Mozilla needs to skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s been. LGBT rights
I just don’t understand WTF the Mozilla Foundation was thinking on this one. It’s akin to making someone a CEO who donated to segregation campaigns in the 1960s. You just wouldn’t do that.
Gay rights have not yet achieved the same acceptance as other civil rights have, but they will do so undoubtedly one day. And when that day arrives, and it already has in most of Mozilla’s fan base markets, it is going to haunt the Mozilla Foundation even more than the decision today is doing. Mozilla looks to the future in all it does, except when it comes to its leadership apparently. The future profile of CEOs will not have anti-LGBT beliefs, and Mozilla needs to be skating to where the puck is going, not where it’s been.
What is really troubling is that the origins of the tech industry, the West Coast tech, were about tolerance and civil rights. Personal computers and related technologies were about freedom from oppression. For a tech non-profit to install an anti-LGBT CEO is completely 180 from why and how tech evolved from its early days. Technology isn’t just about what you do, it’s also about who does it. They go hand in hand.
If this was simply an oversight that was missed in due diligence of the CEO’s past then OK, but make the change happen.