I cannot imagine in the slightest that Brendan would retaliate against someone for a political belief they expressed. I also think to a fair extent politics simply don't come up at Mozilla in the course of working on Mozilla-related tasks and goals. At least, not politics of the horribly divided sort as here. (Net neutrality is sort of divisive, but nobody is going to get particularly upset talking to someone who disagrees with them there.) I have vague ideas about what many people think, but I simply don't know for most folks.
Regarding "advisors" talking to him, assuming this means counseling him not to take the CEO position given it might be divisive. I don't know. For all you or I know, people did. I would be rather surprised if it didn't come up at least briefly. It seems a reasonably obvious thing to have raised. But I think it's not horribly obviously wrong to have predicted that people would largely work through this, accepting his actions in Mozilla as being distinct from his actions outside of Mozilla. (If you can point to a single action in Mozilla of his that would betray these beliefs, I would love to hear it. I know of none at all, and I have never heard a single person mention any in conversation.) It's what I certainly hoped would happen, when I raised questions directly to him about this at one of the early Mozilla discussions, to learn what the planned response would be. But it seems not to be the case.
A sad mess in any case. No one at all is helped by his complete absence from the project, not even the people calling for his ouster. The Web lost today, and gay rights/same-sex marriage/what-have-you did not gain.
I respectfully disagree
I cannot imagine in the slightest that Brendan would retaliate against someone for a political belief they expressed. I also think to a fair extent politics simply don't come up at Mozilla in the course of working on Mozilla-related tasks and goals. At least, not politics of the horribly divided sort as here. (Net neutrality is sort of divisive, but nobody is going to get particularly upset talking to someone who disagrees with them there.) I have vague ideas about what many people think, but I simply don't know for most folks.
Regarding "advisors" talking to him, assuming this means counseling him not to take the CEO position given it might be divisive. I don't know. For all you or I know, people did. I would be rather surprised if it didn't come up at least briefly. It seems a reasonably obvious thing to have raised. But I think it's not horribly obviously wrong to have predicted that people would largely work through this, accepting his actions in Mozilla as being distinct from his actions outside of Mozilla. (If you can point to a single action in Mozilla of his that would betray these beliefs, I would love to hear it. I know of none at all, and I have never heard a single person mention any in conversation.) It's what I certainly hoped would happen, when I raised questions directly to him about this at one of the early Mozilla discussions, to learn what the planned response would be. But it seems not to be the case.
A sad mess in any case. No one at all is helped by his complete absence from the project, not even the people calling for his ouster. The Web lost today, and gay rights/same-sex marriage/what-have-you did not gain.
Jeff Walden