My pensieve

I was recently talking to a friend who told me how even though the idea of Free Software is very radical, it has not been able to translate to social changes on the ground and hence cant be called as a revolution in itself. Free Software has led to completely new ideas of producing and distributing software which has again probably also led to a complete different dimension to sharing knowledge like through Wikipedia, sharing digital media like through Creative Commons license and something which is becoming very popular now, the idea of open hardware. There is also now this whole idea of community over Internet which has brought people together for very specific issues. Starting from Anonymous, to Wikileaks to Arab springs, all these are ideas where people came together with the idea of community over the Internet and then doing some changes on the ground on actual real social issues.
The latest news of recently appointed Mozilla CEO, Brendan Eich stepping down as he did not necessarily agree with homosexuality and had donated to support an anti-gay proposition is a very important development in free software evolution. The outrage it created within the mozilla community which actually led to this development is quite interesting. This states that Mozilla as one of the leading free software foundation has committed not only to equality in web and with respect to software but also equality amongst the people in real world. As a foundation mainly dealing with software and web, it has now stood for something that is involved in a social context of real world outside the realm of binary digits. This is important as it asserts the fact that freedom that we talk about in software also is equally important in real life if not much more important. Free Software, free Internet as an area of achieving freedom cannot be complete without changing things in actual society where people respect freedom of individuals in the society.
This also asserts a very different perspective of the community as a whole. Though in real world, opposition to gay marriages is very active and common, though the whole process of democracy in real world has not been able to change this in the actual society, in the virtual world, where the community is much more democratic it was able to change things for real. It leads interestingly to the idea that the real big world is not democratic enough or the virtual small world is very radical as against the actual real world. The voice of homosexual people which was not heard in real world was actually heard and echoed by the community in virtual world.
Ofcourse how this development will manifest itself in the real world inside the mozilla community, and also in other free software communities is up to be seen. Can it backfire on mozilla community where the real unequal society takes over and abandons mozilla for coming out of its stated realm of binary digits and taking part in real world issues? Will it alienate people, both users and developers who could appreciate the freedom in virtual world but cannot come to terms of such a freedom in real life?