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. :(
