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[GlyphGryph]

Same can be said about militant gays/christians/atheists/whatever.

If you didn't notice, cramming those things down customer's throats results in the employee getting fired.


I don't mean to strawman so I'll ask this hesitantly: Are you taking a "not tolerating intolerance is hypocritical" stance?

Of course not. Fundraise the fuck out of turning public opinion in your favour, knocking down every piece of legislation this guy supports, call him out when and where he preaches his intolerance and, in fact, participate in an active campaign to fight it.

The problem here isn't that people might not tolerate his intolerance, it's that people have apparently decided they aren't going to tolerate people who disagree.

Here's the thing - I'm not saying this guy doesn't deserve to lose his job (from my understanding, Mozilla management is shit and they and the board all deserve to go). I'm not saying people shouldn't fight against the homophobes.

I'm questioning whether taking someone down, like this, for this sort of thing, is "good". Maybe it's a necessary evil because the ends justify the means, that's a situation where something can be ugly, but still the right decision. But I can't even see that here - what was the practical gain of doing this? What are the repercussions?

It reminds me of the old question - You're running as a progressive in a conservative state. You get details that you're super-conservative male opponent is involved in a gay affair. If you out him, publicly, you are a shoe in - all you need to do is plaster the airwaves with ads that imply that people shouldn't vote for this guy because he is gay, and you're going to win.

Do you do it?

Either way, in my opinion, the result is ugly. It's a horrible, evil thing to do. That you're doing it to a person who does not mind doing evil horrible things may make the act justified, but it doesn't make it any less ugly, if you understand what I'm trying to say here. You're normalizing outing gay people for personal benefit, while reinforcing and relying on people's negative opinions about gays. Even if it's worth it, it doesn't mean it's good.

To me, this is the same situation - I don't like this guy. I think he's a bad guy. But trying to get people fired for having a political opinion you see as wrong... that's horrendous looking, to me. It's just ghastly. Even if it can be justified, is that something we want a precedent for? Is it something who's precedent we want to reinforce? Can we make a coherent argument as to why it should apply in this case but not in all the other cases where people will surely want to do it?

It's the hatred in the unambiguous support for this I've seen that bothers me - it's not people arguing "it's worth it", it's people arguing "this is a good thing even if it has no good consequences. Punishing someone for disagreeing with me about a single thing, no matter what else he has done or who he is, is enough in and of itself to be a good thing". Is that something people can really read and not think is a horrible opinion to hold?

[Loud Whispers]

To use your belief, we would have inevitably come to the same scientific discoveries without the direct participation of those scientists. But point your point about who was or wasn't an actual Nazi is well-taken.

Science is not social progress. There's no saying what would have followed there. If we were to say that the scientific discoveries were somehow inevitable, without the direct participation of those scientists, it's a fair bet that the Soviets would have reached key milestones in the world than it being America. A world where liberalism lost the rise to supremacy in the 20th century would be a worse world, to say the least.

Eich got payed over 400k in 2007. Don't know how much he's worth or how much his pay changed over the years, but chances are he's got more than enough to live comfortably.
The effect of forcing a rich 53 year old out of his job is the difference between lots of money and a less than even more money. All righteous fury directed at making this old man jobless is rather... Impotent.
However it is self-punitive, we're losing out on someone who gets shit done who could have retired a long time ago. That someone who has put so much into the internet (DO I NEED TO ALL-CAP THAT THIS GUY INVENTED JAVASCRIPT?) who looked ready to put even more into it is now taking all the money he's made from his career and buggering off  to somewhere where it's quiet, and now we don't even get to enjoy our modern-day nazi-science moon landings, if you pardon the ghastly metaphor.

A moot point really if this was just a flamewar smokescreen to cover up what Mictlantecuhtli suggests.

[nenjin]

A moot point really if this was just a flamewar smokescreen to cover up what Mictlantecuhtli suggests.

I don't think it necessarily invalidates or trivializes the points raised. To me it speaks to a larger issue of powerful, non-govermental people in positions of business authority and how they interact with the political process.

It reminds me of the old question - You're running as a progressive in a conservative state. You get details that you're super-conservative male opponent is involved in a gay affair. If you out him, publicly, you are a shoe in - all you need to do is plaster the airwaves with ads that imply that people shouldn't vote for this guy because he is gay, and you're going to win.

Do you do it?

Is he running a platform of denying homosexuals equal rights because they're not living according to the way God planned it? Then yes, I'd out the fuck out of him, both as a hypocrite and as an enemy of social progress.

Science is not social progress. There's no saying what would have followed there. If we were to say that the scientific discoveries were somehow inevitable, without the direct participation of those scientists, it's a fair bet that the Soviets would have reached key milestones in the world than it being America. A world where liberalism lost the rise to supremacy in the 20th century would be a worse world, to say the least.

I'm going to disagree that social progress is inevitable then. The best we can agree on is that no one knows how the world might have turned out differently, we only have the one we have.

It's the hatred in the unambiguous support for this I've seen that bothers me - it's not people arguing "it's worth it", it's people arguing "this is a good thing even if it has no good consequences. Punishing someone for disagreeing with me is enough in and of itself".

Then I think you're intentionally demonizing the opinions people have put forth in an effort to feel like you're on the morally right side of this issue. As though it's just about "being right" and not what is right.

As for what the consequences are, I believe it's a message to CEOs and Boards everywhere that there there is no magical barrier between business and political beliefs. Because as I said, it's about empowering them by not holding them accountable for what they believe. If you disagree with their beliefs but you still use their services, buy their products and so forth, you're essentially empowering their beliefs and enriching them.

I don't necessarily disagree that it's a slippery slope. Action is easier to judge than belief. But when belief becomes action behind the scenes so often in America, I feel like it's a slope worth trying to climb down.

I just wish there were bigger targets making themselves this vulnerable. But that's why the most powerful business figures in America go to great pains to only express their real beliefs in safe places where they can remain hidden.

[Loud Whispers]

On a humorous note, there is currently an invasion of okcupid by trolls because okcupid disallows browsing it via firefox whilst requiring javascript to run.

[Sheb]

Did anyone point out that the people on the board resigned not because he once gave to an organization opposing gay marriage, but because they wanted someone with more mobile experience to develop Firefox OS?

[nenjin]

Did anyone point out that the people on the board resigned not because he once gave to an organization opposing gay marriage, but because they wanted someone with more mobile experience to develop Firefox OS?

Source?

Also, who quits a high level position at a company because they're unhappy with the technical skills of the newest hire? You fire his ass for being a poor fit and hire a new one.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Also, who quits a high level position at a company because they're unhappy with the technical skills of the newest hire?

Apparently half the board of MoCo

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/03/28/three-mozilla-board-members-resign-over-choice-of-new-ceo/

Three Mozilla board members resigned over the choice of Brendan Eich, a Mozilla co-founder, as the new CEO. Gary Kovacs, a former Mozilla CEO who runs online security company AVG Technologies; John Lilly, another former Mozilla CEO now a partner at venture-capital firm Greylock Partners; and Ellen Siminoff, CEO of online education startup Shmoop, left the board last week.

The departures leave three people on the Mozilla board: co-founder Mitchell Baker; Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, and Katharina Borchert, chief executive of German news site Spiegel Online.

The three board members who resigned sought a CEO from outside Mozilla with experience in the mobile industry who could help expand the organization’s Firefox OS mobile-operating system and balance the skills of co-founders Eich and Baker, the people familiar with the situation said. They did not want to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Mozilla spokesman Mike Manning confirmed the three remaining board members, but he declined to comment further on Friday. He did not immediately respond to a request to speak to Eich and Baker.

[Loud Whispers]

Also, who quits a high level position at a company because they're unhappy with the technical skills of the newest hire? You fire his ass for being a poor fit and hire a new one.

Although it would be amusing to see all the employers in an interview quit over something like this, I imagine it would be difficult to get rid of a co-founder and CEO.

[Sheb]

I got ninja'ed by Mict. But yeah, here you are.

[nenjin]

Gary Kovacs, a former Mozilla CEO who runs online security company AVG Technologies

Well, now I can at least put a name to the man who makes my life hell on a regular basis.

[kaijyuu]

So does that mean they should be fired on principle because they might be tempted to?

Depends how much power they have. I'm more willing to trust a waiter than a CEO or other high level management.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I love that people are trying to claim that because the guy invented a useful tool, we shouldn't care about the shitty things he does. Almost as if doing something we like gives him positive karma and doing shitty things detracts from that. Or, to put it another way, if I help an old lady across the street I should be able to turn around and kick a puppy and end up back at zero, totally fine.

A shitty guy can relax in his mountaintop villa and code some software, and I'll use the software. I'm pretty sure a lot of the software we use was created by horrible people. IBM provided and serviced computer systems that they knew facilitated bookkeeping for Nazi concentration/death camps. We burn oil produced by countries run by dictators and religious fundamentalists, places where known homosexuals are arrested and executed. The travesty of and after the Bhopal disaster was handled by a subsidiary of Dow. We eat food produced by companies owned by Monsanto and Nestle.

The difference here is, has the company chosen a representative to be their current Chief Executive Officer who holds bigoted beliefs? That leaves a stain on the company.

[Loud Whispers]

I love that people are trying to claim that because the guy invented a useful tool, we shouldn't care about the shitty things he does.

On the contrary, I care more that he could have continued to develop THE GOD DAMN INTERNET than his donating to a highly polarized proposition six years ago. The analogy would be more apt if Seymour Cray was fired because he donated a grand to a puppy kicking factory or something 6 years ago; even then, puppy kicking is a whole lot of hyperbole.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I love that people are trying to claim that because the guy invented a useful tool, we shouldn't care about the shitty things he does.

On the contrary, I care more that he could have continued to develop THE GOD DAMN INTERNET than his donating to a highly polarized proposition six years ago. The analogy would be more apt if Seymour Cray was fired because he donated a grand to a puppy kicking factory or something 6 years ago; even then, puppy kicking is a whole lot of hyperbole.

He doesn't need to be a CEO to work on it. He needs to be a programmer. Or, at most, a project lead overseeing several programmers.

[Loud Whispers]

He doesn't need to be a CEO to work on it. He needs to be a programmer. Or, at most, a project lead overseeing several programmers.

But it's a bit too far gone for him to turn back now.