Was Eich a Threat To Mozilla's $1B Google "Trust Fund"?

theodp (442580) writes "Over the years, Mozilla's reliance on Google has continued to grow. Indeed, in its report on Brendan Eich's promotion to CEO of Mozilla, the WSJ noted that "Google accounted for nearly 90% of Mozilla's $311 million in revenue." So, with its Sugar Daddy having also gone on record as being virulently opposed to Proposition 8, to think that that Google's support didn't enter into discussions of whether Prop 8 backer Eich should stay or go seems, well, pretty much unthinkable. "It is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8," explained Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2008. "We should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love." Interestingly, breaking the news of Eich's resignation was journalist Kara Swisher, whose right to marry a top Google exec in 2008 was nearly eliminated by Prop 8. "In an interview this morning," wrote Swisher, "Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker said that Eich's ability to lead the company that makes the Firefox Web browser had been badly damaged by the continued scrutiny over the hot-button issue, which had actually been known since 2012 inside the Mozilla community." Swisher, whose article was cited by the NY Times in The Campaign Against Mozilla's Brendan Eich, added that "it was not hard to get the sense that Eich really wanted to stick strongly by his views about gay marriage, which run counter to much of the tech industry and, increasingly, the general population in the U.S. For example, he repeatedly declined to answer when asked if he would donate to a similar initiative today." So, was keeping Eich aboard viewed by Mozilla — perhaps even by Eich himself — as a possible threat to the reported $1 billion minimum revenue guarantee the organization enjoys for delivering search queries for Google?"

Comments

The new Hitlers

[hessian]

Our new tech overlords, made rich by a market that dropped in their laps, now want to experiment with "social engineering."

This has a bad history. Hitler, Stalin, et al.

However, they don't care -- this is about their egos and feeling good for having done something socially popular, at least among their somewhat incestuous and nepotistic California cult.

Naturally, any dissenters must be weeded out, as they were in the Soviet Union and after the French Revolution.

Ideology of this sort never changes. Since it is not based in reality, but in thinking about what "ought" to be, it views any dissent as a threat that might invalidate its own claim to being morally right.

Thus, the dissenters must be squashed. Gulag, guillotine, or boycott. It matters not which is used so long as it silences them.

Re:The new Hitlers

[johnlcallaway]

This is more like the Church of England and it's inquisition, where heretics where hunted down and punished because they dared believe something different. The militant gay people think they have the right to tell other people what moral values they have to have. Personally, I don't give a crap who someone has sex with. I just find it repulsive when people who don't feel the same way are called names like 'homophobe'. The name callers are no different than those who call people who want legalized abortion to remain legal murders, narrow minded and unwilling to even try and look at the other side of the discussion. Or carry on a real conversation for fear they might just be wrong.
It seems to me that allowing gay people to marry only creates even more discrimination. It's adding another group into the married pool that gets special privileges just because they sign a piece of paper. There is nothing about being legally accepted as married that is different from living together, except government benefits and some company benefits. Nothing. Nada. It's all about a very small group of people wanting to get the same extra privileges that a larger group enjoy because the acquiesce to the government's attempt to force social behaviors. I knew a couple that didn't want to be married because of student loan issues (they didn't want his income to be included in the calculations), so they had a 'joining' ceremony and lived together for years. Everyone treated them as married, EXCEPT the government. Which was exactly what they wanted.

Since nothing is stopping gay couples from having ceremonies and living as if married, as far as I can tell, gay marriage is all about forcing acceptance and government benefits. It's just more of today's entitlement society where someone wants something from the government. Of they want the government to force companies to give them benefits. It has absolutely nothing to do with love.

Name one benefit afforded to a married couple that shouldn't also be afforded to any two people just living together, that have agreed to create a financial interdependence. Why can't two sisters who have lived together their entire lives get the same social security and tax benefits as a married couple, simply because they don't get married. Why should two roommates, no matter what sex they are, be denied those same benefits simply because they don't want to have sex with each other. In fact, name one reason why two roommates, who don't have sex, can't get 'married' and get the same benefits. Isn't that sexual discrimination??? How long will it be before people start to figure that out. All gay marriage laws do is dilute the term 'marriage' (which barely means anything anymore anyway), reducing it to a simple 'give me my entitlement' statement.

My mother and brother lived together for many years until she passed away. He was an independent truck driver and only needed a place to sleep on the weekends. She was retired and did his paperwork (there is a lot of paperwork for truck drivers) and scheduled his loads. Why couldn't they get the same tax benefits of 'married, filing jointly' as anyone else. Why shouldn't he be able to name her as his social security beneficiary. If he passed away suddenly, my mother was just as financially dependent on him as she would have been to a husband and would have found it difficult to manage without his income.

Hypocrites .. that's what I think those that support gay marriage are. They don't give a flip about equality, they only want to force their moral beliefs on those that disagree, and enable a very small group of select people to get benefits. If they truly wanted equality, they would fight to ELIMINATE all benefits tied to being married. Tax laws could be changed to allow for household incomes to be used. Social Security survivor-ship benefits could be simply modified to allow for one person to receive them, and set several rules (such as living together for a number of years while working and paying social security taxes). D