Monday, March 31, 2014




Mozilla staff call for new CEO to stand down over donation to anti-gay marriage campaign

Employees and volunteers at open source organisation Mozilla, which creates the Firefox browser, have called for its new chief executive to stand down because of donations to anti-gay marriage campaigns

Employees and volunteers at Mozilla - the organisation which promotes open source software such as its Firefox browser - have called for new chief executive Brendan Eich to stand down because of his donations to political campaigns to ban gay marriage.

This week Mozilla named Brendan Eich as its new chief executive, following the resignation of Gary Kovacs which was announced in April last year. Eich was previously Mozilla's chief technology officer and has a long history with the group dating back to before its formation from Netscape, having worked on the Navigator browser in the 90s and creating JavaScript in a marathon, ten-day programming session in 1995.

The controversy stems from a $1,000 donation he made in 2008 to support California's Proposition 8, which opposed gay marriage. The donation was listed in a public database with Mozilla appearing next to Eich's name as his employer. It caused controversy in the technology industry when it was uncovered in 2012.

Eich posted on his own blog to "express my sorrow at having caused pain" and promised an "active commitment to equality" at Mozilla.

"I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion," he wrote.

But employees were unconvinced. Chris McAvoy, who leads Mozilla's Open Badges project, took to Twitter last night to call for the new chief executive to stand down and said that he had been "disapointed" by his promotion.

SOURCE

This is pretty rough stuff.  You can be hounded out of your job because of a political donation you make.  An attack on democracy


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well his principles or previous convictions didn't mean very much when he could so easily repudiate them just to advance his career.
1:39 AM is of course over-generalizing, and trying to diminish the civil rights of others is a lot more vicious.

Old Bob said...

People who are intolerant of other people's intolerance are just as intolerant as those they see as intolerant.

Use the Name, Luke said...

Which is more important to a technology organization? Excellence in technical capabilities? Or PC intolerance? Now we know Mozilla's answer.

In case it isn't clear what's going on here…

Bill Donohue and the Gay Thought Police

Anonymous said...

Would they have asked for his resignation if had donated to a pro-gay cause? If not, why not. Bloody bigots.

Anonymous said...

So 'Old Bob' according to your twisted argument or implication, we should not be intolerant of Nazis!

Bird of Paradise said...

Tell the Mozzila staff to GO TAKE A HIKE