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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
It would also have been a very public statement of position that he could have been held accountable to.
Go on.
Those who would have Christians deny Christ and embrace sin do the same: ergo anti-Christians 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.
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.
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.
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/04/03/the-hounding-of-br...
I have to agree.
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.
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.
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?
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.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/10/the-mo...
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?
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?
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.
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?
Why?
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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/
How, apart from perhaps ease of concealment, is there any difference between the two?
One of those "old-fashioned opinions" has historically been an opposition to "miscegenation".
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.
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.
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 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.
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'?
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.
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.
Unless Eich actually makes a statement on his political views, we don't really know anything.
"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]
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.
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.
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.
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".
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?
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.
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...
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.
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 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.
Great comparison, it's not like the KKK murdered thousands of people or anything.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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."
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.
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.
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...
Seriously, homophobia was supposed to mean "strong fear or.aversion to homosexuals" not "opinion that homosexuals dislike"
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 ...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.