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Comment by Georgelemental | Hacker News Reader

Brave's CEO (Brendan Eich) used to be co-founder and CEO of Mozilla. They kicked him out because in 2008 he donated $1000 of his money to an unapproved political cause. Can't put time/effort into something that is more interested in virtue signalling than improving.

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CTO would've been appropriate, but not CEO. Mozilla could not keep a CEO donating to ban gay marriage. I rather doubt even Microsoft would've kept him. It's divisive and distracting, especially for a public benefit organization. They made the right call.

7 million people voted in favor of Proposition 8. Would you ban all 7 million from any position of authority? What of the 6.4 million who voted against, are they "divisive"?

It's fine if he voted against it. But a donation disqualifies him from that position if for no other reason than it's distracting from Mozilla's purpose. Whether good or bad, the foundation has a strong human rights focus.

Gervase Markham was a dedicated outspoken fundamentalist at Mozilla until his death and was very influential, but he wasn't in a leadership position. Big difference.

Would you have the same opinion if he had donated to the other camp? Does the timing of the donation also matter, in your view?

> improving

ah yes my favorite important improvements that I totally use daily like adding crypto tokens to chrome and crypto spam notifications on android

Shouldn't be a dead comment; this is exactly what happened.

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