And are other companies really beholden to their users so much?
The duration wasn't relevant as he explicitly declined to say anything about his "personal views", leading people to believe he still supports them. Other companies are fairly good at backpedaling and saying they didn't really mean it, whatever it may be.
And anyways, no one is saying he's not allowed to be the CEO. Just that apparently a lot of people got annoyed at that and felt it to be wrong in some way. I don't see any "life sentence" here. If I start promoting the idea that stupid people be discouraged from reproducing, I shouldn't be surprised that folks might not want me in a public role, even if I'm right.
The whole mob mentality is a bit concerning - I don't recall much discussing about Eich's suitability or the higher importance of what he's doing.
GoDaddy got quite a bit of hate due to the founder smiling with a shot elephant.
It starts to become a litmus test when trying to define when it's acceptable to boycott and demand resignation. Was Mozilla a special case because of their mission and foundation status? What behavior makes someone's position unacceptable? A large donation? a small donation, a vote? Or is it due to outside community consensus at the time? so when the donation was discovered in 2011, it wasn't appropriate, but reappearing after more passing years it is?
A pretty complete and accurate account of the events were captured by a Mozilla employee in: https://medium.com/p/7645a4bf8a2:
In essence, the entire incident felt like mob Internet justice dispensed, where he was depicted as the Prop8 leader and if you believed in Prop 8 you should also be demanding his resignation. Like many divisive issues with strong public opinions online before it, it doesn't take long before it descends into forming divisive stand points, fusing characters involved with the issue itself and opponents demanding maximum harm and consequences. It seems all to easy to demand the end of someones lifetime career.
It will be interesting whether public crucifixion and boycotts will continue for the hundreds of other employees of major tech companies that also donated to Prop 8 (of which Obama was a supporter in 2008), where more than 60% of Intel employees that donated were in favor of Prop 8: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how-rare-are-anti-gay-mar...
I don't understand what the message is in all this, that if you donated (or voted?) you should not be allowed to be a CEO of a technology company? Any company? Even a company you founded? Even after 6 years without any signs of discriminating behavior? How long should it take or is it a life-sentence?
It's also concerning the major role Media can have, who seemingly have the ability to be a catalyst victim selection and control of public opinion, able to spark outrage with their influence and interpretation bias.
Will it end here, or was Brendan Eich just an example of token justice? Seemed strange that out of all donators, a founder of the Mozilla foundation and a crusader for the open web, ended up being it.