You don't have to read any of the political culture ranting of ESR (and you probably shouldn't unless you're masochistic) to have seen that Eich was railroaded and screwed and witch-hunted pretty hard.
It seems very reasonable to interpret that whole situation as Mozilla acknowledging the importance of politics over technical leadership--fair or not, when you broadcast your realpolitik that hard, you're gonna lose people.
> when you broadcast your realpolitik that hard, you're gonna lose people.
Hacker culture may not necessarily be aligned with Eich's personal views / situations. But crucial underlying concept is ignoring nebulous things like that. So taking action / reforms based off the premise feels like a Chesteron's fence [1].
