[andyjohnson0]

> Brendan was being portrayed as being evil incarnate because of the donations (which were a perfectly legal thing to do, btw).

Im not sure why you posted this as it has never been suggested that his donation was illegal.

The campaign against his appointment as CTO was on the basis that his financial support for proposition 8 showed him to be hostile to the protection of civil rights for some members of society, including Mozilla personnel, and that this was incompatible with his leadership role.

[mozman]

Is there or has there ever been any evidence that Brendan did not separate his personal views from professional views?

[jraph]

He might have separated his personal views from his professional views. He probably did, actually. But I don't think it matters.

People still didn't like it. His right to have these views, their right too.

It would only have been worse if he hadn't.

The world is not neutral, organizations neither.

[moralestapia]

But organizations should be, at least I'm on that camp.

Edit: Well actually, I can think of some orgs. that should be polarized by nature, like those meant to promote change. But a foundation that "works to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to us all" should be quite neutral on all others topics beyond that.

[jraph]

I think I understand this opinion, but I'm not sure this is actually possible. I don't think political neutrality really exists. The closest thing that exists is status quo and mainstream / widespread opinions / beliefs.

On any subject that's not the main mission of the org, people will have any sort of opinions, on one side or another. Sometimes biased towards one of the sides depending on the mission or the actual people it attracts.

(sometimes on the main mission too actually, but in this case the org is in trouble / needs to adapt the mission - it can be an existential crisis)

And if for some idea, the mainstream / status quo outside the org is biased toward one side, this bias might also affect the org because the org lives in this world.

Let's take an (imperfect?) example: about veganism/vegetarianism/non-vegetarianism, what is the neutral stance? If the org needs to organize a dinner, some side will need to be taken. Allowing everything to accommodate the preferences of every person is not neutral. That's the status quo however, usually. You can only have "presence of animal-based food" or "absence of animal-based food". Nothing in between. You need to pick a side, take a non neutral-decision.

In the case of Brendan being rejected, people were going to be pissed either way. If he stayed, it would have pissed people who thought Brendan was not desirable as a CEO of an organization like Mozilla which is supposed to be inclusive because of his anti same-sex wedding actions. Because he left, it pissed people who thought his personal opinions should not matter. And both sides have a point, which is the hardest part.

[themaninthedark]

>Allowing everything to accommodate the preferences of every person is not neutral.

What do you mean that is not neutral?

Not being neural would be either forcing everyone to get meat with their meals or not allowing people to get meat with their meals.

By allowing choice you are taking a neutral path.

[jraph]

> By allowing choice you are taking a neutral path.

By deciding to serve meat to people who want it, you already decided that the necessary meat production is okay enough that your org will endorse it, which is not consensual. Many vegetarian people stopped eating meat not for their own comfort and pleasure, but because they actually think meat is not okay (for environmental reasons, for the animal suffering, or whatever). Usually they won't complain because they don't want to be seen as jerks and to force their views onto people, and because serving meat is very normal, but that's still not neutral. Maybe in 10 or 20 years not serving meat will be seen as an obvious environmental measure to apply and will become the status quo, and serving meat the weird thing to do, but that won't be neutral neither.

By the way, if my preference is zucchini, will you make sure I can have it? Why not, and why the special treatment for the meat, of all food a human can eat, then? That's not neutral.

I'm sure this example won't convince everyone though and that's why I called it imperfect, so let me find something else.

As a bus company in Alabama in the 1950s, what was the neutral thing to do? Letting people sit in their bus anywhere no matter their skin color, or to force "colored" passengers to sit at the back?

In South America in the 1800s, was it neutral to let people have slaves? That was probably considered normal / acceptable. Neutral? I guess not for the slaves.

Today at a bar, do you serve your drink with a straw by default? If you do, in the eyes of some people, you are producing waste for no good reason. If you don't, for others, you might be breaking their expectation to have a straw and that's unacceptable for them, and it is your duty to serve them well, just letting them pick one on their own is not enough.

Today, when speaking about someone and you don't know the gender of the concerned person, do you refer to this person using "they"? Is it neutral, or is it pushing fancy new pronouns that break English and don't sound natural? Is "neutral he" neutral then? Is "he or she" good enough when there are non-binary people out there? By the way, do you acknowledge that some people are non-binary? If so, aren't you too much into this LGBT stuff? If you don't, aren't you too close-minded?

You are creating a new company. Full remote? Okay, now, you are pissing off people who feel better in a office. Everybody at the office, then? No, that can't be neutral in 2023. Hybrid then? Ok, but now you are forcing people into some uncomfortable mix where remote workers are missing out on the office talks and office workers need to bother with setting up video calls with remote workers all the time, and to put up with video calls from the colleagues next to them all day. Here I don't see which would be the neutral choice, I think there isn't actually.

There might be consensual topics, but you have to pick sides for most decisions, even if the side you take is the status quo.

[naasking]

> People still didn't like it. His right to have these views, their right too.

Yes, the question here is who mixed their personal right to their views with their professional responsibilities. If Eich didn't, then it seems clear that everyone at Mozilla who objected to his appointment did. That wasn't the conversation that took place though.

The "professional responsibilities" in this case was being a good steward for Mozilla's products and the vision of products that preserved digital rights for its users. Not clear what this had to do with civil rights like gay marriage.

[andyjohnson0]

> The "professional responsibilities" in this case was being a good steward for Mozilla's products and the vision of products that preserved digital rights for its users. Not clear what this had to do with civil rights like gay marriage.

That's not all a CTO does. They also have "people" responsibilities.

As the then CTO, one of Eich's professional responsibilities was to lead the tech teams and individuals at Mozilla. The belief, among a significant proportion of Mozilla's employees, that he could not be trusted to put aside his opinions on civil rights when managing people, was what led to the opposition to his appointment.

[naasking]

> The belief, among a significant proportion of Mozilla's employees, that he could not be trusted to put aside his opinions on civil rights when managing people

A belief he couldn't be trusted based on what evidence, aside from them not liking his views on gay marriage?

[BrendanEich]

I was CTO from 2005 incorporation of Mozilla Corporation. You must be thinking of CEO.

FYI, I'd already run all of engineering from 2013 January on until CEO appointment, as SVP Eng + CTO.

[infamia]

That doesn't make any sense., and there was something else going on. Eich's position was exactly the same as the platform that Obama when he initially ran for president. Somehow that supposedly makes Eich unfit to run a company, but it is fine for Obama to be President.

[andyjohnson0]

Obama and Eich are both people, but the president of the USA and the CTO of Mozilla are completely different roles. It "doesn't make any sense" because the comparison is invalid.

[skeeter2020]

>> The campaign

And this really is the crux, isn't it:

1. a political campaign inside Mozilla

2. by some employees that interpreted risk that

3. his donations were an attack on what they perceived as their rights

4. and this made him unable to fulfill the role of CTO

That's a whole lot of one-side conclusions to get to "he's unfit to be the CTO". No wonder he left.

[jraph]

> a political campaign inside Mozilla

And outside too. I read that OKCupid invited Firefox users to switch browsers, and CREDO mobile gathered 50K signatures for a petition. So nothing specific to Mozilla in the end.

> No wonder he left.

He indeed wrote on his blog "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader" and he was probably right about this.

[andyjohnson0]

What do you think "they" should have done?

This was all discussed at the time: the campaign against his appointment was far from just being "inside Mozilla". And "what they perceived as their rights" are now actual civil and legal rights because US society decided that was the right thing to do.

[HideousKojima]

You mean because five unelected judges decided

[pxc]

That's a good point— gay rights are pretty precariously situated and it seems a bit premature to celebrate their status as set in stone at this point.

But Democrats who run in elections and appoint judges seem to generally like being able to point to the courts as a risk, and show little interest in legally bolstering civil rights when they have the power to, so it'll probably stay as it is... until it doesn't, just like with Roe and Casey.

[sciurus]

Sounds like you may have missed some developments, like the Respect for Marriage Act in passed in 2022.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-expected-pass-b...

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8404