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)
> 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.