alt Hacker News> Yeah no, (1) Mozilla was going to be in for a tough go no matter what; I don't think Eich would have fared any better.
Nobody knows this for sure. We do know that Eich was fired for political reasons, and not because of his technological direction.
This betrays a decision making process that prioritizes political correctness above leadership qualities and technical contributions.
> you can't donate to stop your own employees and users from having civil rights without repercussions.
Why not? Why can't the CEO of Mozilla have his own private political views just like anyone else, and donate his own private money to whatever democratic causes he likes?
This really isn't obvious to anyone except the people, like you, who view Mozilla as a political project first, and as a software project a distant second.
Firing your CEO for not being sufficiently aligned with the American Democratic Party only makes sense if you assume the purpose of Mozilla is to push American Democratic politics, rather than make good software that anyone in the world may use (spoiler alert: many users of open-source software are not American Democrats!)
Replies
> Firing your CEO for not being sufficiently aligned with the American Democratic Party
This is not what happened. He gave money to a cause with the explicit goal of using that money to prevent his coworkers and users from having equal civil rights based on an inalienable trait they were born with.
That's not an "American Democratic Party" alignment issue, and if you genuinely believe it is, your dog whistle may be broken. It's sounding an awful lot like a normal whistle.
He has a right to do that without fear of government retaliation. But Mozilla has a right to fire him for being a bad person because of it.
> Eich was fired
Eich resigned.
> private political views
Donations are public material support. Not private views.