Linda Sandvik Resigns As Director Of Code Club

Are there a lot of companies/organizations out there that would be comfortable with employees (or directors) publicly criticizing the organization or its partners? Outside of journalists (who should expect/demand this sort of freedom of expression), I suspect the answer is no. It's not clear to me that Code Club's request was unreasonable.

If she thinks that Google's actions makes them an unfit partner, then I see the lie (and applaud her commitment to her principles, though I don't think I agree with them). After further thought (based on your and other responses) I think that's a good interpretation of her statement, though the level of implication required seems a bit much for something as imprecise as English -- it would be nice if it had been made more explicit.

Hmm, how about journalists who write articles about companies that buy advertisments in newspapers they work for?

Are journalists allowed to write bad things about advertaisers? There are other topics they can choose or switch job...

I can't belive that Google is sponsoring Code Club totally without any gains (positive PR, for instance), so that's kind of mutual relation between Code Club and Google. If Code Club starts promoting coding worst practices (say, let's use always static methods in Java) I would expect that Google, as a partner/sponsor, would react.

Google provides a lot of valuable services, but they have also some questionable practices, I don't see any reason why someone cannot speak about them.

I guess she wasn't spreading lies about Google or offending Google or Google employees, etc. so why the "gag order". Constructive criticism should be welcomed, especially in the strongly "meritocratic" circles.

"put the organisation ahead of your personal issues/complaints" way of thinking can be really dangerous because it allows to justify evil - "because organisation/my boss" said to do X or Y I can put aside by belives and opinions.

That's start from cheating older people to buy expensive phone plans or cable TV subscriptions ($1 a month only... for first 3 months out of 24).

Then we can justify bankers talking people into bad investments.

Then we can justify selling drugs that does not help anyone (but the company invested $XXXXXXXX, so the product must go to pharmacies).

It's true that the world doesn't work that way, in the sense of natural law: it is neither inevitable nor predictable that one will be able to express any opinion without consequences, and as you note, were you Google, one would not be able to express a negative opinion of Google without there being any negative consequences. I have to concede this point because your own opinion on the matter might well go into a (newly opened) file marked "things I don't like about paulhaggis" that could hypothetically affect our future business transactions, as individuals; people have opinions about each others opinions, and form inferences about the other person based on those opinions.

However, there's a larger transaction going on here, in the sense of the opinions about opinion sharing that are simultaneously shared when we voice and respond to each other's opinions, and this transaction has a scope in which Google's corporate motto, "don't be evil", has some meaning. (I'm not asserting that Google will follow it, just that it has meaning.)

I'm going to use the game theory ideas of "cooperation" and "defection" because most people who read HN are familiar with them. There is indeed a body of opinion which holds that, in a cooperative system, the value for all cooperators of the open development and sharing of information -- even opinions; even distasteful opinions -- greatly outweighs any harm any one cooperator should fear from that information, unless that entity is actually a defector.

Google wishes to do good things to (a) invest in its own future, and (b) gain moral standing as an entity, which it (rightly in my opinion) correlates with brand effect and future market share. It has very little to fear from the opinions of any one individual, barring some vast personal influence in Washington or on Wall Street. I find it unlikely that Google -- in any decision-taking sense -- actually intends to silence the speech of critical individuals, simply because the signalling of opinion that that would entail -- the opinion about opinion sharing -- would be a self-inflicted harm that would far outweigh any possible benefit.

(It is possible, of course, that there are people at Google who share your analysis of the situation and have acted independently to express displeasure to the board.)

What the board has revealed about itself is a collective opinion which agrees with your own. The board either feels that they should promote Google in exchange for its funding, or that "the world doesn't work that way", and that they should be concerns about retaliation against Code Club by Google in response to the director's opinions. The board feels that Google will publicly defect from the system of open information cooperation, and they themselves are willing to (quietly) defect from that system in order to prevent Google's public defection.

This brings the Code Club board of directors into conflict, in general, with everyone who relies upon a cooperative system of the open and free sharing of opinions, and that is why they face retaliation for their actions.

So, that is why you might want to sponsor a group that thinks you are evil and is spreading that opinion around: because you wish to establish that you are not evil, by supporting their actions despite their words, and that they are therefore wrong.

[ed: grammar]

Mozilla ousted Eich because a vocal group was calling for his head. They knew about his donation for years and didn't care. The decision was pragmatic, not ethical.