Eich is free to express his opinions and free to suffer the consequences. CEO is a very political position and he made a politically bone-headed move. I don't see how it could have ended any differently.
The people doing public witch hunts should suffer the consequences of their childish behavior then and this won't be too constructive in furthering their stated goals.
This self-righteous bickering is indicative of more character flaws than Eich displayed with his opinions.
> CEO is a very political position and he made a politically bone-headed move
No, that is not what happened. Political activists inside companies have gained power as a result of the 'long march through the institutions [1] which they have been using to enforce their ideology in rigid fashion. This started in the lunch rooms but eventually reached all the way to the top. Eich, like many other CEO's was replaced by a political activist - in this case Mitchell Baker - who used her position to further her ideological goals while simultaneously enriching herself. She is only one of many who is guilty of this type of fiduciary breach of confidence.
The fact that these 'champagne socialists' strut their virtue while filling their coffers - in Dutch this this is called 'links lullen, rechts vullen' (talk left but hoard right) - only makes it all the more galling and clear that their ideology is only a thin veneer over a lust for greed and power [2].
[2] That same ideology sees everything in the world as an eternal power game between the oppressive and the oppressed and calls for a permanent revolution against the powerful - i.e. against themselves.
That is also not what happened as can easily be seen by those same activist taking over non or only partly market-driven sectors like academia and large parts of the public sector, especially centred around education.
If "the market" truly were king I'd expect those who come with plans to rake in the most money for the least effort to take over, i.e. the thing which those same activists tend to point damning fingers at for being the evils of 'capitalism'. I'd also expect companies which are taken over by activists to fail in the market since they produce less efficiently given that part of their energy is used to further the cause of those activists instead of focusing on 'shareholder value'.
It was obviously a targeted, coordinated attack. People were looking decades back into his donation history to try to find anything that tied him to "the right wing". A thousand dollars a decade before to a anti-gay-marriage proposition in California that most Californians agreed with him on at the time. A few thousand dollars two decades back to Ron Paul. Why do you claim he should "suffer" for that? Should half the country "suffer" as well just for voting Republican?
Meanwhile, around the same time, Bill Gates was meeting with Epstein, and that received less than 1/10th of the media coverage. He was sending emails about "staying late into the night" at Epstein's house with a woman and her underaged daughter. But that's ok, because he's on "our side".
It's not about making people suffer. Eich used his wealth to lobby for something that many people find objectionable. Mozilla is quite an ideological company (many who work there are probably somewhat driven by the "mission" rather than necessarily the company's financial performance), and so the CEO publicly supporting criminalising same-sex marriage could affect hiring and staff morale.
It's not like his career has been destroyed. He's still incredibly wealthy, and has a new browser company. People can use that, and work there, if they want.
>Eich used his wealth to lobby for something that many people find objectionable.
Something which a majority of Californians in 2008 voted for, so your many people were the minority.
But even were that not the case, where should the line be drawn? Even if Eich's view were held by 1% and not the 52.24% that voted for it in 2008, should Eich have been fired for holding that position? Yes or no?
> publicly supporting criminalizing same sex marriage
Same sex marriage simply wasn't a thing legally at the time, and was an issue the american public was discussing. It was not something in the process of being criminalized. The population of California voted not to allow it in the year we are talking about here, just to give you some perspective. Barack Obama opposed it politically.
My example was the media coverage of these two events. Look at how the Guardian covers Eich in the article linked in a comment above. Pay attention at how they go out of their way to throw out labels like "right wing". Now try to find a single article from the Guardian that so strongly rebukes Gates. If his behavior is not OK, then why don't they address it?
Yes, I agree that the liberal aka mainstream media have lost their way, in the sense of favoring political positions rather than what's objectively true.
This became obvious in the coverage of Trump and then Russia's war on Ukraine. If everything I've read for years was true, both Trump and Russia would have been finished long ago. But they're clearly not.
As is shown in the following notes, the definition of rape in the New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning of “rape” in common modern parlance, its definition in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere.
The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was “raped” within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump “raped” her as many people commonly understand the word “rape.”
Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.
Sorry, in the US, only courts convict. And if you are convicted of rape, you go to jail.
Word play does not count here. Last time i checked he is still walking around, campaigning.
I don't have strong opinions about the Eich situation. But:
> Should half the country "suffer" as well just for voting Republican?
In the past, probably not. With today's Republicans? Absolutely. You don't get to knowingly vote for a fascist and his corrupt sycophants and face no repercussions. If your politics are "I don't give a fuck about democracy unless I win," our world views are entirely incompatible and I don't want to give you an iota of support.
Your account has swerved into using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. I don't know why, but it's dismaying, because you've been a great contributor in the past but now you're posting more battle comments than not.
This is not allowed on HN, regardless of which politics you're for or against, or how right you are or feel you are. We have to ban accounts that post like this and I definitely don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop posting like this, that would be good.
If you look over that material and still have a question that hasn't been answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
The short version is: (1) some political overlap is inevitable* and ok, but (2) even in those threads, battle-style or flamewar-style comments are not ok, and (3) using HN primarily for such purposes is not allowed and we ban accounts that do. Your account has been on the wrong side of both (2) and (3), which is why I replied to you.
It's a common perception that "HN is getting more political lately" but I think that's an illusion which goes back a long way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869. It's a product of sample bias plus random fluctuation.
* Btw, that is the answer to your question "why not ban [political] topics entirely"—it can't be done. For one thing, there's no agreement about what counts as "politics"; for another, many stories that are clearly on-topic for HN have political aspects. Trying to exclude the political altogether would actually be a surefire way to intensely politicize this place, as we discovered when we once briefly (for a couple days) tried an experiment in doing so. That was quite a learning experience.
