I thought Scalzi's take on the issue was one of the more objective that I've seen lately. He's correct, of course: as a private organization, Mozilla reserves the right to hire and fire (which <i>would</i> have been Eich's fate had he not resigned) as they see fit as long as such action does not run afoul of state or federal labor laws....which this does not.<p>Mozilla was concerned about their appearance in the public eye, and chose to align themselves with one particular side of the issue. Again, as is their right. Eich was not denied any First Amendment right, as the U.S. Government was not involved.<p>But let's not kid ourselves: those vigorously cheering Eich's departure aren't considering the whole picture. If this were 1950, Mozilla would be chock-full of white men eager to hustle the CEO out the door were it disclosed that he was gay or had donated to a Socialist/Communist organization.<p>"Tolerance" had nothing to do with what happened to Eich. This was the Jacobin mob in action.
There is a lot more to this issue than that.<p>The reactions outside and inside of the company showed very little tolerance, and between dialogue/engagement and intimidation/suppression, the latter was chosen. This in itself is a massive problem.<p>I read a lot of nonsense lately about this being "the free market", "he can defend whatever he wants but then face the consequences", etc. Do these people realise that the exact same arguments were used for the suppression of gays? how are these valid now? is this the kind of discourse people support in the Valley?<p>But even worse than that is the argument that nothing illegal was done. Yep, the same as stripping Alan Turing of his awards was legal at the time, or put him under "treatment", or marginalising and ostracising him.<p>Quit focusing in the legalese and look at the lack of compassion as human beings people have for those who dissent in a way that <i>offends</i> them.
Finally, some sanity on this issue. Thank you, thank you.<p>> "I mean, isn’t this <i>supposed</i> to be how things work?"<p>> "But, but… Mr. Eich should be free to believe what he wants, and to contribute to any political cause he so chooses! Well, and so he is, and I would, as they say, defend to the death his right to do so. What he is <i>not</i> free from — and this is the thing which people seem to fall down on again and again — are the <i>consequences</i> of his actions."
I'm not religious but I do agree with the logic behind this comment:<p>"So we Catholics can start lobbying to remove all CEOs who advocate pro-Homosexual behavior or in anyway supported attacks on traditional marriage and religious freedom, following the same reason as Mr. Scalzi?"
I haven't been following this much, but it's sort of amusing and annoying when someone mirrors my thoughts on a subject so well.<p>The really bad thing that happened in this entire drama was that the list of donors was released to the public. That shouldn't have happened. Some quick googling, on the other hand, yielded this:<p><a href="http://www.gayfresno.com/content/view/669/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gayfresno.com/content/view/669/</a><p>To which I can ultimately only say, "Sigh."
I've been searching for an analogy to neutralize the political sentiment and to focus on the facts.<p>Scalzi nailed it with the gun-rights comparison. If your community values the right to keep and bear arms, and if you make a private donation to support gun control, then maybe you shouldn't lead that community.<p>This article helped me understand this unfortunate incident, thank you.
Mozilla was founded to protect open standards on the web against the threat posed by <i>private</i> actors. But, as people keep arguing, we should only be concerned about interference from the <i>state</i>.<p>Since the state is not threatening Brendan Eich's freedom of speech, there is no issue there; and since the state is not threatening open web standards, Mozilla's existence is completely unnecessary.<p>The obvious conclusion is that Mr. Eich saw that this was the case, and voluntarily chose to abandon the now-obsolete organization. Everything is as it should be.