Did Eich use his position to advance his advocacy? That's really the only question of merit. If he applied his views to hiring or firing decisions, that's an HR and legal matter all of its own.
There's an infinite number of arguments on how his publicly expressed (these donations were not anonymous) personal views impact his role as the head of an organization.
If for instance valuable members of the org quit on it, recruiting becomes noticeably harder, Mozilla's PR is impacted and investors aren't happy about it, I'd assume that's enough to ask him to step down.
Is that the case? Same applies to people trying to oust others on such grounds. I would never support an organization with that much lack of a spine and in my quite pragmatic views the requirements here are fairly low due to economic realities.
I trust the leadership of Mozilla a fair bit less than previously and I believe it at least now has a toxic work environment I also would probably not like to work for.
I still do support Mozilla projects, but I am far more careful of that today.
On Mozilla in particular, I think people joining it and supporting it in general have a fairly stronger opinion on what an organization should have as values than for many other large size companies (let's say Microsoft, Oracle or Accenture for instance).
Is a good or a bad thing ? Honestly I don't think Mozilla would have grown as much without all the social clout it has. There's no denying it has a tremendous effect on the pool of candidates, and the users choosing to support the company even as other products can be objectively better.
As you say it cuts both ways as they now have a kind of moral handcuffs limiting the views and moral/political positions they can have at the leadership and PR level. I personally see it as net positive, but we can agree to disagree.
Yes, we would have to disagree. Mozilla previously had a reputation of being open and tolerant, even for people with more conservative viewpoints. While the proclamation for inclusion might be louder today, it is far less believable now.
Especially if there are any moral "handcuffs" as you say, because that would be an obvious contradiction to their stated values which I would argue people will notice.
The rules of PR demand that you are less free with what you communicate and it also demands you to lie. Many opportunities that Mozilla had were lost without any gain.
Hard to believe that Eich discriminated against gay people like you suggested. And I feel that isn't even the issue of those that complained here.
I think there was no good out of that situation, keeping Eich wouldn't have been great either.
We've potentially seen a similar thing play out with 37 signals and a third of employees leaving ship after they felt betrayed by the leadership's personal positions.
I personally didn't see Eich as a good leader at the stage they were, and while not being impressed by the current leadership either I'm not sure his ousting had that much impact in the grand scheme of things.
The entire thing was simply that he had donated to some Christian organisations, some of which spent some of their time advocating against gay marriage. That was it.
incorrect—eich donated to the campaign for california proposition 8, which was "a state constitutional amendment intended to ban same-sex marriage", and actually passed at the time, but was later overturned in court
This was also back in 2008 when even Obama was quoted as defining marriage as "the union between a man and a woman" [1]. So that begs the question: Why did Eich get so much more scrutiny than even Obama? Why did the media seemingly coordinate to do hit pieces on him? And why the CEO of an open-source browser with < 5% market share, and not the massive big-tech incumbents?
my opinions about morality aside, someone pointed out elsewhere that mozilla specifically has an outsized relationship with the LGBTQ+ community, thus making it practically impossible for him to be an effective leader there
he himself actually literally said as much: "Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next." [1]
it was reported on beforehand [2], but as far as I'm reading, there wasn't a serious outcry until 2014, six years after the donation, after he was appointed as CEO (and subsequently ousted)
as for politicians, I think they're by definition mealy-mouthed, and they often just say what they think people want to hear at any given time
If for instance valuable members of the org quit on it, recruiting becomes noticeably harder, Mozilla's PR is impacted and investors aren't happy about it, I'd assume that's enough to ask him to step down.