[chc]

This isn't intolerance of intolerance. It's punishment for a small donation six years ago. If Eich were running around being a dick to gay Mozilla employees, nobody would disagree with firing him. But he's not. People are attacking him for his political sympathies, not for being intolerant. (In fact, Eich's behavior at Mozilla was exemplary. I have never heard of any instances where he had trouble tolerating gays or liberals.)

When we talk about "intolerance of intolerance" being OK, we're being a bit flip. What is actually meant by the phrase is that it's OK to make people act tolerant, even if they aren't naturally inclined to do so, in order to preserve a particular group's rights. They can hold whatever opinions they want, but they have to be civil. But Eich was already doing that. He was even one of the people who helped draft Mozilla's inclusiveness guidelines. This was just punishment because Eich held a particular opinion, not because he was actually having trouble tolerating gays in the organization.

[dllthomas]

Those raising a stink assert that "political sympathy" (to the extent of taking action to support it) with a proposal to strip rights from a portion of the population is intolerance of that subpopulation. And certainly it's the case that one needn't be intolerant in every possible way to be intolerant.

[chc]

I am somewhat sympathetic to that view, but that was a long time ago. If he has been 100% tolerant for almost six years now, this action seems more like a very belated punishment for past intolerance than an attempt to force him to be tolerant, which he was already doing.

[dllthomas]

Sure, I don't have enough insight into the goings on at Mozilla to say. That said, being a lightening rod and dealing with PR stuff effectively is part of the job of being a CEO, and arguably if he'd performed the job better he'd still hold it - I'm not sure the outcome is ideal, but I'm not going to freak out about it either.

[chc]

I don't believe any CEO could have done better against the witch hunt Eich faced. I mean, OKCupid was protesting him personally. I've never seen anything like it before, and I'm not sure what, say, Tim Cook would have done if the tables were turned and people had been attacking him for being a homosexual and it was materially affecting the bottom line. I think it would have worked out much the same.

[dllthomas]

"I don't believe any CEO could have done better against the witch hunt Eich faced."

Perhaps not. Lacking the skills and experience that make a large-organization-CEO, I don't think my inability to think up a strategy means much. I'm also not paid like a CEO. I expect the same applies to you, although I don't know that. Obviously, our collective inability means slightly more.

[chc]

Well, I'm thinking more about what I have seen CEOs of large corporations do before. I'm sure I couldn't do it. But many CEOs have been brought down without half the pressure (see, for example, the history of Yahoo), so it's hard to imagine anyone could withstand that kind of storm.

[mullingitover]

> If Eich were running around being a dick to gay Mozilla employees, nobody would disagree with firing him. But he's not.

Not in public, no. However, he was a dick to them in private where he though it'd be safe. Prop 8 was about taking away a right that gay people had. They were already allowed to marry. This was about the majority ganging up on a small, persecuted group and taking things away from them by legislative fiat. The Constitution forbids this, as was later confirmed by the courts.

If Prop 8 had been about re-enslaving blacks, and he'd donated to that, do you think we'd be saying, "well, but he's nice to all the black people he works with!" It was morally repugnant to support Prop 8, and public acts like political donations do, shockingly, have consequences.