6 ms·

To me this is a win for freedom of speech and free markets. You're free to express your close minded opinion, but the market is free to reject it and you.

MrZongle2 13y ago
To me this is a win for freedom of speech How exactly was this a win for Eich's freedom of speech?
- prutschman 13y ago
  If being CEO is a prerequisite to having freedom of speech then free speech is worth very little in practice. If it's not, then he has not lost his freedom of speech.
hackinthebochs 13y ago
The way I see it, the exact opposite happened. There was no "free market" action that corrected for a bad choice of CEO. It was a minority of people with a large voice who were able to create and control a narrative and thus force a CEO out. This is the exact opposite of "free market".
daveqr 13y ago
This was the opposite of a win for freedom of speech.
- adamwong246 13y ago
  "Freedom of Speech" does not mean "Freedom from the Consequences of your Speech."
  - cousin_it 13y ago
    No, freedom of speech means exactly that people shouldn't be punished for speech. What else could it possibly mean?
    - Aloisius 13y ago
      No, it means freedom from state censorship and state punishment (imprisonment for instance). The public can punish you all they want.
      - cousin_it 13y ago
        Well, that's a bug in freedom of speech then. Other freedoms don't work like that. They protect you from all actors, not just the state. For example, your employer can't fire you for being gay. They shouldn't be able to fire you for your political views either.
        Aloisius 13y ago
        Plenty of other freedoms work exactly like that. The freedom to assemble doesn't mean that private owners can't keep you from assembling on their property. The freedom of press doesn't mean that the editors can't censor your work. The freedom to bear arms doesn't mean that private businesses can't bar you from the premises.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        makomk 13y ago
        Which means, in practice, that people can't necessarily use those freedoms. If most or all public spaces are privately-owned how do you exercise your freedom to assemble? Now that most of the communication channels people use are privately owned, how much freedom of speech do we really have?
        mindslight 13y ago
        Actual freedoms themselves don't work that way, just the codifications of them in the US "Bill of Rights". Given what was discovered about complexity-induced logical contradictions in the 1930's and the subsequent wholesale implementation of such, this should be considered a P0 bug.
        13y ago
  - blisterpeanuts 13y ago
    Actually, it does. You can't be fired from your job for expressing a political view in the state of California.
- e40 13y ago
  "Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them." How was that taken away from him? The freedom of speech doesn't include the ability to hold onto a specific job when you exercise your speech rights. That idea is downright silly.
nostrademons 13y ago
There's no need to editorialize. "You're free to express your opinion, but the market is free to reject you." Remember that a generation ago, many of the opinions that we believe are simply open-minded were unthinkable, and people who thought them faced severe rejection by "the market".
Dewie 13y ago
In a free market, the market is perfectly free to reject your products because you are a woman. It is perfectly free to reject the business of handicapped people because making the establishment handicap friendly would hurt the company's bottom line. The free market seem pretty indifferent to whatever is going on around it. In this case it did 'the right thing', but that was because of the people using the free market, not the free market per se. Bringing up the free market seems a bit stretched, though, since most people's relationship to Mozilla is their free browser. How much does Mozilla get from their users versus donations from companies like Google? Of course, goodwill is important for any big company, which was definitely at stake here.

MrZongle2 13y ago

To me this is a win for freedom of speech How exactly was this a win for Eich's freedom of speech?

prutschman 13y ago
If being CEO is a prerequisite to having freedom of speech then free speech is worth very little in practice. If it's not, then he has not lost his freedom of speech.

hackinthebochs 13y ago

The way I see it, the exact opposite happened. There was no "free market" action that corrected for a bad choice of CEO. It was a minority of people with a large voice who were able to create and control a narrative and thus force a CEO out. This is the exact opposite of "free market".

daveqr 13y ago

This was the opposite of a win for freedom of speech.

adamwong246 13y ago
"Freedom of Speech" does not mean "Freedom from the Consequences of your Speech."
- cousin_it 13y ago
  No, freedom of speech means exactly that people shouldn't be punished for speech. What else could it possibly mean?
  - Aloisius 13y ago
    No, it means freedom from state censorship and state punishment (imprisonment for instance). The public can punish you all they want.
    - cousin_it 13y ago
      Well, that's a bug in freedom of speech then. Other freedoms don't work like that. They protect you from all actors, not just the state. For example, your employer can't fire you for being gay. They shouldn't be able to fire you for your political views either.
      - Aloisius 13y ago
        Plenty of other freedoms work exactly like that. The freedom to assemble doesn't mean that private owners can't keep you from assembling on their property. The freedom of press doesn't mean that the editors can't censor your work. The freedom to bear arms doesn't mean that private businesses can't bar you from the premises.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        makomk 13y ago
        Which means, in practice, that people can't necessarily use those freedoms. If most or all public spaces are privately-owned how do you exercise your freedom to assemble? Now that most of the communication channels people use are privately owned, how much freedom of speech do we really have?
        mindslight 13y ago
        Actual freedoms themselves don't work that way, just the codifications of them in the US "Bill of Rights". Given what was discovered about complexity-induced logical contradictions in the 1930's and the subsequent wholesale implementation of such, this should be considered a P0 bug.
      - 13y ago
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  Actually, it does. You can't be fired from your job for expressing a political view in the state of California.
e40 13y ago
"Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them." How was that taken away from him? The freedom of speech doesn't include the ability to hold onto a specific job when you exercise your speech rights. That idea is downright silly.

nostrademons 13y ago

There's no need to editorialize. "You're free to express your opinion, but the market is free to reject you." Remember that a generation ago, many of the opinions that we believe are simply open-minded were unthinkable, and people who thought them faced severe rejection by "the market".

Dewie 13y ago

In a free market, the market is perfectly free to reject your products because you are a woman. It is perfectly free to reject the business of handicapped people because making the establishment handicap friendly would hurt the company's bottom line. The free market seem pretty indifferent to whatever is going on around it. In this case it did 'the right thing', but that was because of the people using the free market, not the free market per se. Bringing up the free market seems a bit stretched, though, since most people's relationship to Mozilla is their free browser. How much does Mozilla get from their users versus donations from companies like Google? Of course, goodwill is important for any big company, which was definitely at stake here.