Thoughtcrime

[Xiahou]

Is it acceptable to force someone from their job for a political view? A political donation? A political vote?

Apparently so.

Brendan Eich, only recently appointed CEO of Mozilla, was forced to resign due to the firestorm over his 2008 donation of $1000 in favor of Prop8. He stated in a recent interview how he separates his personal beliefs from his job....

Mozilla has always worked according to principles of inclusiveness. It may be challenging for a CEO, but everyone in our community can have different beliefs about all sorts of things that may be in conflict. They leave them at the door when they come to work on the Mozilla mission. We are a broad, big, mission-based organization. It's not to say some of those other beliefs aren't as contributing to the open Web, but we will not succeed globally without being maximally inclusive by leaving exclusionary beliefs at the door. I've done that for 16 years. I've done open source for 20 years. I think my reputation is well-known. Mozilla.org was founded 16 years ago today. The open source went up on March 31.

I've always treated people as they come, I've worked with them, tried to get them into the project, I've been as fair and inclusive as anyone -- I think more. I intend to be even more so as CEO because I agree there's an obligation to reach out to people who for whatever reason are marginalized.

But that's not good enough. Nothing short of a public, full-throated disavowal of his personally held beliefs will prevent him from being black-listed.

"I asked him to just issue a statement that his personal, private beliefs remained the same about what a traditional family is, but that he recognized that we should not legislate morality and that those laws had a tangible negative effect on people," Catlin said. "Instead, he fell back to his defensive position and refuses to apologize for helping to fund a law that actively discriminated against his own employees and community."

People should be appalled by this. Perhaps Mozilla, when choosing it's new CEO, should have a checklist of hot-button political issues that you must be in favor of before you can be considered?