4 ms·
Well sure I think that in broad moral strokes you have the right to not support someone who you disagree with. (BTW not sure if you saw the comment Eich posted
by safety1st 3y ago
Well sure I think that in broad moral strokes you have the right to not support someone who you disagree with. (BTW not sure if you saw the comment Eich posted here yesterday, dang has now deleted it for policy violations, but it looked like Eich was saying that the donors didn't try to force him out, and that doing so would have been illegal under California law. So make what you will of that...)
But at the end of the day I would rather live in a society where we have the ability to cooperate with other people in the pursuit of a good cause, even if we disagree with them about some other cause. Like if you follow the attitude of those donors to its logical extreme where do we end up? We end up with no one cooperating on anything, many projects that could have improved society never happen, many opportunities for people with differing viewpoints to learn about each other's perspectives never occur, and so on.
I think if you take what those donors did to the logical extreme you end up with some form of societal collapse, and history teaches us that what happens after that is a strongman shows up and enforces a far worse type of social order.
I think those donors pulling out of Mozilla hurt the cause of free software, hurt Mozilla, and was one instance in a multi-year process of American political polarization that led to the election of a demagogue like Donald Trump, and is still going on. All because one guy in the C-suite had a bad position an issue that was totally unrelated to Mozilla. This is a very dangerous road for our society to tread.
I actually read a blog post at one point by the donors about their decision - short version is Prop 8 would have prevented them from marrying and one of them was here on a visa which they would have lost. So I really feel for them and understand why they would be angry at Eich. Still think they should have selected a different outlet for it.