Politics were allowed to raise such an uproar that the Mozilla CEO was forced to resign -- he was most likely pressured both by the board & his desire to do what was best for the company. As CEO his personal views were about as relevant as the brand of socks you like to buy, but politics were allowed to create an uproar that Mozilla couldn't ignore. From a biz standpoint it was *ALL* about the uproar. The political types behind it, the media, & loads of special interests, each for their own reasons, would have you believe it is & was all about LGBT rights. If the CEO's personal views created a problem at work or for Mozilla's users he would have never made it to CTO let alone CEO. It was all about creating a large enough uproar that there would be lots of publicity and attention -- in effect loads of free advertising -- the effects on Mozilla be d*****.
Whether Mozilla as a organization made the right or wrong choices on this is really up to you -- this isn't the place to discuss politics. My only goal is to point out that there are lots of folks trying to manipulate you -- it's like a magician focusing your attention where they want you to look so you don't see what they're actually doing, & how they're doing it. If you doubt that, ask yourself what you know about the personal lives, the personal beliefs of the CEOs running all the other corporations whose products you use & buy. I mean, what church does the CEO of the company that makes the dish soap you're using today attend, if any? If you're like me, I'm not even sure of the brand on the bottle under the sink.
Background
Extremely briefly for those outside the US, there was a proposition put on the election ballot in California banning same sex marriage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_%282008%29
Afterwards opponents won the right in court to find out & publish who supported that proposition. There's practically & logically only one reason for prop. 8 opponents to do this -- to show people the consequences of their support. The new Mozilla CEO was one of those supporters. Making an issue of his support accomplished far more than printing a list that included the old folks down the street. Again, whether the CEO's support of prop. 8 was right or wrong is up to you -- for all I know he donated money to both sides [like many biz leaders] to reduce the risk of upsetting one side or the other.
My personal take is that Mozilla is at fault -- unlike many other companies, organizations, & individuals who have been backed up against the wall, they didn't bring in the media & PR pros. Instead they gave the appearance of caving in, or worse, internalized the whole thing, thinking somehow that they were at fault, lashing themselves to the whipping post. By appearing to take sides, they've lost a good sized portion of the market -- IMHO there's a very good chance that they're effectively done, gone, out of the running. I'm not going to boycott or applaud Mozilla, but I've started the process of transitioning away from what was my preferred browser, simply because I don't see how they're not going to go downhill with fewer users & devs. Now would be a good time for Opera to make a marketing push.
