In my opinion the real issue has little to do with Brendan Eich's political views. Regardless of how you stand on the issue of whether one's politics should impact one's suitability for a job, no one can claim surprise at the community backlash. Least of all the Mozilla board.
The real issue is that the Mozilla board saw this coming, and didn't think it mattered to upset a big chunk of the community. That is hubris, plain and simple.
When your organization is dedicated to community, you can't put community second in your decision-making process. The decision made the Mozilla board look out of touch with their mission.
Following this line of thinking, you can see how even an ardent opponent of gay marriage could be upset by Brendan's appointment, purely on the basis that risking the community is the last thing they should do. I wish more of this discussion would be about the Mozilla board's tone deaf decision, and less grandstanding about politics or freedom of speech.
This is one of the better pieces I've seen on the politics of the situation.
Much as it pains me to say it, being CEO is very much a political position, and if Eich couldn't muster the will to issue a timely "My position on Gay Marriage has evolved" statement, he really wasn't suited to the role, no matter that he had, in every sense that should matter, earned the position through his hard work.
I have to wonder if, when this started becoming an issue, Mozilla did what most corporations would do which is to bring in a PR firm specializing in crisis management and communications. Because if they did, it doesn't look like their advice was heeded.
Incidentally, to all the conservatives who are up in arms over Eich's resignation, I have four words: "Van Jones" and "Shirley Sherrod".
"Brendan Eich was not fired. After his appointment, there was backlash from the Mozilla Community. He came under pressure to resign and he did. The Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his donation; they did not "remove him because of his views." If that alone was the issue, they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place. Resignation (after only 11 days in the CEO role) became the only viable path forward when a sizable portion of the Mozilla Community refused to follow the person that the Board designated to lead the organization. That wide refusal and rejection fomented the issue, and Eich's decision to maintain his public stance on gay marriage -- as is his right -- created an impasse. It is incorrect to say that he was fired or removed; it is fair, though, to say that he was forced out."
Let me make this even more fun for you: I have a real problem with what happened to Brendan Eich. From what I understand, there wasn't a major effort inside Mozilla to oust him --- he did not make his own employees feel uncomfortable. His relationship with Mozilla was employer/employee. His support for Prop 8 was quiet, and, painful as it is for us to recognize this now, very much in the American mainstream: Barack Obama ran in 2008 opposing marriage equality.
The irony in the furor over Brendan Eich is that it is well out of proportion. I worked with Mozilla long enough to recall the time when a community engagement manager soliticed calls for donations to an anti-gay-marriage organization on his blog, which was replicated to Planet Mozilla. There were no calls to boycott Mozilla or to fire said person for that act.
I bring it up because the outrage is clearly so manufactured, not because I'm "primed to argue, even though I know it won't go anywhere."
Eich was hounded out of his job. It's absolutely clear from the sequence of events. You can argue that he quit his job to end the controversy, but that amounts to the same thing.
In 2008, Eich's was the mainstream view. Even Barack Obama stated in 2008 that he believed marriage should be between a man and a woman.
It's ridiculous that someone should be considered an unacceptable type of person to be CEO because he donated $1,000 to a successful, mainstream proposition that passed, in a state of 35 million people, on an issue that Obama also agreed with! Nor did the bill "take away rights". Did all those people who quit the board or said nasty things about Brendan Eich vote for McCain-Palin in the 2008 elections? Highly doubtful.
Mr. Eich in fact stated that his personal views would not color his performance in a leadership position, and that he had nothing against homosexuality. When it became clear that he could not shake the controversy, he chose the high moral ground of resigning.
Losing this man, the inventor of Javascript and a key player at Mozilla.org for many years, was a real blow to the organization. It's never a good idea to politicize a technology organization whose mission is to create free and open tools for everyone, to be used all over the world by all sorts of people.
I think that it's a shame that Eich had to resign. And I say this as someone who is very happy to see the winds changing in the US (and elsewhere), and who thinks that it's a good thing that gay marriage is becoming the norm and accepted law.
Mozilla is a non-profit. It's normal and expected for a non-profit to have officers and directors who agree with the stance of the non-profit. I would expect the head of a vegetarian organization to be a vegetarian. I would expect the member of a religious organization to be an observant member of that religion. And I would expect that the head of a labor union patronize union shops more than non-union ones.
So if Eich had taken a public stand against open-source software, or against Web standards, then it would be totally and utterly reasonable for him to resign, or to be forced out.
But Eich didn't take a stand against things that are at the core of Mozilla's mission. Rather, he had a personal opinion -- one which I don't share -- that used to be mainstream, and is increasingly seen as out of the mainstream, at least in large portions of the US and many other liberal democracies.
I think that it's unfair, and even a bit dangerous, for him to be forced out because of a personal political opinion.
If the next head of Mozilla gets up and says that he thinks it's OK for women to have abortions, would it be reasonable for them to be forced out? After all, there are many millions of people who feel that abortion is murder. (I don't concur with this opinion, but I know that it exists.)
If the next head of Mozilla donates money to anti-Obamacare ads, saying that things should go back to the way they were a few years ago, you could make a pretty good argument in favor of saying that this opinion will effectively condemn many people to death, or perhaps crippling poverty.
I don't think that we want this to happen. We don't want CEOs to be ousted because they have political opinions which reflect a minority.
I've often engaged in political discussions and debates with clients, some of whom hold opinions that I find completely and utterly wrong-headed, and perhaps even dangerous. But I'm not going to stop working with them because they hold different opinions. Rather, I'm going to be professional and work with them -- and perhaps even continue to debate them, so that they'll see my side of the argument.
Eich believes that gay marriage is wrong. I believe that he's wrong about that, and history is increasingly against his opinion. But his opinion doesn't have to do with Mozilla's mission.
By capitulating to public opinion over Eich's personal politics, Mozilla has opened Pandora's box. I worry that people who want to become the heads of major companies and organizations will keep their opinions and donations to themselves, for fear of eventually being condemned for those opinions. And that can only be bad for democracy and openness.
I wholeheartedly agree. Someone shouldn't be fired because of their views on a subject like gay marriage. Some people are for it, some people are against it and everyone needs to accept that. Just like some people believe in God and others do not.
Mozilla crossed over into a whole new territory. The once humble as as the article put it, politically neutral organisation for the first time I am aware of in its history caved in to popular opinion. Should Brendan Eich have known better than to air his views on a touchy subject like same-sex marriage? As a CEO yes, but it is wrong to vilify someone simply because their views do not align with those of others. Eich made a mistake, and the whole situation quickly got blown out of proportion.
The wrong decision was made in this situation and as a result, I too, uninstalled Firefox.
On the one hand, Brendan Eich is entitled to his political views, and they do not inherently preclude him from being a great CEO.
On the other hand, a non-trivial portion of the population, particularly the next generation, see opposition to gay marriage as morally repugnant, the way most people now view anti-miscegenation laws.
I don't think this is going to go away. Mozilla will continue to suffer a minor but significant attrition of mindshare over this issue as long as he remains at the helm, regardless of his merits as a leader or as a human being.
Politics are always a factor in every industry and every facet of life, it is naive to think otherwise, politics are what happens when a large enough group of people have to be led, be it in a company or a country.
As far as Eich is concerned there are three things to keep in mind: 1) He was the public face of the company, he was supposed to represent Mozilla's values; there was NO problem with Eich when he was an engineer or simple employee of the company 2) It was a non-profit dedicated to openness and freedom and inclusion on the internet 3) He refused to qualify or repudiate his hate speech. It would be like appointing someone who had fought against multiracial drinking fountains the head of the ACLU. Organization over.
Really it's the fault of the board who selected him without a thorough vetting. Hateful and publicly expressed views like that have no place in the public face of any inclusive organization; knowing your leader and boss wants to take your rights away because he doesn't approve of who you have sex with always creates a hostile work environment. They were just able to do something about it because Mozilla stands for something and operates based on principles rather than a top-down dictatorship like most corporations.
And honestly if he had explained how he planned on reconciling his hateful views with managing gay employees and their marriages, etc. he may have been allowed to stay.
If there wasn't an element of cancel culture then Brendan Eich would be Mozilla's CEO and not the incompetent CEO they currently have.
Don't get me wrong, I profoundly disagree with Brendan Eich's political views, I am for same-sex marriage and I'm very much a liberal when it comes to any moral leanings. That doesn't stop the fact that Brendan Eich being ousted of Mozilla for his intolerant political views is a shame and set back Mozilla considerably.
Maybe we're not getting the whole story, and perhaps this was as much an internal political struggle as an external protest against his Prop 8 contribution?
Eich has often been abrasive when commenting on HN to the point of personally insulting some posters here, perhaps he made political enemies inside Mozilla as well, and they used this external protest as a convenient excuse to make life very difficult for him inside Mozilla such that he felt it better to leave.
I personally, even though I've had disagreements with him, and even though I don't support his views on gay marriage, am saddened by him leaving Mozilla. He is the Steve Jobs or Larry Page of Mozilla, the passionate defender of the organization and its goals. Is there someone of equal standing who can visibly lead the community at Mozilla?
Someone needs to fight for the Web, I don't think his personal contribution to Prop 8 merits complete ostracism from the other good work he has done.
Mozilla, much more than most is a political organisation (about freedom and openness) not just a commercial one. It has a mission, it will succeed with community support and goodwill. The political views of the CEO matter.
People are not saying (as far as I have heard) that there should be no place at Mozilla for Brendan Eich due to his political views but they are clearly uncomfortable with him leading a political organisation. A commitment and career somewhere does not entitle you to be CEO of the organisation if that is not what is best for the organisation.
Brendan Eich was working pretty hard to derail real progress too, ironically. It's pretty understandable for people to be upset about the appointment of someone unqualified to CEO of an organization they strongly care about and someone who actively works against equal rights is incredibly unqualified to lead an organization like Mozilla, no matter their technical or business expertise.
I agree that people shouldn't be protected from the consequences of what they say or do, and I don't agree with Eich's point of view.
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.
Can I just be blunt? Eich has absolute freedom to say what he wants. He's free to campaign against same-sex marriage. He could campaign against interracial marriage, if he wanted to. Not a problem, and I'm deeply glad that this belief is deeply ingrained in US culture.
But the freedom to advocate any idea you want does not give an individual the right to be free of criticism from others.
The thing that has happened here is pretty simple:
- Eich was promoted to a highly visible community leadership position.
- Mozilla as a community organisation has a general policy of promoting diversity and equality in software development.
- Eich's personal views are not compatible with that position, and he was previously an active campaigner against some civil rights for LGBT people – a position which caused actual damage to members of the organisation he was CEO of, and others in the community it is a leader in.
- Eich failed to convincingly apologise, or explain and reassure the community that his views were acceptable.
- Members of the community and Mozilla who were directly affected by his actions, others who are their peers, and other people in the community in general, felt that Eich was, as a result, not a suitable candidate for such an important and visible position.
- Those people made their objections known, and Eich failed to control the controversy, eventually resigning.
I don't really know what else could be expected in this case. A bunch of people objected to his views (which is totally their right, considering those views were actively harmful to them), and he/Mozilla did not believe that his continued presence in the role would be effective.
Is the argument that we should completely ignore the personal views of people in important and visible leadership roles? That seems unrealistic, and would quickly fall down when presented in a slightly different light.
I'm deeply saddened by this whole affair — not because Eich has resigned, as much as I think he would have been an effective CEO, but because this discussion has to happen in the first place, and because prop 8 was even a thing.
AT least we'll be over all of this nonsense in a few years.
Eich's public behavior was absolutely material to his work. You can't work to break apart gay families and undermine gay people's constitutional rights and then expect gay people to be be perfectly comfortable working for you. And Mozilla's board reasonably felt that material to him being the CEO of a company. Well, that or his demonstrated inability to handle a corporate crisis with a big press element.
I know about Brendan Eich's views, but Mozilla is an organization devoted to open source, none of whose concerns, as far as I can tell, have anything to be with sexual minorities. Were he still the CEO, he really couldn't have used his office to act on his views; so why all the castigating ?
He has a view, and sure a lot of us (including me) don't agree with him, but this culture of outrage is disgusting.
You know what else goes beyond Mozilla? The work they do, the open internet they've spent over 15 years fighting for. The problem in this case is the LGBT community apparently feels like the most special of the snowflakes with the most important problems. Be honest, forcing Eich out didn't do anything for the LGBT community outside of a hollow victory and a blatant showing of power to intimidate its enemies.
Solidarity used to mean that you look at the bigger picture and don't torpedo groups who are on the same side as you over personal feelings. For 16 years Eich fulfilled his own and his employees' contracts. For 16 years he was completely in line with Mozilla's inclusivity policy. For 16 years he fought for one of the most important social causes and he had that taken away from him because he felt that in supporting the personal beliefs of others he deserved personal beliefs of his own. Not only that, those of us who care about what he fought for had him taken away from us and I am yet to hear one good reason why.
There is ample evidence that he never once espoused his views at Mozilla. So much so that his own co-founder didn't realize he had such a position until it came to light 13 years into their working relationship.
What the LGBT community needs is true victory where they're treated no differently from anyone else. This is only a victory for the righteous indignation that is rampant on the Internet.
It is pretty sad that those who were most vocal about Mr. Eich stepping down because of his beliefs no doubt have little problem giving their money to the likes of Orson Scott Card who I would submit is considerably more harmful to the cause than Brendan Eich has been.
The real issue is that the Mozilla board saw this coming, and didn't think it mattered to upset a big chunk of the community. That is hubris, plain and simple.
When your organization is dedicated to community, you can't put community second in your decision-making process. The decision made the Mozilla board look out of touch with their mission.
Following this line of thinking, you can see how even an ardent opponent of gay marriage could be upset by Brendan's appointment, purely on the basis that risking the community is the last thing they should do. I wish more of this discussion would be about the Mozilla board's tone deaf decision, and less grandstanding about politics or freedom of speech.
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