I've been searching through old HN stories about Eich, but can't seem to find any where the comments generally supported firing him due to supporting Prop 8 (banning gay marriage).
Is there a particular thread you had in mind? Or are you stating the overreaction was being angry that he might have been fired over that support?
One is a thought, the other is an action.
Punishing people for unknowable bad thoughts is an Orwellian nightmare. Punishing people for visible bad actions is how society moves forward.
I strongly agree with that statement, but I also strongly object to the ouster of Eich. An opinion on one does not imply an opinion on the other.
I support the right of the KKK to march through the streets, but that doesn't mean I should have to hire one of their members.
That's not the analogy. It's contrived, but to stick with the theme of white racists, is it ethical (legality aside) for a board full of clansmen to fire a CEO that donated to the ADL? To keep it simple, let's say the CEO is not Jewish, but does financially support the ADL.
I was making an oblique reference to a rather famous free speech case. [0]
> is it ethical (legality aside) for a board full of clansmen to fire a CEO that donated to the ADL?
No, but I have a hard time finding anything clansmen do ethical. If your ideology is motivated by bigotry, that's the problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...
I just recall there being a LOT of people who found it perfectly reasonable to oust somebody for long-ago political donations, despite there being no indication that he ever actually discriminated against anyone at Mozilla.
Yeah, you can make arguments that the mere existence of a such past donation creates a symbolically hostile environment, etc. But those arguments seemed pretty thin to me. At the time Eich made that donation, every major Democratic presidential candidate (including Clinton and Obama) were ALSO publicly opposed to marriage equality. So it seemed like extreme mental gymnastics to put a "hate speech" label on Eich.
In the GitHub story today, if you were feeling charitable then you could likewise apply some positive spin too. There IS some context to those slideshow bullet-points and that tweet, which has been buried under the outrage. Once again, I disagree with these messages even when that context is considered. But my point is that it seemed like there were a lot more people willing to do mental gymnastics in the Eich case than in this one.
No, the extreme mental gymnastics here involve thinking that hate speech can be defined by looking at the content of Clinton and Obama's campaign speeches.
The ouster came six years after his donation. The only way that could be characterized as "long ago" is by the use of extreme mental gymnastics.
Anyway, donating to Proposition 8 is equivalent to making the statement "I will actively work to take other people's rights away, even though it will never affect me". Is it any surprise that he was ousted? It was a disaster for Mozilla to associate with him.
Does the last 6 months count as history? I don't think enough time has elapsed to fully ascertain the merits of same-sex marriage. Changes in sexual culture take a few dozen years to propagate and get a good read on the real effects.
People started boycotting Mozilla after he was promoted. "Disaster" is an appropriate descriptor.
