So a little bit about why the Eich thing bothers me personally.

I actually probably do agree that people should be able to have opinions and do political activities off-work that don't imply that their work means the same thing. Actually, arguably, many movements, including LGBTQ rights, probably are incredibly unpopular themselves or seem "publicly misaligned or offensive" at some point, and thus it may be hard for important movements to advance until they hit critical mass in such a way. So... that's tricky, and does make me feel conflicted.

BUT. I will say that personally, I felt really grossed out even more so than at Eich but, presumably, Mozilla's board for making the appointment, one that surely they realized would have made many of their staff uncomfortable, because this has been expressed previously. That's very bothersome and worrying to me. It left me thinking, "How out of touch is Mozilla's board from their staff? Are they really representing them correctly?" I'm sure that a lot of Mozillians felt like they weren't being cared for or taken into account, and I'm sure that wouldn't have been hard to find out.

Admittedly, that feeling hits closer to home for me because I've had more than a decent chance to see firsthand what happens at user freedom oriented nonprofits that make decisions about executive hiring without care for how that will affect staff or community. I don't understand how a board can get so insular and out of touch, though it seems to happen a lot.

I guess I've never had that same kind of board-level governance role so it's easy for me to make comments. If I ever do sit on a nonprofit board though, take this post as a reason to take me to task to take some time to get a sense of how the staff and community would feel about an appointment before I go ahead with it.

Governance is hard, and it's easy to point fingers, and harder to act probably. But this does feel like governance failure, and as far as institutional leadership goes, that bothers me a lot.

EDIT BEFORE EVEN POSTING DUE TO FEEDBACK: it's been pointed out since three board members left, maybe some did not agree, so I guess that makes this stranger, and even for more confusing governance reasons. (It's not clear at all if that's why, though.)