[tajen]

It was before the law was voted, and the law was in favor of his opinion at the time, therefore there was nothing reprehensible at the time.

Plus, the point is, if we purge people based on their political opinions, why bother with democracy?

[grzm]

"the law was in favor of his opinion at the time, therefore there was nothing reprehensible at the time."

What is legal is not the same as what is moral or ethical.

Figuring out how to tolerate dissent is an issue I think a lot of people are trying to figure out right now, as your statement is pointing to.

[tajen]

What about you let people privately support the causes they believe in?

He may have good reasons to think that, which aren't forbidden by law. It was legal, it is moral for some people, it is ethical for others, what about we let him do his job of managing a technical company? Companies shouldn't be forced to fire people who are considered as "witches" by the people, as long as they're competent in their job. It takes a huge amount of time to train CEOs and keep replicas on hot standby in a company, if the company has to second-guess the people's opinion about the politics (or sexual life) of CEOs, it's bad for the economy. And if we practice a witch hunt at every level of companies, it quickly goes unethical. See this quote from GitHub's new Diversity Director:

> "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women"

[grzm]

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear in my comment. I'm not taking a position on what happened in with respect to Brendan Eich in particular. As I wrote, I think figuring out how to balance this is a difficult issue. Given the amount of discussion this instance in particular and similar situations, I think it's far from settled for a lot of people. At least there's not wide agreement.

You bring up good points regarding the training and the costs of replacing people. Those costs are balanced against the value brought to the company, right?

One of the reasons I think it's difficult to discuss as when people start giving examples as to what should be tolerated and what shouldn't, some people are going to think it's absurd, and take issue with the discussion as a whole.

For the sake of argument, I'll try.

Let's say one of the goals of the company is to provide honeymoon packages and the target market is gay couples. An employee makes a donation in support of something like Prop 8. Is there a conflict there? Are they a good fit for the company? If not, should they look for someone else? Perhaps the person shouldn't have been hired in the first place. Should the company be able to make that decision based on knowing the candidate made such a donation? Should the candidate look elsewhere and not consider a position at the company? Can a company's goals change over time? Can a company's goals include those broader than just the product they market?

You mention "let him do his job of managing a technical company". I think there's tension here, as well (independent of the situation at Mozilla). People are not purely rational beings. How people get along in the workplace is important to its overall effectiveness. What's acceptable in one workplace is not going to be acceptable in another, similar to how people have different circles of friends. Should companies be able to hire for fit? Fire for it?

I think there are some very real questions there. And a lot of contentious issues. Please don't assume my answers to all of these questions, either. You're guaranteed to be wrong as I haven't come to a firm conclusion on all of them :)

If toleration of political opinion is a settled issue for you, please share :) Can you think of a political position that should not be tolerated?

The whole "what's legal is not necessarily moral or ethical" is another kettle of fish, which is the point I was making initially. Your point about what's moral for some people and ethical for others points to some agreement on your part, doesn't it? Perhaps one difference is whether or not we agree that a company can or should have an ethical purpose or should reflect the ethics of the people who own the company or work of the company. Or do business for the company, for that matter.

I don't expect you to have answers to all of these questions. I'd be surprised if you did. If you don't think these are valid questions, I'd be interested to hear which ones are invalid and why.

[gaur]

> there was nothing reprehensible at the time

Lots of people knew proposition 8 was reprehensible and protested accordingly. Eich chose not to listen.

> if we purge people based on their political opinions, why bother with democracy

Purging people based on political opinions is exactly how democracy is supposed to function. We regularly vote politicians out of office because of their political opinions. What other criterion should a democracy use to select leaders?

[grzm]

"Purging people based on political opinions is exactly how democracy is supposed to function."

What does "purging" mean to you in this case? You've now provided two examples: firing and voting. What level of political disagreement justifies what actions? I don't think there's widespread agreement, and it's something I'm trying to figure out for myself.

[gaur]

> You've now provided two examples: firing and voting.

Voting someone out of office is firing them. We're talking about firing.

[grzm]

Cool. I can see that for the purposes of this discussion. Is this only a workplace issue in your mind? At least for right now? Other aspects on my mind is what kind of heuristic do you use to determine if the political opinion is fireable? Or rather, it's not only what the opinion is (there are a lot of controversial political issues), or the opinion itself, it's the expression of it, right? For example, something said (some sort of speech act), or some other behavior.

[gaur]

Maybe for you this is some abstract problem for which you enjoy dreaming up an endless stream of meandering questions. For me it's a matter of "are the people above me in management going to fuck me over because of my sexuality?". And if I have evidence that they might, either they need to go or I need to go. And if I like my job, I'd rather it be them than me.

So for the sake of LGBT Mozilla employees, I'm glad Eich was shown the door. I'm not interested in entertaining a bunch of fluffy questions about heuristics, expression of opinion, what "purging" really means, or whatever. That's just noise.

[grzm]

I've been fortunate that I haven't had to deal with this firsthand, which is exactly why I'm asking. Thanks for taking the time to get back to me. I appreciate it.