Brendan Eich and Mozilla
whatever.scalzi.com
whatever.scalzi.com
Mozilla was concerned about their appearance in the public eye, and chose to align themselves with one particular side of the issue. Again, as is their right. Eich was not denied any First Amendment right, as the U.S. Government was not involved.
But let's not kid ourselves: those vigorously cheering Eich's departure aren't considering the whole picture. If this were 1950, Mozilla would be chock-full of white men eager to hustle the CEO out the door were it disclosed that he was gay or had donated to a Socialist/Communist organization.
"Tolerance" had nothing to do with what happened to Eich. This was the Jacobin mob in action.
I specifically chose support of a communist group (or being gay) in the 50s. Being sympathetic to or being a member of an unpopular group in this case isn't as easy as observing somebody's skin color. It's not about separate water fountains, schools and bus seats, which are all physical manifestations of bigotry.
By distancing themselves from Eich, Mozilla demonstrated that they were more interested in siding with what was popular rather than affirming any interest in real diversity: diversity of thought.
Because isn't that what the diversity movement is supposed to be all about?
This isn't the "diversity movement." It is a protest in support of equal civil rights for a historically and currently oppressed minority.
The 'paradox of tolerance'[1]: To what degree should we tolerate others' viewpoints, even when those very viewpoints are intolerant?
Also see 'European immigration and Islam'.
On what do you base that assertion? There certainly was no indication for this, and the board claimed the opposite.
The company has insisted that Eich wasn't forced to resign due to employee pressure. But why else would he resign? Eich has been with Mozilla since the beginning, serving as an architect and CTO.
He stated "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader." Why? Because those whom he would lead refuse to be led by him, the organizations he would work with would refuse to work with him, or a combination of both.
If this were the case, then in the company's best interest the board would have to fire Eich.
It was inevitable.
> Mozilla reserves the right to hire and fire (which would have been Eich's fate
> had he not resigned)
(See https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...)
Mozilla had become a hostile work environment for him.
How would have staying on changed any of that? The die had been cast.
The reactions outside and inside of the company showed very little tolerance, and between dialogue/engagement and intimidation/suppression, the latter was chosen. This in itself is a massive problem.
I read a lot of nonsense lately about this being "the free market", "he can defend whatever he wants but then face the consequences", etc. Do these people realise that the exact same arguments were used for the suppression of gays? how are these valid now? is this the kind of discourse people support in the Valley?
But even worse than that is the argument that nothing illegal was done. Yep, the same as stripping Alan Turing of his awards was legal at the time, or put him under "treatment", or marginalising and ostracising him.
Quit focusing in the legalese and look at the lack of compassion as human beings people have for those who dissent in a way that offends them.
OkCupid should be ashamed for themselves for their cheap move leveraging their large user base. Brandan Eich = "deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies"
Really, he is your enemy? He make your site work with JS and Firefox. Without both, internet browsing will suck today. Please OkCupid, show him some respect and a benefit of doubt.
Mozilla failed to back the cofounder that worked tirelessly for them for 16 years. They never emphasized after 16 years in an executive role, his personal vote did not have any effect on his ability to lead a diverse team. Hope his next company will appreciate his contributions more.
Not sure why the “Eich was wronged” crowd raises this lie so often.
He wasn't made to apologize.
What? If the "belief" was the material support of a law to strip a class of people of rights -- yes, absolutely they should apologize... at the very least.
> Now we are slandering him thru a social media shit storm.
It is only slander if it is untrue, he never repudiated his views. People basically called him someone who is against marriage equality ... because, well, he is someone who is against marriage equality.
> Mozilla failed to back the cofounder that worked tirelessly for them for 16 years.
What really kicked off this thing was lack of internal support, when you have GROUPS of your own employees publicly calling for your resignation, you are in deep shit as a CEO.
> his personal vote did not have any effect on his ability to lead a diverse team
By "personal vote" you mean, material support for a law to strip a group of people of a right? Just double-checking. Additionally, it DID have a massive effect on his ability to lead the Mozilla staff, bunches of them on twitter asked him to step down.
> Hope his next company will appreciate his contributions more.
We will see, I suspect no company will hire him as a CEO. Being homophobic is just not hip these days. I really think he doesn't belong at the helm of a company -- probably make a great CTO somewhere, or just retire and relax.
There are decent people who have old school views. They are just slow to adjust due to upbringing or religion.
The key to your nonsense idea that wanting to striping an entire class of people of a right (and materially supporting the effort) is simply a "dissenting opinion that offends them". It isn't offensive, that trivializes it. It is a legal attack on class of people.
If he had donated $1000 to a group to reintroduce segregation in public schools, I highly doubt you would defend him under the idea "he just has a dissenting opinion that races shouldn't mix and materially supported the effort" -- or would you?
Western society by and large has decided that certain issues are no longer up for "dialogue". Racism is wrong. Sexism is wrong. 61% of young republican (18-29) leaning voters support marriage equality -- which means this issue is actually settled, just waiting a few generations for old homophobic people to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Until you get on here and vigorously defend holocaust deniers, racists and sexists who materially support such perspectives, I am prone to believe you have another agenda here.
I've seen much more dialogue and engagement than intimidation and suppression. Most things I've seen on this topic were people complaining and writing, not forcing Mozilla to do anything. The only one that got close to "intimidation" is the OKCupid thing, which is still debatable.
> Do these people realise that the exact same arguments were used for the suppression of gays? how are these valid now?
Are you seriously comparing the oppression of gay people with the "oppression" of people who have homophobic views? I don't think this should be explained to you, but it's totally OK to discriminate people because of what they think or the opinions they have; is not OK to discriminate people by what they are. For example, any company should be free to fire White Supremacists, but not to fire white people just for being white. Are you seriously saying that people shouldn't dissociate themselves from people whose opinions they find offensive? And you are complaining about political correctness?
> But even worse than that is the argument that nothing illegal was done. Yep, the same as stripping Alan Turing of his awards was legal at the time, or put him under "treatment", or marginalising and ostracising him.
Again with this comparison! You seriously need to stop comparing the discrimination of gay people with the discrimination of homophobic people. Next thing you know, you are probably going to argue that LGBT organizations need to accept homophobic managers and volunteers.
> look at the lack of compassion as human beings people have for those who dissent in a way that offends them.
I'm not even sure what you are saying here. I haven't noticed a lack of compassion. in your whole comment, there is no single argument to explain your position, and the only thing you did was create arguments from thin air and disproving them. I don't even know who you are talking about... everyone who supported the firing of Eich?
> "I mean, isn’t this supposed to be how things work?"
> "But, but… Mr. Eich should be free to believe what he wants, and to contribute to any political cause he so chooses! Well, and so he is, and I would, as they say, defend to the death his right to do so. What he is not free from — and this is the thing which people seem to fall down on again and again — are the consequences of his actions."
You can say whatever you want, as long as you don't want a bullet in your head. Does anyone recognize that as freedom of speech? I doubt so.
Clearly we recognize freedom of speech as the ability to speak out with some limit on the repercussions of that. I'm not clear what they should be, but there certainly are some.
You can say whatever you want. If I say "you know what, I don't think black and white kids should go to the same school," I assume the liability for that statement. I may think it's reasonable, and other may as well, but the fact is in this day and age that statement and sentiment will do me all kinds of damage. Especially if I'm a public figure.
Are we actively working against people who believe differently from us? Yes, that is called activism. As long as it is nonviolent resistance, civil disobedience, or simply speaking out, we are within our rights and fighting for what we think is important: equal civil rights for all people.
Will that get people fired? Hell yes. You think superintendents who were in favor of segregated schools didn't lose their jobs? You think diners that wouldn't serve black people didn't go out of business? Activism aims at producing consequences, whether it's changed laws, greater visibility, or the removal of people who support the opposite cause. In the case of civil rights the stakes are high enough and the groups large enough that major consequences are possible. Eich was one of them. Here's to a hundred more!
Anyway, has anyone else noticed how supposedly a community of people not wanting one guy as CEO is a terrible tragedy, a lynching and on and on, but not Proposition 8 and the larger movement to prevent people in love from being able to marry? "The death of one man is a tragedy…"
So I guess that he is fine with a company fireing, let's say, an employee who donated to Obama's compaign because... consequences of his actions, right?
To be honest, his reasoning sounds like the communist propaganda from Eastern Europe: you are free NOT to join the Communist Party, but then you won't be able to hold a high(er) ranking position at your job, and you'll be stuck at a mid-level for the rest of your life. See? It's freedom! You are free NOT to sign the donation of your agriculture lands to the State, but then the State will take it anyway. But what matters is that your are free to choose, and... consequences.
We play the "freedom" game in lots of cases. You can be racist, you are technically free to act in racist ways in public, but the consequence of such behavior is that most people will choose not to associate with you. You will lose opportunities to do business, to socialize in most cases, and more. So, are you free to be racist? Not really, not if you want to be part of the society, even though the technical answer is yes.
So, the larger society does not "tolerate" racism. And the community of which Mozilla is a part does not "tolerate" the CEO being part of a movement to prevent gays marrying. I don't consider either to be a tragedy. This is about what groups of people will allow, and what they won't.
Kinda different all of a sudden, huh.
But y'all don't think that's a problem, it's only when it goes in the other direction that it's a tragedy, a lynching, a bullet in the head. The backlash against this is ridiculous.
"So we Catholics can start lobbying to remove all CEOs who advocate pro-Homosexual behavior or in anyway supported attacks on traditional marriage and religious freedom, following the same reason as Mr. Scalzi?"
The really bad thing that happened in this entire drama was that the list of donors was released to the public. That shouldn't have happened. Some quick googling, on the other hand, yielded this:
http://www.gayfresno.com/content/view/669/
To which I can ultimately only say, "Sigh."
Why do you think secrecy in voting is widely considered to be necessary for true democracy?
Voting is the same type of public, political speech that donations are. Indeed, in a world where money is indisputably an overwhelmingly dominant medium through which votes are gained (that is effectively the point of donations), they are practically synonymous.
I could be more amenable to your viewpoint if the donation amount is hidden, though.
Edited to add: also agree with gcp's point, and am annoyed that it didn't occur to me, which it should have.
Scalzi nailed it with the gun-rights comparison. If your community values the right to keep and bear arms, and if you make a private donation to support gun control, then maybe you shouldn't lead that community.
This article helped me understand this unfortunate incident, thank you.
and if your community is made up of people who have hundreds of different points of view on the right to keep and bear arms... for example, any community that extends beyond the borders of the United States where the conversation may have entirely different contexts?
How many of you making claims about the Mozilla community are actually a part of that community? How many of you are part of an organization with critical resources coming from over 100 countries and languages, not to mention every major world religion and the non-religious? If you're not, then speculating on what the Mozilla Community values is just that, speculation.
I see a lot of people on the Internet deciding for themselves what the Mozilla Community values. I see a lot of people leaping to conclusions based on a few tweets from a few Mozilla employees, while ignoring all the much more nuanced and longer-form blog posts from many far more experienced and long-term Mozilla employees and community members expressing very different views.
(Are we really so lazy that tweets are more effective in establishing the acceptable "facts on the ground" even when there are more robust, compelling, and accurate information available in longer-form blog posts? That's a fucking shame, IMO.)
Since the state is not threatening Brendan Eich's freedom of speech, there is no issue there; and since the state is not threatening open web standards, Mozilla's existence is completely unnecessary.
The obvious conclusion is that Mr. Eich saw that this was the case, and voluntarily chose to abandon the now-obsolete organization. Everything is as it should be.
The difference is that it usually doesn't work.