And going the other way, to something a bit broader/more mainstream, say he donated to the Republican Party. Ok to ostracize him?
To me it seems like people have some kind of dividing line that's not cut and dried, possibly depending on their own beliefs.
I see you are fairly new here: something that sets HN apart from other corners of the internet is that generally, we try and be tolerant, and give other people the benefit of the doubt. Snarky one liners are not always looked on very positively.
Naturally, there are heated discussions and these ideals don't always hold true, but one of the guiding principles here is to pretend you are talking to someone in person and think about how that would guide your interaction with them.
His poor response didn't help: "if you disagree with me you're oppressing the poor Indonesians who don't have a mouthpiece!". What an asshole.
The fact is, donating to support prop 8 is bigotry in and of itself. Many have said no one experienced overt discrimination, but all that really means is that he wasn't bigoted to the victims' faces, he quietly donated to a cause with the intent of stripping people he calls his friends of their rights. He apologized for hurting his LGBT friends, but stops short of actually apologizing and then justifies his beliefs with those of a 3rd world country.
Free speech has nothing to do with this, this is someone whose actions many people, both inside and outside of the organization, found incompatible with what they saw as Mozilla's values, and who can blame them?
Tl;dr opposing gay marriage is widely seen as a despicable and regressive cause that many people do not want to associate with
I can blame them. Mozilla makes a web browser. Gay marriage has nothing to do with Mozilla's mission or with the political issues Mozilla has to deal with as part of its mission. I could understand the uproar if Eich had donated to a "ban free software" cause, but that is not what happened.
You're right, this is not about free speech. Eich was not punished for what he said, he was punished for what he thought. The donation is irrelevant here, other than the fact that it revealed Eich's beliefs. There would be just as much anger and vitriol if instead of a donation someone revealed that Eich had voted in favor of proposition 8.
They have decided that they do more than "make a web browser" and deal the political issues around that topic. They want to associate themselves not just with "don't be evil" but actually "doing good."
This is an advantage, because people will volunteer time to Mozilla in order to do good. This is a disadvantage when different people have different ideas of what "doing good" means. Which I think is the source of the commotion here.
As an executive at Mozilla, Eich forced the organization to take a stance on the issue by donating.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_c...