bigots because we insist on the right to 'property'?

Wikipedia estimates the campaign in support of Prop 8 raised $39.0 million. $1000 is not a "very large sum of money". It's a rounding error. Likely a rounding error for Eich's personal finances as well if he's at the level of CEO or potential CEO.

If you are going to attack Eich, do it with the known facts. Six years ago, he gave a $1000 donation to a $39 million political cause. His mood ("incensed") at the time is not known. His actions since then are mostly not known. His publicly stated position is full support for LGBT individuals in basically every area but marriage. His current views on whether homosexual marriages should be legal are not explicitly known. His personal feelings toward LGBT individuals (I've seen the word "hate" tossed around many times) are not known.

That is why I, and so many other people, have a problem with the response to his appointment as CEO. He made one known donation to a movement against homosexual marriage. It was an amount of money equal to a rounding error at most. This was six years ago. When appointed, he publicly promised to fully support LGBT individuals at Mozilla, including maintaining health benefits for same sex partners. He was actively promoting an initiative to bring LGBT and other potentially marginalized individuals into tech.

Why does someone who is actively supporting LGBT individuals above and beyond the legal requirement need to recant from a small, legal donation to a political cause? Why does he need to change his opinion to match the popular opinion? Why can he not simply keep his opinions to himself, go on actively supporting LGBT individuals at work, and stop making public donations opposing homosexual marriage? Because from all appearances, that was his plan.

My problem is that the tech community is more interested in his personal feelings than his actions. He has committed to supporting LGBT individuals at work. That is an action, or at least a promise of action. Whether he apologizes or changes his mind about homosexual marriage is a feeling. He was effectively ousted from his job not for his actions (because if he had said he no longer felt that way and apologized for his donation, he likely would have been able to stay), but for his feelings, his opinions. He was forced out because he apparently still felt his donation was good and that homosexuals shouldn't get married. Note that he did nothing to act on those apparent feelings while CEO. His crime was having the feelings, not acting on them. If he had convinced everyone he was now a supporter of homosexual marriage, he would still be CEO, even given his past donation and even if he had done nothing to counteract it.

Holding the correct beliefs is apparently now a job requirement at Mozilla.

I guess lots of folks weren't convinced that was 'his plan'. He was unconvincing, unrepentant even. That's critical - if he had convinced folks his bigotry days were behind him, maybe it would have worked out differently.

And $1000 is significant to me. It pays for print ads, or hours of activist pay. Doesn't matter how big a pile of money you put it it; it's still effective at spreading the message.

better go followup with everyone who donated and make sure they quit

In your own example, you (a) aren't head of the organization and (b) are not, I assume, advocating a view that some of your colleagues should be second class citizens.

Well said, every time I heard someone use that excuse it comes to my mind what would it be if he put money on an association like the kkk?. Those people would say too "I'm sorry to judge you for being a fucking racist"?. Because right now they're saying "I'm sorry to judge you because you're a fucking homophobic".

I am seeing this.being.thrown.aromasso much, not.only in US but here in Brazil.too,.that when someone try to.insult me.calling me homophobic, I will reply: "yes, with pride"

Seriously, homophobia was supposed to mean "strong fear or.aversion to homosexuals" not "opinion that homosexuals dislike"

Correction, it's an irrational fear of homosexuals. You have absolutely no reason to fear them.

Often an irrational fear leading to anger and hatred. Or is it the other way around?

and if you do, you might be interested to know there's experimental evidence of a correlation between homophobia in men and physical arousal to male homosexual stimuli.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8772014

And what? The implication is that you'd like to throw your lot in with the "those who don't consider homosexuality to be right are really closet homosexuals" deception.

If such papers bear out (I've seen one such study but didn't read this one) then are we supposed to say "we should just follow our basic sexual stimuli to determine our ethics".

Riding the bus often gives me an erection, I must be bus-sexual; my right to marry a bus must be enshrined in law ...

>if he put money on an association like the kkk?

Great comparison, it's not like the KKK murdered thousands of people or anything.

And thousands of people have been murdered in the name of homophobia. But this isn't really a numbers game; if, in the TWENTY-FIRST century, anyone is murdered, attacked, insulted, or treated in any way differently because of their sexual orientation, that is an outrage.

Good point, it's not like members of the LGBT community have ever been beaten and killed for being LGBT.... Oh wait...

Yes he didn't donate (directly) to a group that goes around beating and killing homosexuals but it's disingenuous to pretend they (KKK and homophobics) don't have plenty in common. First of which being hate.

So. to be clear, you're saying Brendan Eich is a homophobe?

Well Debate.org seems to agree with what I think you are trying to say which is "being against gay marriage does not make you a homophobe"[0], of course Slate would disagree with you [1], and The Atlantic would agree with you [2]. I could go on but I won't, I'll just tell you what I think: yes, It does.

And yes, he was a homophobe, by giving to a group of people trying to destroy human rights for homosexuals. I think people can change but the complete lack of response on that specific issue from Brendan Eich makes me assume he still is.

[0] http://www.debate.org/opinions/does-opposing-same-sex-marria...

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2013/12/16/gay_marriage_o...

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/being-ag...

Okay, let's go with a more direct comparison. Say he funds the campaign for a successful constitutional referendum banning interracial marriage. Do you honestly think he'd be able to stay as CEO in that case?

That direct comparison doesn't work either: The herd mentality in religious circles is that because same-sex couples can’t produce biological children together, they shouldn't be recognized as marriages. This is rational if you see the institution of marriage as a state-recognized union between that's only between a man and a woman, which has long social and cultural roots.

Bans on interracial marriages, on the other hand, are just justified by racism and not objective facts.

Eich is ignorant, but I'm pretty sure he's not a bigot.

http://www.benmoskowitz.com/?p=971

You're aware that the religious argument, and the IT WILL DESTOY SOCIETY argument, and the "unsuitable for raising children" arguments were all used in the context of interracial marriage in the US in the 60s, right?

Incidentally, the idea that marriage has long social and cultural roots is also kind of dubious. If you look at marriage in 1800, it's essentially an entirely different arrangement to marriage today; notably, it lead to effective legal erasure of the wife as a person.

You don't seem to understand: they can be rational and maintain that a relationship between two people categorically incapable of producing children together biologically, two people of the same sex, can’t be a marriage.

It's ignorant, places way too much emphasis on sex rather than committment and love, and is justified by stupid ideas like marriage being "reserved" for heterosexual couples for the purpose of procreation, but it's rational. It also leads to seperate but equal legal frameworks, which are bullshit.

Bans on interracial marriage were irrational, not relying on a single objective fact.

What I would like: abolish state-recognized marriages altogether. Civil partnerships for everyone, let churches squabble about marriage if someone wants a ceremony, and they can enter into a partnership for benefits.

What's practical: modifying our legal framework for marriage across the states.

My point is that people who opposed interracial marriage thought that they had a rational basis for doing so (even though it didn't make sense); similarly, people who oppose gay marriage today also think they have rational bases for doing so, even though they don't make sense.

> they can be rational and maintain that a relationship between two people categorically incapable of producing children together biologically, two people of the same sex, can’t be a marriage

Pretty much nobody actually makes this argument, though. Probably because infertile people get married all the time.

>My point is that people who opposed interracial marriage thought that they had a rational basis for doing so (even though it didn't make sense); similarly, people who oppose gay marriage today also think they have rational bases for doing so, even though they don't make sense.

Not really, as I said before there’s no biological basis for refusing to accept an interracial relationship as a marriage.

I'm not going to continue defending views that aren't my own, so if you're interested in reading what exactly "traditional marriage" defenders are talking about then try this review: http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Georg... (pdf)

That's explicitly not rational, unless you are going to deny marriage rights to opposite sex couples who are "categorically incapable of producing children together biologically."

"a relationship between two people categorically incapable of producing children together biologically, [the female of whom has had a hysterectomy following uterine cancer], can’t be a marriage."

Your point contradicts itself; first you mention that marriage is about biological reproduction (which would annul marriages between infertile couples?), then you say it's about society and culture, then you say it's about objective facts.

No: They believe that marriage is a union that's only between a man and a woman, which has long social and cultural roots. Justified by the fact that same-sex couples categorically can't reproduce with each other.

Of course these objections to same-sex marriage have a slight problem: egg and sperm donations. But it's not exactly typical biological reproduction.

It's pretty stupid, but not everyone who holds these objections is a homophobic bigot. And, to be clear, I'm not attempting to act as an apologist for whatever views Eich holds: I'm just trying to refute the direct comparison between same-sex and interacial marriage bans. Because it's in every thread multiple times, and usually with a KKK reference which is absurd.

There was really no way this situation would have ended well regardless of how it turned out, because both sides seem incapable of communicating.

Eich is literally Hitler. He even has a pretty German-sounding name. Heil Eich?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

i'm sure if he was anti-gay, all those gays working for him for 6 years as a cto would have noticed a little earlier, everyone was surprised when they heard about this in 2012. and it didn't stop people from using mozilla products then. if you don't think that the cto of a large tech research company has at least a little say in who gets hired, you need a reality check.

let's not kid ourselves. someone wanted him out of the way, and we all played our role. congratulations for being the toys at hand of the powers that be.

i'm really curious who the next cto/ceo of mozilla is going to be. IN FACT I'm worried on who it might be.

here's a crosspost from recode:

> I am in full support of gay marriage, I'm against prop 8. But I'm also utterly opposed to railroading people out of work because of personal opinions they hold.

> Today the bullies won. Today tyranny gained a toehold. The next time some religious group throws out an employee or leader because he donated money to planned parenthood or gay rights group, remember this day for you laid the foundation.

Crap. If he wanted to stay in that position he would have made the standard "Mistakes were made.. I've changed/learnt/grown.. " speech. He didn't, which didn't inspire confidence, so he was unfit to lead.

Why does lying inspire confidence in you? You don't appear to account for that he can hold a view that opposes same-sex marriage and also want to continue doing his job. Why is that not allowed in USA?

He didn't just hold a view. He actively attempted to detract happiness from the lives of others.

Yes...this guy is the devil himself, I bet he spends his free time wondering how he could make other people's life worse.

Yes, quite evidently he does.

Proof? Or is all you have his donation in favor of Prop 8? because if that's it, you can't claim a trend with one data point...

Are you saying that you believe he did not spend his free time deciding to donate?

Are you saying that one data point means you have enough data to infer broad actions?

He may have spent some time deciding to donate, he may also have made a snap decision and donated without consideration. You don't know. You also don't know how he spends his free time. You basically know nothing about him. I also know basically nothing about him, but I'm not making broad statements based on one piece of information.

The principle of presumed innocence has been completely ignored when it comes to Eich's personal life. His life is his to do with as he pleases (to an extent). I disagree with his position on gay marriage, I also think that the one data point coupled with his actions this past week say he probably shouldn't be CEO of Mozilla, but I don't know anything else about him, and can't, and shouldn't, make assumptions based on tiny morsels of evidence.

The only realm of Eich's life that I even microscopically care about (I really don't care all that much) is the public realm. As stated, I disagree with him, and think his selection to the CEO position probably wasn't considered enough, but that doesn't mean I'm fit to make comments on his personal life. Nor are you, unless you're closely acquainted with the man.

>"He actively attempted to detract happiness from the lives of others."

Go on.

Those who would have Christians deny Christ and embrace sin do the same: ergo anti-Christians should also lose their jobs?

Those who would have park-walkers deny that walking in a park is enjoyable, and embrace a walk-less life do the same: ergo anti-park-wakers should also lose their jobs?

Perhaps - but the question is silly - because there is no such thing as an anti-park-walker.

Just as I'm not so sure there is such thing as a serious 'anti-Christian'. People who suggest there is no God and call others stupid for believing in a God? Yes, they exist. But anti-Christians that would put money into a political campaign that seeked to change the law so that Christians were forced to deny Christ? No, I don't think those people exist in a any meaningful number.

Anti-gays that want to deny gays the right to marry - yes, quite clearly, they exist in large numbers.

It is allowed. No one forced him to step down. They just expressed their own opinions.

But if he made this speech, it may not have been a lie. We may suspect it would have been, but we would have had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It would also have been a very public statement of position that he could have been held accountable to.

Hey he can go try out for a job at Hobby Lobby or Chick-fil-A, no problem. But in Silicon Valley? No CEO job for him.

No, this statement is crap. If fact, kudos to him for not caving and making some malarkey confession about how he's learned and changed.

> McCarthyism

Give me a break.

Why didnt you link to nazism ? or communism ? Eich is like a jew persecuted by this army of pro gay nazis ... not.

You cant expect us to take what you say seriously after that hyperbole.

Ok, so your premise is that comparing someone to McCarthy is like comparing them to Hitler or Stalin because he got leftists fired for beings leftists (and, occasionally, actual spies and soviet agents). But getting a guy fired for having socially conservative views is fine?

Strawman, you are misrepresenting what I just said. My point was writing hyperboles and comparing what is not comparable doesnt strengthen one's case.

> McCarthyism

Bring that up if it turns out that he is blacklisted across the valley, and unable to land a new job. Given the number of millionaire VC's alone that have come out supporting him on Twitter, I kind of doubt he'll face anything resembling McCarthy level persecution.

If you don't see the difference between people being upset about having a known supporter of discrimination in a role where he is shaping public opinion about an organisation like Mozilla, and the person ultimately responsible for a workplace vs. someone being blacklisted across an entire industry, or worse, and paraded in front of congressional committees to confess their "sins", then that shows a scary lack of understanding of just how nasty McCarthyism was.

>Bring that up if it turns out that he is blacklisted across the valley, and unable to land a new job.

Well, McCarthy era victims were also able to find the odd job here and there. McCarthyism is about the practice, not about if the effects are in full force or not.

I wouldn't be surprised if no major company would want to hire him for a public position now, lest they suffer the same public backslash.

>If you don't see the difference between people being upset about having a known supporter of discrimination in a role where he is shaping public opinion about an organisation like Mozilla, and the person ultimately responsible for a workplace vs. someone being blacklisted across an entire industry, or worse, and paraded in front of congressional committees to confess their "sins", then that shows a scary lack of understanding of just how nasty McCarthyism was.

Actually, it's the above that shows lack of understanding of what was wrong about McCarthyism. It wasn't that the blacklisting was total ("throughout the industry"), it was that the blacklisting existed at all. Even if people would only got fired from one job and left alone after that, McCarthyism would have been as bad.

It also shows a lack of understanding of the ramifications against Eich. Take the top players that could hire a well known Javascript/TCO guy like Eich. Would Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Opera, Abobe, etc hire him now? Their PR persons will tell them not to touch him with a ten-foot pole.

As for being "paraded to confess their "sins"" that has already been done -- Eich was forced to confess his sins in public posts and promise he'll be good (as if he gave any indication that he was bad in the workplace all these years in this regard). Well, in his case the commitee wasn't "congressional", it was a tech media one. I'll give you that.

Hey, there's no civil right to a CEO job. If he's shown himself to be incompetent at the job, he won't get another one.

Igniting a firestorm of protest by contributing significant bucks to support a hate law, is something he could have seen coming a mile away. Well, not the magnitude of the response, but the fact that in Silicon Valley it would be viewed negatively, that's obvious.

So, he doesn't conduct his personal life in a way that can reflect positively on the board and stockholders. So no CEO job for him.

What is your proof that he was discriminating against people, or a "known supporter of discrimination?" Donating $1000 to Prop 8 back in 2008? You do remember that Barack Obama himself was anti gay marriage/pro traditional marriage then. Right? So, are you saying Obama had an epiphany and has suddenly discovered the errors of his ways? Where were you calling for his resignation as a bigot?

You also realize that there are many gay people who are against gay marriage, right? So, now, leaders in the business world have to conform to the most vocal group or else face professional harassment? Because actually agreeing with 50% of the population and the current political leaders isn't enough?

So, when the illegal immigrant situation blows up, are you saying that anyone that supports "legal" immigration and isn't outspoken about it must be professionally disgraced?

Re McCarthyism, this seems particularly relevant: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Anticomm...

Jesus Christ, man. On the one hand, thousands of people lost their status in society and their dignity due in part to Eich misusing his wealth. OTOH, this guy loses one job. Who's the real bully here?

Whoa, that's ridiculous. As the most public embodiment of the organization, wouldn't Mozilla's policies of equality ring hollow if they'd left him in place? His values did not align with the organization. As Jobs always said (perhaps with a bit of false modesty): "The CEO serves at the pleasure of the board." (Side comment about "all those gays" noticing: I can't believe you a genuinely a stranger to opinions and convictions being held in secret.)

>We haven't failed him. While the old "may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" trope gets used here, it doesn't mean you need to protect people from the consequences of their speech.

Actually it means exactly that.

The way you put it ("supporting your right to say it doesn't mean you shouldn't suffer the consequences of your speech") is totally absurd.

"Your right to say it", means exactly the right to say it and NOT suffer consequences.

If we accept "suffering consequences" as orthogonal to "having a right to say it", then we come to the absurd conclusion that even people in the most opressive regime, or those threatened by the Inquisition had "free speech".

They said it, and then, they suffered the consequences (from getting fired to getting set on fire, depending on the period).

Free speech means anybody can say anything, and people supporting his right to say anything, without any personal consequences (other than others potentially disagreeing with him and answering back to what he said).

Anything else is not free speech.

Your thinking here is awkward, confused, conflated and simplistic.

Thanks, I prefer it that way.

At least I give specific arguments about it, not just throw some words like "awkward" and "confused" against a point of view I don't like.

>"Your right to say it", means exactly the right to say it and NOT suffer consequences.

It depends what consequences we're talking about here. There's a difference between the consequence of being thrown in jail for something you said and people thinking less/differently of you because of something you said. I suspect OP was referring to the latter.

Yes, but what happened is the former: there were specific requests for his losing his job, and in the end he had to resign for them.

So, not just people "thinking less of him", but concrete consequences to his income (and hireability).

Basically, for a person with fewer means and, say, a mortage, it would be equivalent of having him go homeless for what he said...

I usually think of free speech in this context to mean freedom from state intervention. The state shouldn't be allowed to treat you differently from others because of what you say.

Here we're talking about how the public's treatment of Mozilla and Eich have changed because of their speech. This is perfectly rational.

To give you a counter example. If we accept that "having a right to it" means never "suffering consequences" then I'm never allowed to form an opinion of a person based on the things they say. I have to think "well he said all those racist things but I've never seen him in a KKK uniform so my opinion is still neutral".

TL;DR On issues of free speech we, the people, can make people suffer consequences as we see fit. The state cannot.

>I usually think of free speech in this context to mean freedom from state intervention. The state shouldn't be allowed to treat you differently from others because of what you say.

No, it was also meant against any kind of intervention. Also from the church for example. Or bigoted crowed. Or lynching.

Take a racist Southern town for example. Is this idea of free speech compatible with the town people giving a black guy a hard time if speaks freely (not hiring him, the ocassional threat, passive agreesive attitude towards him, etc), just because the state is not involved?

>To give you a counter example. If we accept that "having a right to it" means never "suffering consequences" then I'm never allowed to form an opinion of a person based on the things they say

Well, opinion is also free speech (well, thought and speech) itself. Not really talking about that when discussing actual consequences. Or even "I'm not going to buy this guy's book now that he said that".

Do you then support the legitimacy of the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy era? It was a purely private sector action with no government enforcement. Furthermore, communist sympathizers were widely reviled and feared in the society as a whole.

So if I'm your fiance and you suddenly find out that, say, I am a member of the KKK, you can't decide not to marry me (that would after all be a consequence beyond simply disagreeing)?

Obviously that would be absurd. As an individual I'm entirely within my rights to respond to the views of another beyond simply disagreeing and debating with them.

It seems entirely reasonable to me that I would be able to choose not to spend time with someone with views I found abhorrent.

So how about choosing to work (or not work) on a voluntary project being run by someone whose views I disagreed with?

Legally, you are fully right that "free speech" doesn't mean you are free of social consequences of speech.

Socially, while I disagree with Eich's political views, I really worry about starting a tit-for-tat here that leaves no one the winner.

You might think your views are socially dominant. And in your time and place, maybe you are even right about it. But this will not always be the case.

Back in the 60's my dad risked his job to go march with Martin Luther King when MLK was in Detroit. His boss didn't like MLK and would have canned my dad if he found out. If my dad had been fired, I really hope you wouldn't be so blase as to say "well, he's just reaping the consequences of his speech."

I think it is possible to hold both views (it is acceptable to force Eich out; it was immoral to fire workers for being part of the civil rights movement, blacklist workers for being communists). And you don't even have to appeal to the "my side is always morally right" non-argument.

I think the critical distinction is workers versus management.

If an engineer were fired from his job for a donation he made to any organization -- the ACLU, the KKK, the Communist Party, Prop 8 -- then yes, we would have a problem.

Low power individuals, they need to be protected. High power individuals, we need to be protected from them.

I can see that distinction, although I'm not sure I buy it right now. I'll have to think about it for a while. Thanks.

It still feels, like a character assassination. Lots of great men were fucking weird... Hell most of us are really fucking weird. Gratefully most people today don't emphasize.

Mozzart had a fetish for shit, which he extensively exchanged with his cousin. Imagine someone squatting a big chunky shit on your shit each time you hear his music.

Einstein was for lack of better world a whore. He had sex with bunch of his cousin from his maternal and paternal side. He slept with his cousin, her sister and early slept with cousin Elsa's daughter.

Tesla had a fetish for pigeons, thought he could talk with aliens and was afraid of germs more than anything else. And he had OCD to top it all off.

Lots of us are really weird, but only a few of us are in charge of mid-to-large organizations. And of the examples that you gave, I don't think any of them worked to have their brand of weirdness enforced over other people as law.

Eich claimed to support LGBT equality at Mozilla, but when given the opportunity, he refused to say anything like "I regret supporting a law that had negative consequences for our employees" or even "I would abstain from supporting a similar law in the future". This silence suggests he may advocate for equality at one level and against it at a higher level, which is hard to reconcile.

> I don't think any of them worked to have their brand of weirdness enforced over other people as law.

Wait what about Jobs? Didn't he managed to spread his paranoia, attitude and general weirdness over Apple? And globaly? I mean being a bully CEO was pretty much his trademark.

Eich's departure is a great blow for Mozilla. The whole thing reeks of character assassination.

Very true, but I've not heard any news that he didn't have the support of his employees, or that he wasn't inspiring confidence in them. His position was made untenable by the actions of people outside of his charge.

I would think that your point applies if Mozilla had discounted Eich for the role in the first place, but it appears that his views only became an issue for them after they started receiving negative attention.

In any case, Mozilla have demonstrated quite clearly that they are not the champions of equal rights, free speech, or diversity that they claim to be. I wonder if this will be a problem for them in the long run. I think a lot of people still use their product over Chrome et al because of support for these views.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-bre...

Absolutely - you don't need to protect people from the consequences of their speech.

So why are there no consequences for the sort of person who's not professional enough to keep a person's activities outside work separate from their work itself?

Most hiring managers wouldn't hire a bully. Why do they continue to hire people who have a history of disruptive behavior, calling for the firing of others over things that happen outside of their workplace?

The Eich situation will repeat itself again and again and again (and at lower levels, and perhaps next time over an unfashionable political opinion that you just happened to hold a year longer than the President of the United States) unless there's real consequences for being an unpleasant, uncivil busybody who goes around demanding people get sacked for their behavior outside of work.

If we're really so incensed by the way Brendan Eich was treated, and we're not just being mouthy on the Internet, I ask you all - where are these consequences?

Meh.

There is a selectively low bar on persecution these days. He wasn't being denied the right to marry, they right to make medical decisions for or visit a loved one in the hospital, the right to adopt. He wasn't even being denied the right to a decent living.

He was denied access to a particular leadership position. While there is a slippery slope to be found in denying leadership positions based on belief, there are also two sets of rights to consider. The rights of the (potential) leader, and the rights of the workers he leads. Given that the belief he expressed through his donation concerned the civil rights of other people and not himself, why should I expect that he will respect the rights of any LTBG workers in his employee?

> He was being denied access to a particular leadership position.

He wasn't denied access to the position, he had it. Others made it clear they were not interested in being lead by him. A decision had to be made to either let those people leave or he had to choose to leave.

I did not see a single post from someone who would be led by Brendan saying they did not want to be lead by him. In fact, the opposite.

Please do look up the difference between the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation. He was picked as CEO of the _Corporation_ but the Mozilla employees who called for his resignation were employees of the _Foundation_, and hence wouldn't be led by him at all. The Corporation employees who spoke out in public were saying things like https://twitter.com/Jason_Duell/status/449265719474008064 and http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZFsNqrZ... (since deleted, apparently) and http://subfictional.com/2014/03/24/on-brendan-eich-as-ceo-of...

It's hard to tell from the outside, of course, since everyone involved just claimed to be working from "Mozilla", so it's easy to make the mistake you made.

This is sickening.

Denying gays the right to marriage is not a free speech issue, it's a human rights issue. Replace gay marriage with interracial marriage and see if the idea of "we failed you because we didn't support your right to believe that interracial marriage is wrong" still stands up.

Trying to equate this to a free speech issue is just another way of discriminating against gays. Eich actively supported the discrimination against gays and there's no way that he has the moral right to lead a company like Mozilla. I for one am glad that he was put through the wringer and hope anyone else that believes in any form of discrimination and wants to lead a company gets the same treatment or worse.

EDIT: someone rightfully pointed out I overstepped my description. I changed "Eich discriminated against gays" to "Eich actively supported the discrimination of gays"

> gets the same treatment or worse.

Lynch Brendan Eich? Dunno he seemed like a person competent to lead Mozilla. Just seems weird how fiery was the criticism.

At this point the homophobes and the anti-homophobe camp are starting to sound eerily similar.

> Just seems weird how fiery was the criticism.

I wonder how you would feel if it was your human rights and dignity being denied, instead of someone else's.

Well, if pro-LGBT act no better than anti-LGBT when given power, then I really have to ask what is the point?

He never discriminated against gays. He expressed his political opinion in the form of a donation.

You are right. I edited my description above.

He used money influence to deny homosexuals their human rights and dignity. I don't know what definition of "discrimination" we're using here, but that's pretty despicable behavior by any measure.

He paid his money to take away some rights from some people. He wanted a certain group of people to not have the same status in society he himself enjoys. That goes beyond expression. That's using your money, effectively your power in society, to step on some elements of that society.

I have to ask, do you realize how hypocritical some of your statements sound?

I'm talking about ones like, "I for one am glad that he was put through the wringer and hope anyone else that believes in any form of discrimination and wants to lead a company gets the same treatment or worse."

On one hand you decry discrimination, but then on the other you encourage discrimination against people who you've deemed to have engaged in discrimination. It's very contradictory, and suggests that you in turn should then be subjected to some very negative treatment, "or worse".

Our rights should extend only so far that they do not inhibit the rights of others. At least, that is what I believe.

He has overstepped that line.

There is no hypocrisy. Being punished and being discriminated against are two absolutely separate things.

Sure, I can see them being different things. But that doesn't meant that they both can't be involved at the same time.

Maybe what Eich is facing is seen as "punishment" by some, but it is indisputably discrimination, too. Losing one's job solely because of one's beliefs is a form of discrimination, regardless of what those beliefs may be.

I don't see how you can seriously say that you're against discrimination and those who discriminate, yet you'll resort to that exact same discriminatory behavior while supposedly trying to stop discrimination!

This is a false equivalence. You are presupposing that being pro-marriage-equality and anti-marriage-equality are positions of equal moral value. They are not.

It's like claiming someone being placed in prison for murder is being "discriminated against" for being a murderer. No, we are punishing despicable behavior.

> hope anyone else that believes in any form of discrimination and wants to lead a company gets the same treatment or worse.

Is it okay to discriminate against people who discriminate? I'm not being sarcastic, it's a serious philosophical question.

Why do we even apply fair procedures and guarantee the rule of law for murderers, many of whom are racist, misogynistic, and/or homophobic? They discriminate, so why shouldn't we discriminate against them, too?

You're right, it's a human rights issue. But the thing about human rights is that even people who violate other people's human rights retain human rights of their own, merely in virtue of the fact that they are a specimen of Homo sapiens. Without human rights, we'll be left with nothing more than an endless cycle of discrimination, which quickly becomes indistinguishable from an endless cycle of vengeance.

As I mentioned below, you have confused discrimination with punishment. Eich is not being discriminated against, he is being punished. He lost his job because the people he worked for and the customers of his company's product did not want his as their CEO.

If he never works in the tech industry again because he is a shunned pariah, then that would probably be discrimination.

In the sentence I quoted above, you wished that anyone who donates to an anti-gay-marriage campaign (or similar) will be prevented from occupying an executive position of any company in the future. That sounds more like discrimination than punishment, even according to your own definition.

No it sounds perfectly consistent to me. Anyone who discriminates against any class of people should be rightfully suffer the consequences of their views.

If they recant their discriminatory views, I have no problems supporting them. Gay people do not have the same luxury of changing who they are.

It isn't a new one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I'm sorry, but this is fatuous.

Only the most recent declarations of human rights have included any provisions about sexual orientation at all. The UN declaration was in 1948 - hardly a friendly time for homosexuals. The US bill of rights was held widely, really until the Civil War, to enshrine - implicitly in its provisions on private property - property in people. LGBT people have had to fight hard even to get to the point where gay marriage is even thinkable, let alone considered a fundamental human right, partly because "it's a human rights issue" is question-begging in the extreme. What's your definition of human rights? I bet Brendan Eich's is different. You won't prove one or the other from first principles, I guarantee you.

What we have here, with this little brouhaha, is political bikeshedding. Gay marriage is hard. We just got it in this country (the UK), almost 50 years after homosexual acts were first partially decriminalised. In the US, it seems to be a matter to force through on a tedious state-by-state basis. The obstacles to doing so are huge - because millions of Americans (and millions of British, etc), well organised in right-wing pressure groups and militant churches, consider homosexuality to be depraved and sinful.

Meanwhile, in the tech world, people are generally upping their consciousness on this issue and others. Good. But this is not a problem individuals scattered around an industry can solve. It's a matter for political movements of concerned citizens and always has been.

But there's Brendan Eich. We know very well he donated a whole thousand dollars to the campaign for a cruel, vindictive law (although only because somebody dug it out of CA state records - not because he's on record stating his views). He is in a prominent and vulnerable position of influence - on our turf. Heck, he's in the Valley! We may not be able to do anything about victims of homophobia in West Texas, but we can do something about Brendan Eich. And doing something, apparently, is always better than doing nothing.

Yes, Eich's opinions are vile, and he should be challenged to drop them. But he's not the problem. If he has conducted himself in a bigoted way in his many years as CTO, then that would disqualify him - probably under state or federal law, never mind the morality of it. If not, then there is no material difference whatsoever to LGBT people at Mozilla - any more than there are to LGBT contributors to ES6 or whatever. Don't worry about right-wing hackers who keep their opinions on the quiet and on the side. Worry about the televangelists, the tea party and the rest who breed bigotry to scale.

If he'd been funding a campaign for a constitutional ban on interracial marriage, he'd never even have been considered for the role in the first place (and rightly so).

Certainly, he has the right to say, think and fund what he likes, but if you're funding an effort to remove peoples' rights, you shouldn't be too surprised if people are disinclined to let you have a job which places you in authority over a company full of people.

He just didn't have the right culture fit for Mozilla.

(Shamelessly stolen from elsewhere.)

Essentially, it's really hard to lead people who don't respect you.

We can all have a civil disagreement about whether vi or emacs is superior, or if Political Party X is better than Y. But when you specifically attack the fundamental rights of your employees and their friends / family, then refuse to apologise for it, you're simply not going to be a credible leader.

Here's the other thing - in capitalism, you have to listen to your customers. If the "Moral Majority" wants to boycott your shop/browser/TV show because your CEO isn't sufficiently deferential to their god - they can go for it.

If the business wants to succeed, it has decide whether it will be more profitable to capitulate or not.

In Mozilla's case, they have (belatedly) seen the way the world is turning. Good for them.

> He just didn't have the right culture fit for Mozilla.

I find that hard to believe, his Wikipedia page says he started working for Netscape in 1995, founded mozilla.org in 1998, and helped found the Mozilla Foundation in 2003. If it was a culture fit problem, it took a long time for them to find that out. Seems more like a lynching after he became too publicly known.

You appear to have your irony filters set too high...

The point I'm trying to make is that we see countless example of "Culture Fit" being used as a poor excuse to get rid of an employee for having the temerity to be female, gay, disabled, an ethnic minority - or anything other than the narrowly defined "bro" culture which sadly seems to infect some high-tech companies.

> more like a lynching

Yes, being fired from a powerful position because you actively tried to deny some of your employees and fellow countrymen their human rights and dignity is exactly the same as being hung from a tree for innate characteristics.

Get some perspective.

> If the business wants to succeed, it has decide whether it will be more profitable to capitulate or not.

economic blackmail is wasteful and silly. I'm an atheist are you ok with the religious attacking my livelihood as a small business owner? That's not capitalism that's the dark ages.

It's neither wasteful nor silly. It's the only avenue of protest left available to citizens in a capitalist society.

In the UK, businesses aren't allowed to discriminate when offering services to the public - you can't stick a sign up in your bar saying "No Gay/Black/Atheists Allowed."

But, as a customer, you have the absolute right to vote with your wallet. If you don't like my stance on Open Source, don't buy my products. If you hear the pub landlord cracking a homophobic joke, you can either politely ask him to change his opinion - or you start drinking somewhere else.

As an atheist myself (nice to meet you!) I wouldn't want you or me to be attacked or harassed. That hasn't happened here. Customers have said "well, if that's your attitude, I'll go elsewhere."

The only other thing we can do is ignore it - and that's simply not an ethical option for many people.

You have to differentiate between individuals deciding for themselves to go elsewhere and organized boycotts designed to ruin a person. I would hate to be a minority business owner in a society that condoned flippant use of organized boycotts.

Individuals only have power against large organisations when they collectivise. That's why big businesses are (often) anti-union.

If the imaginary Christians-Against-Internet-Explorer decide to boycott IE10 because they believe the new MS CEO is Muslim, no one is being forced into joining their misguided crusade, are they?

So, what is an organised boycott? It's individuals using strength in numbers.

The myth we're sold is "one man can make a difference." That's rarely true. Many people, acting as one, are what makes a difference.

There was nothing organised about this current situation. I don't remember anyone forming The National Committee Against This One Guy We All Hate and then asking me to pay dues.

Nope. Just a bunch of individuals expressing their collective economic might.

You're right, organised members of the KKK aren't going to eat at "Hamza's Hummus Hut" - but neither are individual racists. If they want to run him out of town - I'll take a stand against that. If they don't want to eat there, I won't force them.

For goodness sake, when are people going to understand that freedom of expression doesn't (and shouldn't) mean freedom from criticism. This is not a difficult concept people.

What happened with Eich was not criticism any more, rather a full blown witch hunt, complete with forks and fire.

The internet has become too much of 4chan the last few years.

I haven't been paying overly close attention, but all of the reaction I have seen has generally been blog/twitter based expressions of sadness/disappointment/betrayal. Has it really escalated far beyond that? (Genuine question).

There were supposedly death threats, but I haven't seen any. In general though, and from an anecdotal perspective, various internet communities do seem to be more and more involved in 'causes' of various sorts.

Whether or not those causes lead to escalation seems to depend on the subject matter and participants, just like anything else really.

We should probably start a list of thing that don't lead to death threats online, it'll be shorter.

The most recent example was someone suggesting putting a famous woman's face on the next UK pound note and getting such threats.

OKCupid blocked all Firefox users with a warning message saying that their users should not use a browser whose development CEO dislikes gay marriage.

Borders to extortion or unfair competition, in my eyes.

They didn't block them; they showed them a message, invited them to use an alternative browser, and allowed them to continue if they so wished.

Presumably that part was written in JavaScript.

They also continued to use JavaScript on their site, regardless of browser. Since Eich invented JavaScript, shouldn't they stop using it?

(I'm slightly wary of this ridiculous argument, but here goes...)

Eich wasn't the CEO of 'JavaScript', so that's not really the same thing, is it?

That's more of an accident of history, really. In his own words, Netscape told him to come up with something, anything, quick, and lo JavaScript was born. Had Netscape known that he was a closet homophobe, would they have hired him in the first place?

It's also much easier being an homophobe engineer rather than a homophobe CEO, because of the nature of the role. His technical achievements can be as impressive as you want and have no relation to his homophobia; being CEO is a role built on public relationships inside and outside the company, relationships that would be severely influenced by his (perceived) homophobia.

This is literally how the free market and competition work.

I've seen a few people say they won't be using Mozilla products any longer, which is up to them of course. I doubt it is any significant number of people.

The only thing I've seen that 'crossed the line' so to speak was the okcpuid thing urging users to stop using Firefox. I didn't see exactly what the message was. It sounded more like a marketing stunt to get some media attention. I think if it had been other people/companies targeted then people on HN would have been applauding their disruptive and entrepreneurial marketing department.

I don't see that that crosses any line, as such. It used to be very common for websites to tell people not to use Internet Explorer, sometimes on a purely technical basis, but often on a "Microsoft is evil" basis. This seems similar to the latter.

Flaming a company is a vastly different from death threats and hate mobs against a person.

I was responding to a comment about a website showing a message to Firefox users; the website made no death threats.

It's called smear. It happens to people in high places whose pyramid of power is missing a keystone or two.

Except he hasn't been 'smeared'. What is being said about him is not a lie.

Smear isn't fabricated: Smear refers to dirt which exists, being spread.

So that's what a "witch hunt" is these days, eh...people blog, comment on the blog, post the blog to social networks, comment on the social network posts, make claims about how they'll change their consuming habits in response to the post...

There once was a day when "witch hunt" actually referred to strapping live human beings to kindling and setting them ablaze.

A witch hunt? Is he dead? Has he been beaten to death like man LGBT people?

Seems to me they found a witch. Or is bigotry just a myth?

The people who felt criticised by Eich's expression of criticism and then felt compelled to drive him out of his job would do well to remember that too, don't you think?

I don't see your point. I don't see anybody in here (yet) saying that the article we are discussing (or any other article defending Eich) shouldn't have been written or published - merely some people disagreeing with it. I have seen plenty of people over the last week or however long it has been saying criticism of Eich should not have been written or published because to criticise somebody for their views is being 'intolerant'.

"I don't see your point." ~ anon1385

Naturally.

What if people decided they're not cool with people who engage in witch hunts having jobs anymore? Doesn't matter because it won't happen? That's not morality though.

Nobody that I have seen said Eich shouldn't have any job anymore. Just that he wasn't a good choice for this particular leadership role.

I'm not privy to what happened within Mozilla, but it does sound like it was internal disagreements (i.e. Mozilla employees begin unhappy with the appointment) that lead to him leaving the post, more than bloggers or HN commenters. That is just the nature of taking a leadership role. If you can't take the staff with you then your position isn't tenable.

> Just that he wasn't a good choice for this particular leadership role.

Since his role had exactly zero to do with his personal views, you could say this about any future job as well.

A CEO post have everything to do with the public perception you create of the company, though. And deservedly or not, his position coupled with his opinions on prop 8 have come to have an impact on the perception of Mozilla. In that respect, the personal views of a CEO often does have something to do with their personal views in a way that is rarely the case for less public-facing positions.

I don't think you understand what a CEO is.

He wasn't criticised for his views, he was fired

By the same token, the people who forced him to resign shouldn't be free of criticism. Right?

I agree with Sullivan's take[1] posted yesterday. If this is the gay-rights movement today, a bunch of extremist Social Justice Warriors, I want no part of it.

Not only that, but Catlin's reaction to it[2] is also shameful: 'oops, we thought he would evolve like President Obama did, our bad. but hey, we're putting our apps back on the marketplace!'

[1] http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/04/03/the-hounding-of-br...

[2] http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/04/03/a-sad-victory/

> If this is the gay-rights movement today, a bunch of extremist Social Justice Warriors, I want no part of it.

Partially true. This episode has been disturbing, yes, but at the same time, it has held strong by the community and the public. And it'll only get stronger till there is equality. It is the frustration of people, friends and family which makes episodes like these escalate. Only a strong movement can bring an impact.

So are they a bunch of "extremists"? No. Are they moderators then? No, again. Its somewhere in the middle.

Very very intolerant and hypocritical of everybody that basically bullied him away. There's finally a self made rock star in a position of power and somehow people have played in such a way that he's the boogie man. Over a fricking PERSONAL point of view.

I can make many many analogies to other businesses and some religious institutions, but this would have happened nowhere but Mozilla.

Stop using #mozilla for your anti-gay/pro-gay/liberal/conservative/libertarian platforms. Read the manifesto: http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto/

When you find somebody holds an opinion you disagree with you have a choice of either ignoring them, pushing them away or engaging them in discussion (which requires a reciprocal action on their part).

It seems the latter option wasn't even considered, everybody just wanted rid.

That's:

a) Not very mature b) Worse, a missed opportunity to convince somebody of an alternative view

Well done everybody, you've turned somebody you disagree with into an entrenched and victimised somebody you disagree with who hates you. clap clap clap

So The Guardian offered him an opportunity for dialogue [1], to have that debate. He had a chance to explain why he held the views that he did. He refused.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/01/mozilla-ce...

Sshh! It's easier to ignore things like that and cast him as a victim of those mean gays!

CEOs, like any other employee, are representatives of the company they're employed by.

Just as if I were to post racist comments on my [Generic Social Media], my employer is going to need to do something to protect the company, because as the article points out: people (clients, customers) are judgemental, critics of gay marriage and critics of Brendan Eich included.

> CEOs, like any other employee, are representatives of the company they're employed by.

Executives of companies are representatives so much more than the rest of the employees.

True. And yet normally, the CEO is immune from the consequences of her actions, while the employee risks getting fired for the slightest deviation.

I think the concern centers more around the perceived double standard on seemingly arbitrary issues. For instance, if Eich was a strong supporter of gay marriage, I have a hard time seeing him forced to step down.

I get that gay marriage is not an "arbitrary issue" for many people, but I think the definition of what is arbitrary and what are violations of fundamental civil rights can get tricky.

great point!!

Look at it this way. If he'd been funding a campaign to make a constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriage, do you think he'd have been able to keep the job?

Like it or not, in the West, gay people are increasingly in the category of people who most people assume should have equal rights.

Of course not, but that's exactly the point. We should be able to have unpopular opinions and still be accepted in a community that emphasizes being a meritocracy, etc.

Whether being forced to resign as Mozilla's CEO counts as the community rejecting him is an interesting argument.

Well, I mean, the broader community does accept him, in that he's not going to be arrested for his opinions or anything. Mozilla didn't accept him, and isn't required to.

He was accepted - at the CTO level - with his unpopular opinions - even after they became public in 2012 - for years.

But there's a big difference (to me, at least) between being the CTO and the CEO. It's that step people are unhappy with.

Jesus, this is the epitome of naive techie blabbering. Does OP really think that the CEO position is based on "merit" alone? That football teams are all coached by former Heisman Winners? That all generals have Medals of Honor? It's not even worth debating Eich specifically with the OP; his view of the world is astonishingly naive.

Will we ever stop conflating opinions with competency, in general? A person can just as well be a full-blown racist or xenophobe and at the same time a very competent leader. The only thing you show when pushing someone down from a leadership position because of some of his opinions is that "that was not a real leadership position, we just needed a puppet good for PR".

Human beings are not things you can take "as whole". A person can be total asshole in one aspect and a great guy in another aspect. You need to see people as "bags of ideas that happen to coexist in a mind and body" and the concept of "individual" as mostly an illusion, and look for the bags with the most good pieces, even if they can have some poisoned beans in them. And it's the same thing for leaders. If you look for an "overall great human being with no great flaws in any aspects" you can only get: (a) a mediocre person that is not "too bad" in any way but also not exceptionally good in any way or (b) a highly skilled liar and manipulator, most likely a very advanced psychopath, that can perfectly hide all his flaws and appear "overall an awesome guy". Oh wait, I've just described 99% of the world's leaders...

Another thing you get by going this way is that you end up with the people really "calling the shots" staying in the shadows, leading through puppets they manipulate and being completely unaccountable.

We're tolerant as long as we share the same views. The irony in tolerance in this case is unreal.

But what's the point of tolerance if you just blindly accept any view, no matter how controversial or offensive, without challenging it? I see nothing wrong with the position of "everyone is entitled to air any opinion whatsoever, so long as anyone else is entitled to challenge them". No-one, as far as I know, has attacked Eich, threatened him, etc. they've just expressed concern about his views, which everyone is perfectly entitled to do.

"But what's the point of tolerance if you just blindly accept any view"

khm acceptance is acceptance, and tolerance is tolerance. You do not accept it, you tolerate it. Not the same thing.

I agree entirely - concur and accept or disagree, tolerate, and challenge.

If you read the comments and tweets there were a lot of nasty personal attacks on Eich and reported physical threats against him for donating to prop 8 five years ago. A amendment that actually passed by the way.

I'm fine with respectful open discussion but the entire situation left me with an uneasy taste in my mouth. If another CEO supported gay marriage and it created a stir like Eich's case did, I would feel the same way. Imagine if Sergey Brin donated to a gay marriage group 5 years ago and it caused such a stir that sites like fox or disney asked you to switch from chrome. Imagine the thousands of tweets criticizing him and the right media making a spectacle out of it calling out his character. That would be ridiculous.

It's about mutual respect and discussing ones differences in a cordial human way. In this case, it was anything but that and the double standard was obviously apparent.

We tolerate everyone's rights except those who try to take away rights of others

Does that include the right to keep and bear arms?

I do not recognise that right, nor come from a place that has that right.

Why don't we "hate the sin, but love the sinner"? Isn't that what Christians that think all gay people (amongst many others blameless groups) are condemned to burn in eternal hellfire say?

Some CEOs have donated to a political campaign of questionable merit on one occasion in the past.

Some CEOs kill elephants for fun.

And there are many shades of gray in between.

I'm not sure exactly where the threshold for "This guy needs to get lost" is, but I'm pretty sure the cutoff is somewhere between the two cases I just alluded to, rather than to one side of both.

Sure, Mr. Eich could try to fire gay employees (if that's legal, which I doubt), but he could just as well help make Mozilla an even brighter beacon of free speech than it already is, indirectly helping the LGBT community and thereby atoning for whatever sins he might have once committed against it. What matters is that the "community" (or some subset of it) didn't even give him a chance to demonstrate, through actual decisions, which path he will choose and how he will try to strike a balance between his personal beliefs and the needs of the community. I guess we were too impatient -- or more likely, too lazy -- to wait for some actually relevant evidence upon which to base a solid opinion.

What's next? Boycott FOSS products whose authors are found to be religious? DDoS attacks on companies that donated to Romney's campaign? By the way, is anyone still using ReiserFS?

> Sure, he could try to fire gay employees (if that's legal, which I doubt)

It is legal in 29 states to fire someone for their sexual preference.*

*Source http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2012/10/18/...

AFAIK Mozilla is based in Mountain View, California, where (according to your infographic) it is indeed illegal to fire someone for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Not sure if that also applies to remote workers who live in other states, though.

Too true, that.

However, I live in the midwest (Indiana) where we do not have similar protections over things as basic as sexual identity. It really is that backwards here.

This is bullshit. I am not discriminating him. I am punishing him with the power I have (my freedom to not use the products of his company) to punish his discriminating point of view. The same way he has the right to use his money to help a discriminating law go ahead, I have the right not to use his products and criticize his opinions.

The blog posts, comments, and tweets aren't really what provided the direct pressure for him to resign.

Far more likely that corporate partners, donors, etc. called the remaining board members or anyone else of any influence and told them that the money would dry up if this problem didn't go away.

I find it interesting that the fact of his donation came up in 2012 when he was CTO of Mozilla (the organization he co-founded). This didn't become an issue in 2014 organically -- again I think it's far more likely that someone had it out for Eich, and saw their best opportunity to revive a two year old issue and get rid of him when he became CEO.

Or it's just that people are ok with CTOs having unpopular dodgy opinions (because the power and influence of that position is limited) but that becomes a -much- bigger problem when they move to being the CEO (figurehead of the company, etc.)

I'm not sorry. He can disagree with other people and make decisions about his own life, but once he gives money to a cause that is working to restrict the basic rights and freedoms of others he's crossed the line.

I'm not sorry one bit.

All CEOs that [don't|] support abortion should be fired then?

We do not need to be tolerant of intolerance.

You sound quite intolerant.

Intolerant of people who seek to use our government to oppress minorities due to their own ignorance and hatred? Definitely.

To not be tolerant of intolerance is to be more intolerant than any religious fundamentalist or extremist.

Oh right, I forgot how religious fundamentalists and extremists are universally praised for their ability to accept contradictory views and lifestyles! What a powerful argument!

I wasn't implying that they were tolerant. Only that intolerance of intolerance, as it were, is one of the most extreme form on intolerance around. Taken to its extreme, it is intolerant of a very large swath of human thought. Religious fundies are mostly just intolerant of things contradicting their own religion, not stuff that's irrelevant to it.

Please don't include me in that "we".

We failed him? How overwrought can you get?

He wasn't incarcerated, executed, sued, or tried for a crime. He lost his job. As we're all fond of implying here, there's no right to employment, let alone the right to be a CEO.

Don't hide behind "meritocracy" and "tolerance" to defend morally repugnant ideals. You demean those words and yourself. You reveal your lack of understanding of what an open and free society means when it comes to the more vulnerable, less privileged members of same.

> He lost his job.

He quit his job. It may be that he was forced to quit to avoid being fired, but that's not at all clear.

Sigh. You are talking about the guy who created JavaSCript. Show no mercy.

In a way we did..

If we carry it to its logical conclusion that the Marriage License is free from religion than by that concept a Muslim living in the US should be able to Marry multiple wives and so should Mormons..

There are people fighting for those rights as well. And I don't think they're insane (as you seem to imply). As long as it's clearly agreed upon between consenting adults, it's not so ridiculous. Perhaps the logistics of that are more complicated, but should they be denied that if they really want it?

And you know what, that's perfectly fine to me, as long as they are all adults,they are not forced, and they can divorce. Why should we impose whatever notion of marriage on mormons, or muslims ? if they want to have 12 spouses ,let them have 12 spouses...

We should not be tolerant of intolerance.

Building a moral framework atop a paradox seems like poor logic to build upon.

Here's a related point: All governments rely on the persecution of groups (almost always minorities) for their continued power. Government would cease to exist were it not persecuting people.

You're simply quibbling with Eich over who gets persecuted (and more basically about who's morals are superior).

Keep in mind that his "intolerant action" was only intolerant if the state dictating personal morality is good (I would note that things like murder are uni-directional intra-personal actions and thus quite different).

I think a better answer is to abolish government-dictated marriage and allow people free reign in their private lives as this satisfies both the gay community and the anti-gay community while also solving the issues of less-vocal groups (eg. polygamists). In fact the general principle of government staying out of citizen's private lives solves a whole host of issues.

Maybe I didn't say this in the right way. What I'm really saying is that I will 'tolerate' or accept any view point as being fine, and entirely a persons right to hold, unless they are holding one that is actively intolerant to others. I don't think part of being tolerant is to sit back while others are abused by those who don't share our views.

It's his personal right to hold his belief, but once he put that into action by making the donation, or if he had voiced his views publicly, that now means we have a duty to hold him accountable, rather than sit back and let him do what he wants. In this case, I think demanding Eich not lead Mozilla because of his views is an appropriate way to hold him accountable.

could this be considered recursive?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Prop 8 pass? I mean, didn't the majority of California voters vote in favor of Prop 8? It was only struck down after by the courts.

Seems like there's a lot of people who should be forced to resign from their jobs over this. Not just one.

It's a sad day when homophobia is not a valid reason for so much people to fire a representative of your company.

A majority voted the same way as him. The president held the same views. But you're singling him out as homophobic??

This line of thinking is juvenile. He was being singled out as the CEO of Mozilla.

This article hits my two pet peeves.

Anyone who believes a person's rights should extend beyond the point at which they infringe on the rights of others is not worth listening to.

Also, please don't use the term 'meritocracy'. Ever. Are you referring to the idea of rubber stamping people for positions of power based on their parents ability to pay for for the most expensive university courses and degrees? No, I didn't think so.

>Anyone who believes a person's rights should extend beyond the point at which they infringe on the rights of others is not worth listening to. //

Lets suppose I believe the exact opposite. Doesn't your claim then extend beyond you and infringe on my rights.

Or better yet let us suppose that a society has a right en masse, for example for taxes to be used to aid child-rearing. That could infringe on your conception of personal rights too.

As to meritocracy - you appear to confuse the term with plutocracy. Now it's true that those from privileged families may be better able to perform certain tasks, but to refuse to allow them to perform those tasks simply because their families are rich, isn't that rather ridiculous? Meritocracy is quite the opposite, if you can perform the task to a sufficient degree is the only measure; whether you have been to an expensive university or not is irrelevant to the meritocrat.

No I am not confusing the word at all. A meritocracy is a society built on the idea that one must (quite literally) gain a 'merit' before being considered for some role. This is open to obvious abuse - the ones that get into power can decide how one can gain the merit. In the US, it has been decided that one must pay for it.

I repeat: you have completely misunderstood the definition of the word 'meritocracy'. The condition is not 'can you perform the task' but 'do you have the requisite (and very literal) merit (passed an exam, for example.)

Don't worry though - a lot of people make this mistake.

Couple of dictionary definitions for you [the first 2 on dictionary.com]:

"mer·i·toc·ra·cy [mer-i-tok-ruh-see] Show IPA noun, plural mer·i·toc·ra·cies. 1. an elite group of people whose progress is based on ability and talent rather than on class privilege or wealth."

"meritocracy (ˌmɛrɪˈtɒkrəsɪ) — n , pl -cies 1. rule by persons chosen not because of birth or wealth, but for their superior talents or intellect"

You appear to be trolling me.

I am not trolling you. The word has been misused so much that it has now been incorrectly incorporated into dictionaries.

See this article written by the man who coined the common usage of the term, bemoaning its now misuse:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

"With an amazing battery of certificates and degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on a minority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time they are relegated to the bottom streams at the age of seven or before."

So on.

> Anyone who believes a person's rights should extend beyond the point at which they infringe on the rights of others is not worth listening to.

That's a nice idea if you don't think about it closely, but it doesn't work because rights always interact and you have to decide which takes priority in which circumstance. You can't just assert that they stop somewhere before they infringe on each other and leave it at that, because that doesn't actually resolve the boundaries.

The easy answers are easy because they aren't actually answers at all.

Of course - the boundaries must be tested. And in fact they likely must change depending on circumstance. I did not imply that someone could write up some set of rights somewhere that are so perfect they do not overlap. But such boundaries do exist and should be considered.

Basic humanity, that's what we do.

I accidentally upvoted this post. Can I undo my vote?

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