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.
It's unreasonable to expect the Mozilla Board to have the foresight of the community's reaction. There was no large sect upset by Brendan's appointment on political grounds. There were a few squeaky wheels, a few silent ones, and a silent majority that had no problem with it.
Hubris? Nah. They just misjudged the ability of the media and vocal critics to not spin a historical donation as a wildly out of scope controversy for the sake of attention, pageviews, and a misguided sense of social rights.
As a single, useless data point, I'm not at all involved in the Mozilla community (though I've been a user for a very long time), or in the same-sex marriage fight, nor am I a resident of California. And my first thought when I heard the announcement was basically "really? The Prop 8 guy?"
This is pretty basic stuff for high-profile executive appointments...
I agree that it should have come up in the discussion; I think that even if it did, it is a reasonable decision to think that his appointment as a whole would be worth the risk.
That's really what this was -- a calculated risk, just like all CEO appointments. I think it's just as reasonable to believe that it could have gone the other way -- that there wouldn't have been as big of a backlash.
I disagree that it was foreseeable. In retrospect of course it looks obvious, but they probably figured that this had all blown over from the first time it was "revealed."
I still find myself a bit confused. CTO at an organization like Mozilla isn't very different in public duties than CEO.
I couldn't agree more with this. Regardless of Eich's views, the controversy engendered by his appointment was obvious and foreseeable. The fact that he/Mozilla didn't even seem to have a plan in place for the backlash indicates that he's unsuitable for a CEO role.
In hindsight, perhaps. But how exactly did it come out that he made that contribution? If someone hadn't uncovered it, would he have outed himself by publicly denigrating gay marriage? Seems highly unlikely.
Many people have skeletons in the closet. While 20-somethings might idealistically believe that people ought to be perfect, especially a CEO, in reality there's simply no such thing.
The political parties are painfully aware of the power of a very thorough background investigation to destroy a candidate's chances, regardless of his or her real qualifications. It has happened thousands of times, and I believe we have damaged our society as a result, by holding every candidate up to an impossibly high standard.
The fact that Eich quietly resigned in the face of what amounts to a smear campaign is a sign of real leadership skills. He has class. He did what was best for Mozilla.
A lesser individual might have made some lame apology to save his job, as demanded by his attackers. I respect that he did not do that, and I'd work for a man like Eich in a heartbeat. I just regret that so many have chosen to politicize Mozilla in this fashion, and I no longer have the slightest respect for the organization.
I would ask you: how many is "so many"? I saw five Mozilla Foundation employees object to the appointment. Mozilla Corporation employees seemed generally supportive.
What caused the real problems here were the media circus, the rampant lack of fact-checking in said circus, and okcupid's opportunistic publicity-grab.
Well, I don't know but apparently it was enough people to tip the scales. Some commenters have asserted that a lot of Mozilla employees were upset by the Prop 8 thing, but I haven't seen any factual numbers, just hazy claims based on the myth that "of course everyone opposed Prop 8".
> but apparently it was enough people to tip the scales
Tip which scales? You seem to be under the misapprehension that there was serious internal pressure for Brendan to resign. There was not.
The problem, of course, is convincing you of that. I can point you to https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... but of course you can decide to not believe that. I can also tell you that I'm a Mozilla employee (that's a clear matter of public record anyway) so I have some idea what was going on internally, but you don't have to believe me on that either...
> a lot of Mozilla employees were upset by the Prop 8 thing
Dare I say that this is because there aren't any? But "Employees support their new CEO in spite of disagreeing with him on some political issues" makes a much worse story than "Employees revolt against new CEO", so the press ran with the latter, facts be damned.
I appreciate your efforts to set the facts straight. The FAQ, while straightforward on some points, is vague on one in a way that I can only see as unfortunately intentional.
> Q: Was Brendan asked to resign by the Board?
> A: No. In fact, Board members tried to get Brendan to stay at Mozilla in another role.
You can read this in two ways:
1. The board didn't want Eich to resign as CEO, and when he did, tried to at least get him to remain in another role.
2. The board did want Eich to resign as CEO (but formally it was his decision), and when he did, tried to get him to remain in another role.
My impression, when I read the FAQ, was that it tries to create the impression of 1, but 2 is more likely to have happened. I'm saddened to have confirmed with by reading the NYTimes article which quotes board members precisely to that effect (that they agreed with Eich he should step down as CEO).
The fact that this issue is muddled in the FAQ in a way that seems intentional does not boost my confidence in Mozilla. It isn't as bad as "they plain fired him" which I thought before, but it's still pretty bad.
The correct reading is 1. The vagueness is most definitely not intentional; I'll get in touch with the authors.
There's a difference between "want him to resign" and "agree with his decision to resign once he makes it". My understanding is that Brendan had to actually get pretty angry with the board to get them to agree, fwiw.
Perhaps your understanding is a little off. Maybe it's a prudent position to go back to not really knowing what happened between Eich and the board.
Anyway, I'm done being angry at Mozilla. You guys are doing an important thing. Calls for a boycott are counterproductive and will only hurt us all. What's done is done.
I just can't quite find it in my heart to support you anymore.
For what it's worth, https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... has been updated with less weaselly language. So at this point my best guess on what happened is that it was Brendan that first brought up resigning, but the board was quite happy that he did so...
I was actually pretty disheartened to read that comment from Brendan, since it directly contradicted what I thought I'd been told by the board members. :(
> If someone hadn't uncovered it, would he have outed himself by publicly denigrating gay marriage?
That's what his contribution was. That's literally what he did.
No one is stopping you from admiring Eich, and no one is stopping you from going and working for him. People who were upset by his publicly stated views chose to vocalize that, and to encourage others who felt similarly not to patronize the company he was heading. Is there any part of that process you'd like to prohibit? This is exactly how free speech is supposed to work -- say anything you like, and accept the consequences.
What public statements did he make? Kindly share the link; I missed this somehow. It was my understanding that he did not make any public statements about his views on gay marriage but simply donated money to Prop 8, then someone was able to find this out because in California such a donation is public information.
Are we really doing this? A public contribution to a specific cause is, of course, a statement. Now please, quote the dictionary definition of "statement" back at me to make this HN conversation complete.
The board probably assumed that the Prop 8 issue had already been settled in the court of public opinion when Brendan's donation was made public in 2012.
The board absolutely did not see this coming, everyone knew there would be some reaction but absolutely nowhere near the level that there was, that should seem immediately obvious from the reaction.
For those closer to the organisation it looks very different, Brendan was already CTO, he was a co founder and very much the 'face' of the company, the community guidelines very much espouse diversity and leaving personal beliefs at the door in the interest of collaboration.
In hindsight it was very obviously a mistake, but everything is plain ...
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.