Looks better on the resume, as well as for the company. A win/win situation, you could say, quite likely to have a built-in golden parachute.
What other reason would he have to resign? “Well I’ve had these opinions for decades, but it comes as a complete surprise to me so I suddenly don’t want to work here!” or something like that?
Or the threat of a mass walkout of Mozilla staff…
Regardless, he left the post because of financial support he made to something that would potentially bring Mozilla Corp into disrepute. It was the right thing to happen, tbh.
Be ware of ware you get your information from. He got fired for three different things.
As far as “his personal opinions” goes he was trying to force his no so personal opinions on others.
What would the other two be? And, I guess I should ask, according to who?
Is subjective. Nazi Germany thought the right thing would be to throw away the lives of hundreds of their soldiers to invade Denmark and protect our blue-haired blond-eyed population, yet for some reason my family is filled with stories of how we helped increase that number.
“First they came for the homophobes, and I said nothing, because frankly I thought they had it coming.”
Confusing a nation with a corporation.
I have a lot of fence jumpers (that means people who married people out side of there social/racial grouping) I know people who say the most horrid things to me. I don’t care what they say as long as they don’t get the government involved.
Well this is getting perilously close to a political debate… Hang on guys, let’s re-rail this wreck!
… I am quite glad the homepage works again…
Tada! 
Throwing away freedom of speech for the right thing is all fun and games until you realize that those who decide what is “right” won’t always agree with you.
Mozilla could, or rather should have said “Ok, we don’t endorse his opinion. Actually, many of us disagree with him. However, that’s his personal opinion and we believe in freedom of speech, so firing someone because an Internet hivemind traced a small 2-years old pledge to a political campaign is simply not right.”
But they didn’t. Which, for a Free software foundation (with self-emphasis on the Free), is either hypocritical or cowardy.
Remember, kids, next time an Internet hivemind could come for you.
Source? On the half-dozen places where I saw the news reported (covering a wide array of stances), I’ve never seen it even hinted. So now I’m curious of why.
(And what are the two other things, btw?)
Edit :
Ah, well, uh…
Right, then I think I’ll stop there.
He gave money to force his god hating religion on others. Lets try this: I don’t like Mormons because they try to make that, oops , did force there godless religion on others as opposed to I don’t like Mormons and I want to make a law so they can have only one wife, here have money to make that law. That’s right America all ready did that I really don’t care how many wives they have as long as I don’t have to pay survivor benefits for all of them.
Better then the Fake News Corp.
Throw crap and hide.
So there are what 29ish states (from Cobert) who can fire you if you work in one of them for saying your gay. Are you ok with that?
It’s not subjective. The Mozilla Corporation advocates social inclusion and he sponsored a political campaign that would have the opposite effect. There was no way his position as CEO, the figurehead, of Mozilla would be tenable in the long term.
But as CEO of Mozilla he would represent the company as a figurehead of sorts. They are not limiting his right to free speech, but you cannot have free speech with no consequence. The consequence of his past actions are that he is unsuitable to lead a company that promotes social inclusion as an FSF.
By all means, if we’d like to debate this topic further, feel free to branch a new thread.
Personally, my browsing habits are fairly unaffected by whoever the company operating the browser’s development decides to hire as CEO. They could have hired Hitler and I’d probably still use it if it better fit my use case than the alternatives. I’d just die a little bit inside in the process.
So company policy is, objectively, the right thing?
Brb, dumping chemical waste in kindergarten sandbox! Gotta do what’s right!
The rest of his post pretty clearly argues corporate conformity/consistency, not general humane ethic.
Also without arguing either way myself, a number of notable non-heterosexuals are on the record criticizing whatshisname’s sacking.
Seriously, who is using a browser based on the type of employees working at the company who is developing it?
Hmm, thinking about Apple and Facebook… This could be me 
But still, for me a browser is the most important software to get my work done. And even the best, fastest and so on browser is still not good enough. I was with Firefox for a very long time. Now I converted to Chrome when firefox was no option on mobile and for productivity reasons I switched to Chrome on the desktop too. Once, I got happy without the addons of Mozilla, I realized, that Chrome is really really fast…
For the company, based on its charter, yes.
Again, if it comes to light that they’ve made someone CEO who actively stands against what the company stands for, it’s well within their rights to remove them from that position. More so if the appointment is doing actual harm to the company and its products (for instance the OkCupid block). The question here really is what made them think it was a good idea to put him there in the first place.
Aaaand frak it.
Firing someone for because he donated a small sum of money two years ago for a cause is against freedom of speach. That’s not just consequences of what one said, like having to justify it (or change their mind) in front of other people. That’s discrimination against someone based on their non-related personal opinions and actions before they were given the job.
It’s as if I fired you from, say, my satellite-launching start-up because you protested against NASA’s nuclear-powered probes. Yes, protesting against Galileo was (I think) stupid. Yes if protesters had their way, we would have been denied from one of the greatest space achievments of the last decade. That would still have been wrong.
Mozilla doesnt stand for gay mariage. They are not a political organization. They are free software foundation. So no, he didn’t actively stood against something the company stands for.
If that’s the case, then anyone supporting their action loose their right to complain about, say, Google and Yahoo accepting censorship to get Chinese market. Remember this one?
What OkCupid did was a dick move for pretty much the same reasons, and given that it is a (very) mercantile organization, it was probably more motivated by the publicity stunt than anything else.
And frankly, most of Mozilla’s revenues being from Google, who doesn’t want to fall under anti-monopoly laws, they could have afforded to make a stand.
So did the Communists ; we know how it ended.
Also, contrary to, well, nearly anyone, I actually listened to arguments on both sides on this particular issue. You know, the advantage of actually having mild feelings about the question at all.
Without going into the details, I discovered to my surprise that both sides actually have good arguments. Both also have people asking the right questions but giving wrong answers. Both have people right for the wrong reasons, and wrong for the right reasons. And both sides have hate-spewing, arrogant jerks that can afford to be such poison because they know they are right.
Problem is, each side mostly assume that the other is only constitued of the last one - partially because they are the most vocal, but also because it’s oh so simpler to neatly divide the world between Us and The Baddies. Which ends up being self-fulfilling, as treating people like hate-driven jerks end up making them so.
All that to say this :
-Not everyone against gay marriage is an homophobe. In my country, there were even LGBT militants street protesting against the local gay marriage. This is the kind of noxious assumption that ends up poisoning things.
-Freedom of speach is not optional. Without it, you simply prevent anyone but the worst to talk. The fact that it is one of the foundations of pretty much any other form of freedom in our civilization is not a coincidence. If you actually listen to the other side, not only can you sometimes hear interesting things, even if you disagree with it, but you actually have a chance to convince them, instead of treating them like extremists until they become so.
When you sacrifice freedom of speach, things either went very, very wrong somewhere, or they are about to.
-You too, you have skeletons in a closet that some Reddit users may dig up one day, and show to the world how you don’t conform with the time’s conformism. Transparency is great, but you shouldn’t let it be so easily turned against the freedom of not thinking like everyone else, of not being put in little convenient labeled boxes, of simply being wrong, even.
Mozilla had a chance to make a stand, they didn’t.
Hell, there were even Nazis that were good people. (Yes, this is a reverse-Godwin : even the worst group ever still had some good people - who were unfairly punished because of it).
Then they came for the Catholics…
But you’re assuming it’s unrelated. I am certain that my political affiliations, for instance, would rule me out from positions with some companies in the tech industry.
Most organisations are political to some extent or another, most organisations stand for something. I would imagine that most FSF organisations would be strongly in favour of social equality, and certainly Mozilla’s staff seems to be.
I don’t recall calling Eich a homophobe. He may or may not be. Personally, I’m against marriage, but I’m not going to stop people doing it just because I don’t like it, it doesn’t really harm anyone else.
I am not saying we should stop him holding his beliefs or sharing his views with anyone. But some companies may deem his views to be incompatible with that of their company, certainly for a leadership role that is supposed to represent them. And that, in my opinion, is fine.
That’s being awfully presumptuous. But I’m certainly not expecting the entertainment industry to be asking for me to work for them any time soon. And I doubt I’ll ever be a priest.
So yes, if anyone tried to actively tried to stifle my speech, I’d have a problem. But I accept that my current and previous (and future) views and beliefs will make my employment in certain positions extremely untenable.
They did make a stand. Just for a different user group.
But I’m basically just repeating myself here.
So your ok with donating to Al Quita?
DADT was a federal government law about stopping freedom of speech.
Because you don’t want to, because you’re not a people-person, or because you don’t believe in God?
Where I live, which is in the civilized world, only the first two are a serious hindrance to becoming a priest. Publicly stating that you don’t believe in God anymore, while conducting your Sunday sermon, will likely get you called in to have a chat with your bishop to check what happened, but some priest actually did it a few years ago and to the best of my knowledge he’s still a priest.
I’m of terrorist descent and proud of it. Because my grandparents and great-grandparents picked the side that ended up winning the war their designation was later changed to “freedom fighters” but while I personally think the world would be a better place if the leadership of that particular organization spontaneously caught fire, I don’t think donating to them should be punishable, as limiting freedom of speech in that way will benefit terrorists more than any amount of money.
I do think it’d be a good thing to have the money rerouted, though. Maybe seize Al Qaeda’s funding and spend it on improving education?
That’s using my quote out of context with out having much of an idea were I stand on that issue. Money does NOT equal speech. The court just wants other sides to be drown out.
Who isn’t a descent of terrorist, who isn’t descended from royalty?
Due to straying severely off topic this thread is now closed. New replies are no longer allowed.