Are we facing a new kind of McCarthyism that is run by mobs?
Mozilla ran into a bit of chop because of the ouster of its high-profie CEO.
Brendan Eich, the inventer of JavaScript and all-around tech icon, was forced to resign his position as CEO of Mozilla and his membership on the Mozilla Foundation board because it was discovered that he had made a completely legal donation of $1,000 to the Proposition 8 campaign in 2008.
Mozilla tried to paint a self-righteous gloss over the whole thing by issuing a statement that sounded, oddly enough, like it was written by a computer. The statement contained vague references to “people who were hurt” and how Mozilla hadn’t been faithful to its “values.” Then there was an icing of claptrap about inclusiveness and diversity.
This latter is especially gag-inducing, considering that claims of “inclusiveness” and “diversity” are being use to justify big-brotherish group think and ruthless enforcement of lock-step conformity.
It turns out that at least 7,000 people were outraged enough to write about their non-support of Mozilla’s behavior on the Mozilla web site. Prominent gay marriage activist Andrew Sullivan also spoke out against what happened.
From the perspective of Mozilla itself, throwing Eich under the bus (It’s getting rather crowded under that bus, btw.) isn’t quite as high-profile as firing Steve Jobs from Apple was, but it’s just as stupid. Dump the guy who invented JavaScript and has ably led the company to challenge the big boys in the tech world because of completely legal, entirely private, low-profile political activity? Now that’s thinking.
I want to emphasize that this donation was so low-profile that it took six years for it to become an issue. They had to do research to find out about it.
Is that the new world of “inclusiveness” and “diversity?” Does diversity and inclusiveness mean you are free to think what you want as long as it agrees with the gay rights movement and you don’t do anything in your private life that someone can dig up and use against you to prove that you don’t agree with the gay rights movement?
Are people who support traditional marriage supposed to hide their beliefs and be afraid to exercise their right as free Americans to engage in political action on behalf of those beliefs for fear of losing their livelihood?
If this can happen to someone like Brendan Eich, is anyone in this country really free?
From The DailyCaller:
Mozilla, the company that operates the web browser Firefox, experienced its highest level of negative customer feedback the day after its embattled co-founder Brendan Eich resigned as CEO after gay rights activists objected to his appointment.
On Thursday, Mozilla forced Eich to resign just two weeks after hiring him. At issue was a $1,000 donation Eich gave in 2008 in support of California’s Proposition 8, a successful ballot initiative which banned gay marriage.
The decision to remove the man who invented the web scripting language JavaScipt did not sit well with many customers — many of them pelted Mozilla’s website with a surge of negative feedback.
On Friday, 94 percent of the sentiments registered on the site were “sad,” while six percent were “happy.” That translates to about 7,000 negative responses, compared to nearly 500 positive responses.
“Your abject and pathetic condemnation of an individual’s right to hold and support their own view on the world is simply unbelievable,” read one user’s feedback at the Mozilla site.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In