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Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

bbc.co.uk

21–30 of 49 posts

Re: Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

#21
This post was killed because a great many users flagged it.

Moderators don't, as a rule, kill any stories that have an active thread. That way those who are interested in the discussion can keep it going. The most we would do is demote an item in rank. There are exceptions to this, but they're so rare I can't remember any.

I'm unkilling the post, because I want to reply to some of the moderation questions downthread, and I figure if I'm allowed to keep commenting here then everybody should be.

Re: Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

#22
post #9

A win for bigotry everywhere. If we don't like your personal opinions we wont vote or back a proposition against them -- we'll make you lose your job.

>Really? Is there a rash of this sort of thing going on that I don't know about?

Yes. How about the guy who lost his job for making a dongle joke, personally to his friend at a conference that was overheard? (And, then the woman who outed him on the internet lost her job too, again for reasons of public reaction). And tons of other examples besides -- people calling for others to get fired etc, because of their personal, not work related, opinions.

>Or is it pretty much just Brendan Eich right now, reaping the consequences of expressing bigotry publicly?

He never expressed "bigotry publicly". He privately backed a cause he believed in (right or wrong) with a donation.

As for "reaping the consequences", for me this amounts to a lynching mentallity that I'm uncofortable with.

If you don't like someone's opinions on civil rights, fight them in the court of public opinion and/or voting.

Re: Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

#23
post #14
post #9

A win for bigotry everywhere. If we don't like your personal opinions we wont vote or back a proposition against them -- we'll make you lose your job.

Yeah, those people in the 50s who fought against desegregation just had a different personal opinion on what was okay. Nothing wrong with that!

>Yeah, those people in the 50s who fought against desegregation just had a different personal opinion on what was okay. Nothing wrong with that!

Hundrends of millions of people had similar opinions in the 50s -- they didn't know better. Do you propose they all got fired?

Even if you do. I don't recall that being the case historically, anyway. Instead, black and pro-civil rights people fought for their rights, with marches, public speeches, voting, and such. Not with campaigns targeted at individual people. The KKK used to do that.

Re: Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

#24
post #22
post #9

A win for bigotry everywhere. If we don't like your personal opinions we wont vote or back a proposition against them -- we'll make you lose your job.

> Really? Is there a rash of this sort of thing going on that I don't know about? Yes. How about the guy who lost his job for making a dongle joke, personally to his friend at a conference that was overheard? (And, then the woman who outed him on the internet lost her job too, again for reasons of public reaction). And tons of other examples besides -- people calling for others to get fired etc, because of their pers…

> He never expressed "bigotry publicly". He privately backed a cause he believed in (right or wrong) with a donation.

Political donations (at least, of the size Eich made) are public, otherwise, this would never have been an issue.

Re: Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

#25
post #9

A win for bigotry everywhere. If we don't like your personal opinions we wont vote or back a proposition against them -- we'll make you lose your job.

I'm not sure it's bigotry when people are held accountable for their public opinions. Free speech cuts both ways.

If free speech "cuts", then it's not free speech.

Free speech cutting both ways should only mean both parties are allowed to say whatever they like -- and the majority/plurality of the people decide democratically which way to go about it and who they agree with.

If an unpopular speech means you get fired, then it's not free at all. It's "be careful what you say or bad things can happen to you" -speech.

All dictatorships and all opressive regimes have such mockery of "free speech". Heck, even burning Giordano Bruno can be considered an example of "free speech" that "cuts both ways" in this logic.

(Not to mention that he didn't publicly voice an opinion in the first place. He privately backed against a bill -which was his democratic right to do- and the name of the backers was leaked).

Re: Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

#26
post #17
post #10

This is sad. I know about Brendan Eich's views, but Mozilla is an organization devoted to open source, none of whose concerns, as far as I can tell, have anything to be with sexual minorities. Were he still the CEO, he really couldn't have used his office to act on his views; so why all the castigating ? He has a view, and sure a lot of us (including me) don't agree with him, but this culture of outrage is disgusting…

I don't think you and so many others would say the same thing if the issue was inter-racial marriage, today. Is it really so hard for people to get a little bit ahead of the progress curve for a change, instead of digging in and dragging heels behind it? What is it that makes it so hard?

No, but the difficulty with which your personal viewpoint can be adopted is not (nor should not) be the benchmark of his responsibilities as Mozilla's CEO, which is what he is there for.

Re: Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

#27
post #22
post #9

A win for bigotry everywhere. If we don't like your personal opinions we wont vote or back a proposition against them -- we'll make you lose your job.

> Really? Is there a rash of this sort of thing going on that I don't know about? Yes. How about the guy who lost his job for making a dongle joke, personally to his friend at a conference that was overheard? (And, then the woman who outed him on the internet lost her job too, again for reasons of public reaction). And tons of other examples besides -- people calling for others to get fired etc, because of their pers…

> their personal, not work related, opinions.

How do you know it's purely personal?

He clearly doesn't agree that homosexual people should be afforded the same legal rights and societal status as heterosexual people in their personal lives.

It's safer to assume that he would have negativity towards homosexuals in the workplace, e.g. look down upon them due to 'lifestyle choice' or some other bigoted nonsense, than to assume that once he's at work all of his prejudices are put to one side.

Chauvinists and racists rarely, if ever, leave their prejudices at home, so why would homophobes?

> If you don't like someone's opinions on civil rights, fight them in the court of public opinion and/or voting.

That's almost exactly what has happened, yet you call it 'lynching'.

'Public opinion' has forced him to step down before people 'voted' by not using/contributing to Mozilla products.

Nobody has denied him the right to hold his opinion, he's free to carry on doing so, however people have questioned his ability to not discriminate against people in his role at Mozilla, due in large part to fact that he has actively supported discrimination against people in the past based upon their sexuality.

Re: Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

#29
post #4

It is somewhat interesting whether these links keep getting killed because HN's response has been so wholly immature or for some other reason.

dang is specifically demoting and killing them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7527229 I'll wait for his post on the topic to form a final opinion on that, but my initial reaction is that it's wrong to bury a story of this magnitude in the tech industry.

No, you're right. For stories of this magnitude, one should be on the front page, and discussion should be consolidated there.

Re: Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla

#30
post #21

This post was killed because a great many users flagged it. Moderators don't, as a rule, kill any stories that have an active thread. That way those who are interested in the discussion can keep it going. The most we would do is demote an item in rank. There are exceptions to this, but they're so rare I can't remember any. I'm unkilling the post, because I want to reply to some of the moderation questions downthread,…

Is there any reason not to "boost" the original discussion if new ones keep getting pushed to the site? It seems duplicative to allow repeat stories just to keep the discussion going. Better to downrank the dupes and uprank the original one if the discussion is still ongoing enough to draw constant repostings.
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