> I suspect (based on board members' and Eichs' own statements) that it was the pressure from the employees that made him decide to resign.

I worked on Firefox from 2000 and full time from 2005 to 2016. Your suspicion is completely wrong. All employees I knew, mostly on the engineering side, were happy with his appointment or at least didn't express any wish for him to step down. That includes the gay employees I knew.

The only Mozilla group that I know of who expressed a desire for him to step down were a handful of people in the Mozilla Foundation (who would not have been part of Brendan's org since he was CEO of the Corporation). They went public with it and got a big PR splash, which I think spawned this meme that there was a clamour of Mozilla Corp employees demanding Brendan's resignation. There was not.

You have posted many comments in this thread but apparently you weren't there and you aren't aware of basic relevant facts. Please show some humility.

If those are not to be taken as authoritative then I think we may as well shut down HN because there is nothing that can be debated past that point.

I'm sure there are interesting and probably quite relevant details to be had but your word - an anonymous HN contributor to me - does not weigh as heavy as Eich's own statements on the matter.

Maybe it is you that should show some humility? Or maybe you should attach your name to your profile to show that you actually were in the board room at the time that this was decided. If Eich wanted to record a different history then he was entirely free to do so.

I clearly remember his statement of regret at the time, it seemed sincere as far as I could see and I think that he should have been given a fair chance, but I also understand how he may have decided to step down.

There are lots of stories about what happened in that boardroom meeting, all of them more or less plausible, until the participants speak up to contradict it I will stick to basing my views on the official version.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm...

[2] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

There are some articles which I've linked elsewhere which quoted some Mozilla employees at the time, which seemed pretty strong evidence to me (names, dates). Of course that is a fraction of the workforce there and it could have easily been blown out of proportion but there were at least some employees who thought like that.

It's unfortunate that Brendan didn't get as robust a defense from his board as Ms. Rice got from Dropbox's at roughly the same time (and I'm no fan of Condoleeza Rice, the Bush IIs administration in general, or the "War on Terror". I believed then as I do now, that it was a wrong precedent to set)

So I guess this means no Mozilla leader should be making any private political donations at all, because if they do, Mozilla is at risk of losing half of its (US) leaders in red or blue states.

I sure hope the employees still have jobs, and if not, they have vetted their new board & CEOs past donations.

> Whether a proposition has a 50/50 split or not does not matter, if half your country is made up of bigots that doesn't mean that it isn't bigotry, it just means that you have a very large problem.

Do those employees/volunteers feel equally strongly about their "bigoted" user base? Or are they more morally flexible since that directly impacts their incomes?

That's part and parcel the strategy of the left, shifting the Overton Window of what you're allowed to support publicly until anything representing traditional conservative values is safely out of range.

I strongly disagree: political polarization is not limited to the left. The right has used similar polarizarion and smear campaigns for decades in order to turn out single-issue voters: any politicians who is remotely pro-choice becomes anathema, regardless of the rest of their platform. Hillary Clinton was so effectively smeared, in 2016 a lot of voters disliked her, but couldn't articulate why. Since Reagan, the political Overton window in the US is has been sliding rightwards - not left.

Also, I am on the left.

Also, I assume you are objecting to restricting abortion which is a very narrow procedure to broaden to making healthcare illegal.

Repeatedly framing opposing views as "racist", "misogynist", "homophobic" is a perfect example of this. Let's not speak up lest we get labeled with one of those.

I'm not aware of anything in this thread that has anything to do with race and yet that's the first word in the triumphant trio of your counters.

They tend to go together. I'll be happy to bet that a large fraction of the Eich defenders in this thread are just using him as a proxy because they sympathize with his viewpoints, and that you will find a disproportionally large overlap with the other viewpoints mentioned above.

That's as may be. However, as someone who is significantly to the left of the Democratic Party on many issues, not least being that no one has the right to tell other consenting adults who and how they should love, I was left feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the firestorm over Eich's financial donations to a particular cause.

I'll expand on this as I don't wish to be misunderstood. I vehemently disagree with the idea that the government should restrict how, and with whom, we create and maintain relationships. That applies to all relationships, whether they be romantic, platonic, familial or business.

Given that Eich's donation to an anti-Prop 8 group goes against that belief, you'd think that I would applaud Eich's humiliation and ouster.

But I don't. While I certainly wouldn't invite Eich into my life or home because he is clearly not on the side of liberty and individual rights, I do not believe he should be judged on those stances in his professional life.

There is a difference between the personal and the professional, although they have been blurred (both incidentally via social media, and deliberately by those who seek to dehumanize those who disagree with them -- and that's not a right/left thing) in recent years.

Eich's performance as CEO of Mozilla should have been viewed by his statements/actions as Mozilla CEO. And unless he took steps to incorporate his personal biases into the management of Mozilla, they were of no relevance to his job as CEO.

And so, no. I completely disagree with Eich's personal homophobia. At the same time, our professional lives should be judged by our professional actions and statements, not our personal and political actions, unless there's overlap between the two.

I have no doubt that there are those who will disagree with the above. And I'm glad you do. In fact, I'd really like to hear your arguments as to why I'm wrong.

Because I believe that we, as humans, need to have our ideas, viewpoints and opinions challenged on occasion. Even more, just because someone disagrees with me, doesn't make them my enemy or a bad person.

IMHO, demonizing/dehumanizing those who disagree with you is not a reasonable response. Engaging in discourse so that the best ideas can rise to the top, ala Mill's Marketplace of Ideas[0] is a much better response.

In that light, please feel free to disagree with me. When you do, I'd only ask that you keep in mind that I'm human. With my own thoughts, ideas, biases and experience. I don't need to have everyone agree with me. Rather, I want others to consider what I have to say, just as I consider their thoughts and ideas.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketplace_of_ideas

A fair point. Although I'd say that if Mozilla was actually being progressive, they would focus on Eich's professional decisions, not his personal ones.

Perhaps I misunderstand the term "progressive," but I see it as moving us forward in the context of our current culture/society and not as punishing anyone who refuses to conform. The former attempts to bring positive change, while the latter seems to be focused on stifling personal expression.

>But this would be a bit like the CEO of Greenpeace going on a whale hunt for sport.

I think that's a poor analogy for several reasons:

1. Mozilla is a software/technology organization, not an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. Eich's personal political views are irrelevant to running a tech organization, while Greenpeace is specifically focused on the species diversity and the environment. Apples and oranges, IMHO;

2. Not only was Eich not CEO when he made such donations, I am unaware of any anti-LGBTQ+ actions by him in any of his working capacities at Mozilla (please correct me if I'm wrong). Or that Eich ever brought his thoughts about same-sex marriage into the office;

I may be way off base here, and have no experience working at Mozilla and don't know Eich at all (although the ideas behind the Brave browser disgust me, and as such, perhaps I should just pile on and demonize him just for that).

Edit: Fixed spacing.

Agreed Brave is a terrible concept.

They can, but they had better think this through. Note that money in politics is a problem to begin with, and that your regular votes are anonymous. If you decide to do so in a public way on a controversial subject then you take a risk.

> I sure hope the employees still have jobs, and if not, they have vetted their new board & CEOs past donations.

Writing this from liberal Europe, the American stance against gay marriage is very puzzling, though even here in the EU there are countries where this sentiment is still alive.

> Do those employees/volunteers feel equally strongly about their "bigoted" user base?

They typically don't know. By advertising it the rules were changed, and that was optional.

> Or are they more morally flexible since that directly impacts their incomes?

How many of the HN folk are in the MIC? How many of them are against anything other than heterosexual relationships? How many of them are racists?

We do not know. We do occasionally get a glimpse when someone deliberately or accidentally outs themselves as such and when they do so in the name of a company that tends to reflect badly on that company. Eich made his own bed and chose to walk rather than to lie in it.

Personally I think the bigger problem with Mozilla/FireFox is the lack of focus and as long as that isn't addressed it does not matter who is in the wheelhouse the only thing that it will affect is the rate at which the ship is going down. The way things are going there won't be another Google payday for Mozilla because there won't be a FireFox userbase left.

You do realize that you're contradicting yourself, right?

Promoting cancel culture (ousting Eich) isn't exactly focusing on tech. Generally you can only pick one or the other

The actions of the CEO and the actions of the employees are two entirely different things.

The CEO could have been just focused on tech and could have left his political flags in the proverbial closet. Instead he chose to bring them out.

Mozilla was already an entity that had made some pretty strong statements about diversity, inclusivity and their view of the open web.

If you then stir up a shitstorm you will find you can no longer effectively focus on the tech either.

So you can very well pick both: make all those statements, live by them, attract employees who see things likewise and then focus on the tech.

But that's a glass house of your own making and if you then start hurling bricks it will have a terrible effect.

Dutch proverb: High trees catch a lot of wind.

If you become a high tree, in politics or as a CEO then your past will come under scrutiny, and what is found there may very well have a direct effect on your present day life.

It's "close enough" only because you're trying to save face from your incorrect implication/claim you've repeated several times across different comments in this thread that he was the CEO when he did the donation.

It's close enough because right up until his apology Eich did not indicate in any way shape or form that he had changed his views on this. Only after it all blew up did he come with his apology. Sure, he wasn't CEO at the time he made his donation but when he stepped forward to become CEO he was well aware of his own position regarding this and knew that to effectively lead Mozilla would be impossible given his - apparently strongly held - views. At least, I'm assuming people do not donate to political causes they do not feel strongly about.

I highly doubt that.

You do realize that all political donations in the US are not allowed to be anonymous right? This was years before citizens united, the only way to donate was through your own name.

Nothing you’ve said in this entire thread has made any sense, please reconsider demonizing someone you don’t know about issues you don’t understand with arguments that are false.

Morality (or what is "bigoted") is not a law of nature or an absolute, it's a societal convention (even murder is not an absolute "bad" - the US or Chinese or Saudi society deems capital punishment as immoral for example, whereas mine does not. Same for drug use or sale, and tons of other things, heck, even incest - not a big deal moraly in ancient Egypt, Westeros, and/or some parts of the rural South).

So it very much matters what the split was.

Actually, the only places in the US where incest (between adults) is legal are New Jersey and Rhode Island.[0] Which isn't exactly the "rural south," no matter what the bad jokes say.

[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/incest-laws...

Yeah, but I was going for where it's moral/casual, not for where it is legal :-)

Do you have data to support that? It may well exist, but I haven't seen anything that makes such a claim.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/atyhay/us_states_m...

moral, not immoral

The US has no problem with capital punishment last I checked (nor do they have a problem with life imprisonment without a trial), maybe not the best example?

No, it is fine if you have wrong opinions. But be prepared to get the flak associated with those.

Nobody forced Eich to make a donation, but doing so publicly set him up for a confrontation with a substantial chunk of Mozilla's employees further down the line.

Just like a 'mild case of rape' could trip up a supreme court justice nominee. (Or at least, it should have.)

That's not different than Stalinist Russia, the Inquisition, Nazi Germany, McCarthyism, some conservative backwater, etc.

If having "flak associated" with having wrong opinions is acceptable by your book, then those examples were all about free speech too. Their victims just got some heavy flak for their opinions.

Or is it bad only when it involves an execution? Rest assured than in most cases in those regimes an execution wasn't needed either. Most were just fired, or beaten up, or ostacized, or disallowed to advance etc., so that's ok I guess.

Doesn't even have to be the state to give "the flak". In the case of the Inquisition it was the church. And in other cases it has been an angry mob.

What does that even mean? If Prop8 had won, would it have been on the right side of history?

Prop 8 did win. I don't know if it is still on the books; it was rendered inoperative due to a later Supreme Court decision based, so far as one can tell, on neither the text nor the intent of the Constitution. In other words, whether one agrees with the decision or not, it was unconstitutional.

Sorry, that sounds like something Nazis or the Maoists in the "Cultural Revolution" would say. "Wrong side of history" is historical determinism and teleologism.

Who is on "the wrong side of history" determined by consensus itself. And it can be as fickle and temporary as anything.

Apologize for what? Exercising his right to political speech? His views represented the views of 52% of the Californian voters, i.e. the majority of voters. He's supposed to apologize for, literally, "agreeing with most people?"

If employees were revolting, perhaps him stepping down was the right choice. But suggesting that he should "apologize" for having political views some employees disagree with is completely unreasonable and indicative of a bullying power play.

52% of Californian voters didn't ask Mozilla employees to trust them with their livelihoods and the culture of the company. A lot of them changed their minds by 2014 too.

[1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

I don't understand your point about 2014. Did Eich make more "controversial donations" that year?

Eich became CEO in 2014. He declined to say he wouldn't do the same thing again.

Was he presented with a loyalty oath that he refused to sign? What do you mean he "declined to say"? Was he asked to say "I won't do this again" or do you think he should have volunteered such a statement?

In the post you linked he acknowledges having "caused pain" & affirms that Mozilla is a 100% inclusive company. Do you think he should have done more than this?

For my part, I find loyalty oaths odious & refuse to ever participate in them. I support gay rights, gay marriage etc. but if you demanded that I state my support for gay marriage upon your command, I would tell you to get lost.

Eich claiming he wouldn't discriminate against anyone doesn't mean much. He also claimed stripping marriage rights from same sex couples wasn't discriminatory.

I think Eich should have thought about it in the intervening 6 years like many of his fellow Californians. He should have expected his promotion would be divisive since he got a preview of the backlash in 2012. He should have felt remorse for contributing to a campaign that demonized LGBT people even if he still believed they didn't deserve equality. He should have apologized. And he should have explained how he would be held accountable like he claimed he wanted.

I wouldn't want him to pretend to apologize if he didn't mean it. He should have expected the backlash though. He could have withdrawn from consideration and just been CTO.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm...

You do realize that the donation occurred years before he was appointed CEO, right?

Also, and this is just a general observation, whether Eich would have been a good CEO or not is a complete unknown.

You're basically faulting him for taking a position which was reasonable and well within the center of public opinion at the time, which had subsequently become unpopular. And completely discounting the statement he made in the meantime showing that his opinions had, in fact, evolved over time, just as it had for a large fraction of the population.

(Another thing to point out is that the board was aware of the political contribution when he was appointed CEO, and did not feel it was any obstacle.)

And one board member did resign over this prior to his appointment.

For us here in NL (where 90%+ of the population supports gay marriage) the whole idea that this is even worth arguing over seems strange, about as strange as coming out pro-slavery would be.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10654651 has more on the story you are misrepresenting even on its own terms.

I could have worded that comment a lot better but the intention seems pretty clear to me: Your actions as a CEO (even past actions) are going to be viewed in a different light than your actions as just another employee, even a co-founder, and what wasn't a problem before the CEO nomination quickly became a real problem, both for Mozilla the progressive entity as well as for Eich himself. Whether the donations were made several years, months or weeks before his tenure as CEO are not important.

The one thing I did get completely wrong - and which I will also acknowledge - is that I thought Eich could have legally made those donations anonymously (it was argued quite strongly during that time that this should be a possibility). I did not realize that this was illegal.

Sometimes the best response to a rebuttal is just "TIL".

Good faith doesn't mean "be very afraid to criticize others when they lie".

He must feel pretty strongly about this subject given the fact that he could have recanted but he chose to walk instead.

He would have needed a time machine or a crystal ball, since the donation was made in 2008 and he became CEO in 2014.

Here are a bunch of variations of the definition, for your perusal.

Oxford: "a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions."

Merriam Webster: "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices. Especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"

Cambridge: "a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who does not like other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life: "

Dictionary.com: "a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion."

Collins: "Someone who is bigoted has strong, unreasonable prejudices or opinions and will not change them, even when they are proved to be wrong. "

Oxford Learners: "a person who has very strong, unreasonable beliefs or opinions about race, religion or politics and who will not listen to or accept the opinions of anyone who disagrees"

Clearly it didn't work out well for him, but I'm not sure it rises to the level of stupidity so much as naïvety.

After all, he'd probably seen plenty of his peers publicly supporting other political causes without problems.

He just didn't realise the situation was "Leader of open source nonprofit, right-wing, publicly political, pick any 2"

If the political cause is to take away freedom from others, you can expect resistance.

That's revisionist history. Free software, and the greater "hacker" community, has historically been libertarian. It's only recently that authoritarian leftism took over.

What if he was donating to support miscegenation? Would that be over the line?

In a free society, we do not rely on force to produce morally correct behavior, except by force of state. We rely on law instead, which conversely requires complete freedom to participate in the democratic apparatus. Anything that messes with that messes with the very heart of a liberal democracy.

Okay, let me explain that one. I know he says that, and I know Mozilla says that, but "I've decided to leave of my own accord" has simply become such a cliche that it can no longer be distinguished from firing.

In any case, this mostly just supports my view that people don't understand liberalism and why we need it. When an atheist and a christian can sit down together and have a peaceful family dinner without talking about politics, despite the fact that at least one of them thinks that it's a matter of utmost moral importance that the other change his mind, this is a miracle of social cohesion that is crucial to keeping society together. And we're losing it.