I've often found that when an issue divides a group that would otherwise cooperate willingly, the problem is that the two sides are battling over the wrong issue. In this case, the CEO-ship of Brendan Eich has been continually rehashed as an issue of freedom of thought/opinion/speech vs bigotry and exclusion...but that's not the real issue.
The real issue is money as speech.
I'd wager that most of those against Eich's position would not begrudge anyone freedom of opinion, or private speech, or even public speech so long as such opinions or speech did not elevate to action. On the other hand had Eich fired a LGBT staffer based on their sexual orientation, not only would he be in the wrong legally, but I think even those carrying the banner of free speech in this case would agree that his promotion was wrong.
So the real question is: by donating money to the Proposition 8 cause, was Eich exercising his right to free speech? or was he taking a discriminatory action?
Of course, you may note this is exactly the same issue in question with the Citizen's United decision. I think this larger question, is money speech or action, will be one of the most important questions of our time...
> So the real question is: by donating money to the Proposition 8 cause, was Eich exercising his right to free speech? or was he taking a discriminatory action?
It's clearly free speech. Had he fired or refused to hire someone over their orientation, it would be discriminatory action. That being said, as the CEO of Mozilla, he is the face and voice of Mozilla. So it is natural that people are looking into how he has exercised his speech, not just actions in the past, to see how he will shape Mozilla in the future.
I make my living coding in JavaScript/CoffeeScript and my personal hobbies include hacking 3D UIs in the browser. To say that my life was directly and positively impacted by Eich's past actions is an understatement. On the other hand, there are many people, more than a few in this very community, who were indirectly and negatively impacted by the small part he played when exercising his right to free speech.
To me the bigger question is, can you officially act 'for' when you personally speak 'against' something?
I'm curious how many people would stop using javascript because of this. Given all sorts of ads & analytics are all served up with it, I bet many people won't.
It's a slippery slope if we try to paint people as "wholy-bad" or "wholy-good" based on one or two hot-button issues. Human's are flawed, complicated creatures. Trying to pass judgment on their entire career & capabilities based on one or two actions not related and/or affecting their job is a dangerous decision to make.
I don't agree with what Eich did -- i'm 100% pro lgbt rights, and i think prop 8 was just plain wrong.
but at the same time, as much as i'm entitled to my opinion, he's entitled to his. mozilla foundation never donated a dime for prop 8, brendan eich did. as such we should 'judge' him, as a person, for it, not him as the ceo.
as evelyn beatrice hall said "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (wikipedia says she said it, not voltaire[0])
There's a big difference between defending someone's right to say dumb things, and suggesting that we should ignore that they said dumb things.
If you see a movie star use a racial slur, the natural response isn't "well, he wasn't on set so I still support him as an actor". The natural response is to recategorize that person as racist, and have a dim awareness of that while considering what films to watch and while watching them perform.
Once you're aware of it, the knowledge that the CEO of Mozilla gets utility from oppressing gay people is something you're aware of whenever you see the Mozilla brand. I don't think that's illogical or something Mrs Hall would say Voltaire thinks is bad.
> So the real question is: by donating money to the Proposition 8 cause, was Eich exercising his right to free speech? or was he taking a discriminatory action?
As I learned in High School Debate Club, most un-winnable, never-ending arguments are actually disagreements over definitions.
Yeah, in most competitive debate events, sides are predetermined, thus each competitor has the incentive to continue to argue ad infinitum about the most basic points, for instance as I debated much over the last several months, what exactly the word "substantially" means. Due to that, the competitor's real views are irrelevant.
> Of course, you may note this is exactly the same issue in question with the Citizen's United decision. I think this larger question, is money speech or action, will be one of the most important questions of our time...
I think this is a fundamentally different issue than the Citizen's United decision. Here, it's a person's speech/action. I firmly believe that people should be allowed to express whatever opinion through words and/or actions, even if it is donating money to a cause, or choosing not to associate with certain people (e.g. gays/Jews/insert favourite -ism). However, I strongly oppose awarding the same rights to political/commercial/non-profit organizations - I don't think a company should be able to donate money to political parties, nor fire an employee because of his/her skin color, sexual orientation, or political beliefs.
There's another issue too, which is "what does inclusiveness even mean" in the context of a global open source project?
Certainly adopting the view that same-sex marriage is a human we should export to countries like Singapore is non-inclusive, and alienates people based on culture.
At a certain point, I think we have to accept that reasonable people can disagree on almost any issue, and we have to live with that.
On the other hand had Eich fired a LGBT staffer based on their sexual orientation, not only would he be in the wrong legally, but I think even those carrying the banner of free speech in this case would agree that his promotion was wrong.
Yes, because in the context of marriage in the US, I think basic fairness requires certain things. Where that context is different (India, Indonesia, Singapore, Poland) the same demands are not at issue. I actually see Eich's donation as far less offensive (even though I see it as wrong) than I do Google's efforts at pushing the issue internationally. The US is no longer a culture for the most part where people get married, have kids, and then retire with their kids. Opponents of same-sex marriage should be working instead on bringing back that ideal, rather than upholding the rights of opposite sex couples not to reproduce and then trying to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples.
So you're saying that if he didn't donate money but instead blogged his opinion, less people would be upset? Seems like it would be the opposite in this case.
This has nothing to do with rights or money as speech, for most of the participants.
This is all about punishing the bad evil bigot man. He has committed the sin of not throwing his arms around gay marriage and he must pay. He cannot be allowed to have such an important position; why, that's almost like a reward for hate.
So money buys influence to exclude people of their basic right of having a voice? Perhaps I'm naive, but money should never trump an individual's right to be heard. Are we living in a warped reality that we think otherwise?
The real issue is money as speech.
I'd wager that most of those against Eich's position would not begrudge anyone freedom of opinion, or private speech, or even public speech so long as such opinions or speech did not elevate to action. On the other hand had Eich fired a LGBT staffer based on their sexual orientation, not only would he be in the wrong legally, but I think even those carrying the banner of free speech in this case would agree that his promotion was wrong.
So the real question is: by donating money to the Proposition 8 cause, was Eich exercising his right to free speech? or was he taking a discriminatory action?
Of course, you may note this is exactly the same issue in question with the Citizen's United decision. I think this larger question, is money speech or action, will be one of the most important questions of our time...