[metaos]

From the team that hounded out Brendan Eich...

May I quote the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

[jimbokun]

And when you exercise that right, other people have the right to point out when you are being a jerk.

[chasing]

You misunderstand this passage. It doesn't mean you can open your mouth and say any stupid thing and no one can do anything about it. You can get fired. You can get your account removed from Twitter. People can complain about you on the internet.

Oh, and don't paint Brendan Eich as some kind of victim of the free speech police. He actively participated in trying to deny a large class of Americans the basic freedom to marry whom they wanted. And people decided they didn't want someone with that record running Mozilla.

[ZanyProgrammer]

Freedom of opinion and expression also means people can point you out as being an abusive asshole. Goes both ways.

[mikeash]

What's your point in posting that quote? Sure, Linus and Eich can say what they want, and others can say what they want about that.

[Kristine1975]

Brendan Eich stepping down as Mozilla's CEO was not due to speech:

>His appointment sparked controversy over a $1,000 political donation Eich had made in 2008 to the successful campaign for California Proposition 8, which sought to establish that, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

[amdavidson]

While I don't agree with his personal donation or Citizen's United, that case held that political donation is a form of protected speech[0].

So in a very literal way, he was pushed out due to the manner in which he chose to speak.

0: http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/citizens-united-v...

[comex]

You don't have to support the Citizens United decision to think that contributing small amounts to political campaigns is effectively speech - because the money is used to promulgate speech (ads), as well as in the more abstract sense that donations are viewed by society as a normal and encouraged outlet for people to promote their viewpoints.

(Of course the humongous donations the decision enabled are also used to promulgate speech, which is why I have some sympathy for it, but there's just a huge difference in practice between giving $1,000 and giving millions.)