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from the i-guess-they'll-unfriend-mozilla dept.
The controversy around Mozilla's new CEO Brendan Eich continues. Eich made a personal $1000 donation to California's Yes on Proposition 8 campaign in 2008. Now, dating site OkCupid has started redirecting Firefox users to a page explaining Eich's views against marriage equality, and asking users to switch to IE, Chrome, or Opera.
If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we've worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it's professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @02:54PM
> "... and not even for all that much money."
$1,000 pays for two people to work an entire day on a commercial. As many as four outside of Los Angeles, where rates are lower. More than enough to create a 60 second commercial intended to influence the ill-informed.
> And just why is it so awful?
Besides his own employees calling for his resignation, it's also weakens the Mozilla Foundation's claim they're about freedom and equal rights.
> I'm not in California (or even close), so I cannot say for certain, but it seems likely that there is more to this than is being reported.
The 'more than being reported' is the employees doing the actual call for the resignation, that's why it's a story. When that failed to get a reply out of him another interested party turned the heat up on him.
> Wouldn't want to risk having facts put a damper on outrage, after all...
Careful what you wish for, half of your outrage about the outrage is fueled by lack of understanding of the situation.
To put it in a better perspective: Let's say there was a ballot in your county to prohibit divorce in your area. Once you're married, that's it, till death, no exceptions, not even domestic abuse. Then let's say a religious group from California (or any area that has utterly no business sticking their noses in your county...) put substantial resources into airing ads promoting this ballot. If this thought makes your backside twitch then you're starting to understand where the heat from this story is coming from. (If it doesn't and you're just sitting there with your cursor hovering over the reply button, just stop and reread it again. There's no point in arguing just to argue.) Then imagine you heard that a new chief of police in your area is starting his job, but the officers under him found out that he donated a significant amount of money to this cause. Did his donation to that campaign indicate that his values may not reflect those of the police department? He didn't answer those concerns, but the PD made a statement that said: "we help everybody, yadda yadda yadda".
So, yeah, it's not so petty or black and white. He still has his chance to address the concern, when he takes it we'll certainly hear about it.