IMHO actively helping launch an unnecessary war that killed tens of thousands (a very conservative estimate) of civilians while costing hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been spent in ways that benefit the American taxpayer is much worse than supporting PRISM or working for the NSA.
I'm kind of floored that anyone in our industry would appoint a former Bushevik at all.
To be fair, the Mozilla thing was much more the "Are you now, or have you ever supported a political issue we don't agree with?" in nature. I'm not saying I agree with it, but that's the same type of question...
Eich was in a much wobblier position from the beginning, with board members resigning over his appointment, public denials about that, and eventual confirmation. That alone might have doomed him and the rest is noise.
There was no confirmation about board members resigning,
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...
2 stepped down because they had other stuff to do, the other 1 because of something that is not prop-8 related.
John Lilly publicly confirmed he resigned rather than appoint Eich, without elaboration. I did not say the board resignations had to do with Eich's material support for Prop 8. WSJ stated all three resigned because of Eich's appointment, and none contradicted that report.
As for the "politics" of it, "Are you, or have you ever been part of the surveillance state?" is not a question about one's political views. It is more like the question in Germany "Were you a Stasi officer or informant?"