Drop Dropbox

by PhilipA • 12 years ago

1990 993 12 years ago

aioprisan12• 12 years ago

Weren't John Kerry and Hillary Clinton arguably equally responsible for any war that Condy supported? The voted for the funds that made it possible, how is that less responsible for the results?

fit2rule4• 12 years ago

I didn't know they were on the board of directors of Dropbox. Very interesting.

Yes: a large percentage of the politicians in power today are responsible for the heinous crimes against humanity being committed, even yet daily, in the name of the American people - and YES, you SHOULD hold them accountable, since - as an American - you, yourself, are also responsible for the heinous actions of your nation state.

NikolaTesla• 12 years ago

(Virtual) Downvote

mbrutsch2• 12 years ago

Sadly, most Americans don't hold themselves responsible for the actions of our duly elected leaders. It's how we sleep at night.

brb, dropping Dropbox...

aioprisan12• 12 years ago

So you also never eat ketchup as well, right? What about making sure that you never buy gasoline from a major, evil gas producer? Are all of your clothing options carefully selected and verified as to not benefit from child labor? And, of course, you didn't write that message on an Apple product, since they are assembled in what are essentially slave labor camps?

harrystone• 12 years ago

I think the way that's usually handled is to say that George Bush tricked them into it. George Bush. Tricked them.

roc2• 12 years ago

"how is that less responsible for the results?"

Devil's Advocate: It's not. But they didn't join Dropbox's board, so it's irrelevant. It is possible this isn't about partisanship, just personal history.

Though I have a hard time believing that's actually the case.

aioprisan12• 12 years ago

Do you think if John Kerry or Barack Obama joined their board, we would see this level of outrage? I highly doubt it.

hackinthebochs3• 12 years ago

Easy. Voting to give someone the authority to go to war, and actually taking the country to war on faulty or fabricated evidence are in entirely different universes. Voting for war authority was likely necessary as a bargaining chip against Iraq to get them to comply with inspections. That Bush took that as a blank check and skipped further diplomatic processes is entirely on his (and his administration's) shoulders.

aioprisan12• 12 years ago

What evidence do you have that there was fabricated evidence to justify the war? I'm not saying it wasn't faulty, but all the parties has closed door access to all the intelligence to make a decision. Just because we don't like the decision retroactively doesn't mean it was done on purpose, but rather due to mistakes being made. Not to say that's more comforting, just that they are different things.

aioprisan12• 12 years ago

Voting for war authority was likely necessary as a bargaining chip against Iraq to get them to comply with inspections.

No, authorization for war action is not a "bargaining chip," it's an authorization to go to war for an extended period of time. The president can already invade any country for 60 days without needing Congress's blessing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution Obama used that power with Lybia. Of course, you can argue that you can invade a country or attack it for a longer period of time without actually breaching the War Powers Resolution, as Obama did: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16powers.html?... How do you recall or condemn that type of action from a sitting president?

bluedino• 12 years ago

If you put together a list of companies that the politicians who voted for the Iraq war were board members of...you'd be boycotting a lot of companies.

aioprisan12• 12 years ago

My argument exactly. Isn't Chuck Hagel on the board of PBS, Chevron, Deutsche Bank etc.

nraynaud• 12 years ago

I think there is a difference between telling a lie and believing a lie.

bachback2• 12 years ago

I'd suggest the alternative http://mega.co.nz

Karunamon7• 12 years ago

I'd be on board with this if it weren't for the fact that Mega as it exists is a gigantic middle finger in the general direction of the copyright industry.

While admirable, that is not conducive to their continued well being.

kzrdude2• 12 years ago

They didn't seem to know how to do cryptography right though.

bachback2• 12 years ago

agreed. perhaps crowdfunded open security is the only way to go.

sprash• 12 years ago

Well they responded to all criticisms fairly reasonable and also introduced a vulnerability reward program. If you find a flaw you get up to 10000 €.

pavs• 12 years ago

Mega is not a drop-in replacement for dropbox. Unless they drastically changed how they worked since the last time I checked.

izzydata• 12 years ago

Well they do have a desktop folder syncing program so it works more like dropbox. They probably don't have a lot of the same APIs and more in depth ways to use it. It is just file backup and encryption.

antonius• 12 years ago

When looking to grow our board, we sought out a leader who could help us expand our global footprint.

Condoleezza sure left a global footprint in the Middle East alright. Hate do this Dropbox, but time for me to move on.

Edit: Suggestions for a Dropbox substitute?

MPiccinato• 12 years ago

We have been using https://copy.com without any issue.

bambax3• 12 years ago

It's an American company (Barracuda Inc.)

skolos• 12 years ago

For me dropbox worked very unreliably on Linux. Copy works much better.

Shorel3• 12 years ago

From https://www.copy.com/about/tos/ :

We will respond to any notice of alleged copyright infringement if they comply with the law and are properly reported to us through our DMCA process (https://www.copy.com/about/dmca).

From https://www.copy.com/about/privacy :

It may be necessary − by law, legal process, litigation, and/or requests from public and governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence − for us to disclose your Personal Information, Non Personal Information, and Private Data Files. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate.

skrowl• 12 years ago

With the new price point, Google Drive is really attractive

kyrra2• 12 years ago

I do use Google Drive some, but the overall usability of it is a bit painful. They have a lot of nice features for sharing folders/files with others, but the organization of it's web UI is just painful to use at times.

biden4234• 12 years ago

Why are you using Google Drive? Eric Schmidt is a tech adviser to Barack Obama, the same person who selected a "war mongerer" in Joe Biden as his partner.

Shorel3• 12 years ago

I have been using hubiC in Windows and Linux without issues.

They give 25 GB, and respect your privacy (they are based on France).

msh• 12 years ago

I tried them but they did not offer any kind of access to previous versions of files which was a show stopper for me.

Touche4• 12 years ago

Ah, the further politicization of everything in America continues unabated.

uptown• 12 years ago

What's the current sentiment regarding the security and privacy of BTSync?

aw3c22• 12 years ago

It's closed source and proprietary so it is no solution for me.

newman314• 12 years ago

I snooped the traffic and it does not seem to send traffic to proxies if you configure it correctly to not do so.

I've moved from Dropbox to BTSync for 1Password sync and am comfortable with it. Of course, if an open source alternative comes up, I'm willing to consider it.

There's AeroFS, but I hate Java apps so that's a non-starter for me.

tcc2161• 12 years ago

https://www.sync.com/

mikeryan• 12 years ago

Its funny I was kind of looking for alternatives for our business, we use it as a poor mans shared NAS across two offices, but with the new Business features (personal and business folders in particular) finally reached a usability threshold for us.

Ugh...

Cyph0n3• 12 years ago

OneDrive is phenomenal. I've been using it for the past year or so and it's been a breeze.

rbanffy6• 12 years ago

No Linux support.

higherpurpose3• 12 years ago

I'd like something a little more privacy-friendly, not that plays "team games" with NSA.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...

someguy1233• 12 years ago

Unless you like privacy. Partially nude photos in your private folder on OneDrive can get your whole Microsoft account banned. [1]

[1] http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-m...

kenrick95• 12 years ago

What I like the most is the integration of OneDrive with Microsoft Office 2013. But Microsoft successfully "force" me to use OneDrive because I bought Surface RT, which the best Windows 8 application for syncing file so far is OneDrive.

Nowadays, I rarely use Dropbox anymore if it is not for group projects. I don't know why but OneDrive seems unpopular among my friends.

smtddr2• 12 years ago

I've been happy with https://aerofs.com/ so far.

ekianjo7• 12 years ago

When looking to grow our board, we sought out a leader who could help us expand our global footprint.

Hey actually the word footprint can also be understood as garbage.

the impact on the environment of human activity in terms of pollution, damage to ecosystems, and the depletion of natural resources.

Then if you read it this way, the sentence sounds actually very appropriate!

vadvi• 12 years ago

https://www.cubby.com/

cottonseed2• 12 years ago

I've switched to BTsync until a compelling open option appears (hopefully soon).

lcfg• 12 years ago

You might like Wuala: http://wuala.com/en/pricing/

lingben• 12 years ago

I like wuala but they are very expensive and have not adjusted their prices at all

up_and_up2• 12 years ago

Bitcasa: 1TB/$10 - https://www.bitcasa.com/pricing

taigeair• 12 years ago

Are they faster?

phireal3• 12 years ago

I've been running ownCloud[0] on my server. It has Windows/Linux/Mac/Android/iOS clients and has been working very well for me as a drop in Dropbox replacement. In addition to the clients, you can use webDAV to access your files.

[0] http://www.owncloud.org

cheez• 12 years ago

How do you run owncloud? What about security and updates and all that jazz?

jenscow• 12 years ago

Hmm.. I use owncloud, and the ethics of the sysadmin completely match my own.

(although he is a bit of an idiot)

higherpurpose3• 12 years ago

Mediafire also offers 1 TB for $5 (first month is $2.5 or something).

https://www.mediafire.com/upgrade/

If you want something with strong security and privacy, there's https://spideroak.com/

Freaky• 12 years ago

It's 50% off if you pay yearly, plus 2 months free on top. $25 for the year, not bad. Not exactly comparable, but still.

xandersvk• 12 years ago

MEGA! it's end-to-end encrypted and 50GB free! they already have desktop client for windows and will also release for Linux and OSX shortly.

walls2• 12 years ago

Yeah lets store everything on a service that has already evaporated once before!

rbanffy6• 12 years ago

The company I used to work for has one (and can help you build a DropBox for your company).

http://titansgroup.com.br/cloud.php

It's currently aimed at telcos (América Móvil used it in Latin America) but IIRC they rolled out their own product, at least for internal use.

sogen2• 12 years ago

http://www.box.com

sogen2• 12 years ago

http://owncloud.org

zanny2• 12 years ago

I've been using Spideroak https://spideroak.com/, they push security but only have 2G of free storage and their prices are steeper.

But they have a Linux client! Proprietary, but I can never get grive to work right so I use it (hesitantly). Most of my stuff is synced via owncloud, though.

peerbreed• 12 years ago

I could honestly care less about Dr. Rice being on the board of directors or not. Is she going to start a program to torture users of Dropbox? If that comes to pass, it may be a cause for concern. Other than that it appears that Dropbox is adding an accomplished and intelligent person to their board. Is who ever made this website, going to run around and try to get Dr. Rice fired from every job she gets? It really does appear that this is a personal vendetta of some sort.

However! I do welcome the thought of people looking for alternatives to Dropbox. I consider trusting your information with a propriety company based in the US, to be quite foolish these days. Personally I use Owncloud. It's open source. You can run it from your personal server. Owncloud has clients for Linux, Window, MAC, Android and IOS. You can also access your information through any web browser. To put the cherry on top, Owncloud has the capabilities to sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across your all devices. It's a great piece of software and should suit those looking for an alternative.

http://owncloud.org/

maaaats• 12 years ago

JottaCloud. Based in Norway, so no US involvement.

iaskwhy• 12 years ago

Are you using it? If so, how's it going?

jpwagner2• 12 years ago

Heroku alternatives too?

http://www.salesforce.com/company/leadership/board-of-direct...

ionised• 12 years ago

Wuala or SpiderOak.

I'd say Wuala, as SpiderOak's mobile application wasn't great last time I checked. It only had read capability.

sparkie3• 12 years ago

Note that there are potential privacy concerns with Wuala and similar services, as they use de-duplication techniques, meaning if somebody makes a file public, and you have the same copy in storage, they can see these files in your account.

It's not a serious privacy violation, as it only identifies what are otherwise public files anyway - but if you want complete privacy, including being able to hide what you are uploading, not just the content - then you're better with something self-hosted perhaps.

ptman2• 12 years ago

git-annex assistant + hosting at rsync.net? http://www.rsync.net/products/git-annex-pricing.html

sparkie3• 12 years ago

http://seafile.com/en/home/

Similar to ownCloud, has client support for all the major platforms.

For the record, it's written by a Chinese company - not that this should matter, but it's often rejected because all those Chinese are cyber criminals, y'know?

pritambaral• 12 years ago

The fb share link has href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<url>". It still functions though, js triggered.

walden42• 12 years ago

Spider Oak is great, and cares about your privacy. Everything's encrypted client-side.

bicx2• 12 years ago

Unless a company is actively hurting people, I'm going to choose what I use based on the quality of the product, not on a board member's past. Maybe they determined that a hardened political voice would balance them out in the boardroom. Maybe they need someone there to play the devil's advocate in an industry that can be extraordinarily narcissistic.

tomp• 12 years ago

Iraq war has not yet ended.

bicx2• 12 years ago

That is currently in the hands of the Obama Administration, not Dropbox.

ahassan• 12 years ago

I think the point the author is trying to make is that you don't know what she will do to the quality of the product, but your best guess would be basing her future decisions on her past.

That said, I don't agree with the author. She may have made bad decisions in politics, but I don't see the relevance to a tech company.

Ygg2• 12 years ago

Really? I see her as someone that can strengthen the ties of NSA and Dropbox.

ekianjo7• 12 years ago

Unless a company is actively hurting people, I'm going to choose what I use based on the quality of the product, not on a board member's past

Seems like it did not work so well with Mozilla recently. And that guy there did not kill anyone either, even indirectly.

nightski• 12 years ago

Uh we have all killed indirectly. Do you pay taxes?

timdiggerm• 12 years ago

Maybe you're replying to a reasonable person who continued to use Firefox.

micahasmith• 12 years ago

sorry bicx but your response is a bit too logical for what we're looking for (a new target for the tech community hate mob)

Cyph0n3• 12 years ago

And the only person they could find is one of the politicians behind the Iraq War? Heh.

KhalPanda• 12 years ago

Yeah... or I could continue using Dropbox as I have done for the past couple of years safe in the knowledge that a director's political background has little-to-nothing to do with the day-to-day running of a tech company.

vishalzone2002• 12 years ago

its not only dropbox. She is also on board of multiple class-A valley startups including thomas siebel's c3 energy http://www.c3energy.com/about-board-of-directors

alandarev• 12 years ago

The pictures on drop-dropbox sites are self-explanary and exponentally stronger, than common comments on why tech X shall be avoided I come across every day.

That is first time a "stop using tech X" site made me change my opinion.

Fully supporting. Those who are searching for alternatives - try out BitTorrent Sync. I have been using it for a while, will pull a plug on Dropbox acc.

Deusdies• 12 years ago

I have generally been using Google Drive anyway, but after what this person did to my country as well, I am not going to support a company that supports her.

Time to move all of my files from Dropbox to GDrive.

mbrutsch2• 12 years ago

That was quick and painless. I was already using gdrive for my work files; downloaded and installed gdrive sync in about 5 minutes, and now I have over 3 times the free space I did with Dropbox. Thanks, Condy!

CamperBob25• 12 years ago

That's fine until Google gets distracted by something shiny, as they usually do, and kills GDrive.

mentos• 12 years ago

Tell Drew Houston: drop Condoleezza Rice or we will

So if they drop Condoleezza Rice you'll be fine with their decision making process and keep your dropbox account?

watty• 12 years ago

No. It's more of a "let's hurt their image because we don't agree with the political decisions of Condoleezza Rice" at this point.

ajsharp3• 12 years ago

This is just silly.

equalarrow3• 12 years ago

How so? So it's ok to be a part of the team that was responsible for killing many men, women, and children and not only not answer for it, but move on to be on company boards where you can be a part of some serious collection of money at some point? Wow, ok. We must be living in different realities because those years that she was part of will be looked at (or already are) as some of the worst - if not the worst - in American history.

It's sad that none of that crew will ever answer for what they started and did. Granted, there were a lot of people in that chain that should have stood up and said no and not killed anyone. But they didn't. And if you or I did any of those things not wearing an army uniform, we'd be locked up and/or on death row.

I would never in a million years even acknowledge anyone from that team let alone bring them on the board of my company. We really are in an era where it's all about valuations, elevator pitches, and exits. I'm waiting for some young company to bring Dick Cheney on next.

Pick your battles I guess and I will be looking for an alternative that doesn't welcome war criminals.

ajsharp3• 12 years ago

While convenient to paint a picture of everything being messed up and different than previous generations, none of this is at all accurate. The difference is that we lived through the Bush administration, remember it vividly, and many of us disagreed with nearly everything that happened during those 8 years. And it just happened, so it's still fresh(ish). As the saying goes, "everything's different, everything's the same." I agree those years were really bad; whether they were the worst or whatever is relevant only to someone trying to make a broader point (which I'm not).

Personally, in most cases, I don't have a problem with hiring someone based on their merits, despite what their past job was, or even what their political beliefs are (see: Brendan Eich). Apparently Condoleeza Rice is extremely smart, capable, and, as the former Secretary of State, obviously well-connected in the international community.

And while you made a pretty good attempt at equating her to Dick Cheney, she's just not Dick Cheney.

At the end of the day, this is about Dropbox, not the Bush administration, and if Drew Houston has a spine, nothing will change about this situation.

elliott34• 12 years ago

grow up

Zikes• 12 years ago

Come on everyone, if we work together we can get Condy fired just like we did Brendan Eich!

secstate2• 12 years ago

Thanks for the flippant comment. Eich resigned because while talking heads on TV would have you believe otherwise, the gay rights movement is a civil rights movement. By actively donating against it, he was making a strong statement about his leadership qualities that he would actively discourage equal rights for homosexuals.

That said, the idea to drop a product over the composition of its leadership is perfectly valid. If Robert Mugabe showed up on the Dropbox board of directors, I imagine a great many people would be nonplussed and Dropbox would have undergo a trial by public that would not end well.

A great many people would argue that given Rice's track record as a public servant, her personal and professional proclivities, while certainly more nuanced and less egregious than Mugabe, are not great when considering where you should store your data.

IMHO, tapping Rice for their board was a terrible decision and speaks more towards Houston trying to pump up the old-school market strength image of Dropbox than a wise strategic move to improve the quality of their service and business.

TL;DR, Houston, you fucked up.

shiftpgdn• 12 years ago

Kind of wish there was a picture of dead kids warning before I clicked the link.

beaker52• 12 years ago

Even if Rice goes, I'm not going back. The board has already shown it's ugly face.

No amount of backtracking will convince me I didn't see what just happened.

cscheid• 12 years ago

Does anyone know of a version of http://theyrule.net with updated data?

jimmytidey• 12 years ago

It makes it easier that I don't really like Dropbox as a product anyway.

theorique2• 12 years ago

Why all this politicization of Rice's role? What possible relevance could her actions (or hysterical descriptions of her actions) in the Bush administration have in regards to her role as a board member of Dropbox?

Most likely, this is a political appointment to get Dropbox connections in Washington, to sell large contracts into the federal government. And, possibly, to sell into governments abroad where Ms Rice's connections may also be of value. (None of which has any relevance to the usefulness of their product to me.)

doktrin• 12 years ago

Actions have consequences. It's perfectly acceptable for individuals to choose to no longer support a product based on its leaderships decisions.

joshstrange10• 12 years ago

And sell our data to the NSA while they're at it?

jbellis• 12 years ago

ITT: people who have no idea what board members do.

joemaller1• 12 years ago

I was wondering how long this would take. Thoughtcrime is here. The quest for ideological purity is kneecapping our future. Shutting out half of the brainpool because they hold opposing views about disconnected topics is a recipe for societal failure.

ekianjo7• 12 years ago

Well, what happened at Mozilla was certainly "Thoughtcrime" (just happened to be on the unpopular part of the spectrum, if it were 20 years ago nobody would have said anything) but Rice is something different altogether. Her hands are not clean, if you know what I mean.

gregd3• 12 years ago

Interesting, since Condoleeza Rice seems to be the very definition of Thought Police. Her quest for ideological purity resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being killed or maimed.

talmand11• 12 years ago

I require sources to prove your claim of "Her quest for ideological purity".

I already know of the Thought Police claims so I don't require those.

bsaul5• 12 years ago

I couldn't agree more. We have a very easy task identifying right-wing style totalitarism, but apparently sillicon valley has a blind eye when it's coming from its left.

vdaniuk30• 12 years ago

Soooo, putting public pressure on a company that is employing a very controversial politician who is linked to war deaths, mass surveillance and torture is left-wing totalitarianism. Care to explain yourself?

itstriz• 12 years ago

Since when is running a boycott campaign a "quest for ideological purity" or enforcing "thoughtcrime"? This doesn't seem like it's about ideology or what sort of things Rice thinks. It's about people being tortured and killed and her part in that. It's about actual crime not thought crime. She should be held accountable for her actions and making her a pariah in various communities is one small way of doing that.

saturdaysaint• 12 years ago

I mean, "actioncrime" is closer to what's being alleged here. So, "crime".

edlebert• 12 years ago

Keep those torches lit for everyone in the current administration too, right? Torture, war, and mass-surveillance continue to this day, 5 years after she stopped being Secretary of State. In addition, many in the current administration were involved in the Iraq war as well.

nomadcoop• 12 years ago

Anyone know of a Dropbox equivalent based in Europe?

Cyclenerd• 12 years ago

I recommend http://www.wuala.com/

In order to protect your privacy, Wuala encrypts the data on your computer before it is uploaded.

jpwagner2• 12 years ago

I don't get this kind of stuff. I'm sure it's based on good intentions, but this will just lead to MORE nepotism and less transparency because the price of negative press is that much greater.

It feels similar to the hit on the Mozilla guy, which really rubbed me the wrong way. For all I know he clubs baby seals in his free time, but nobody bothered to investigate the truth until it was too late.

One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.

mcv4• 12 years ago

To me, this feels totally different from the Eich case. His political beliefs has nothing to do with Mozilla's product. However, giving someone who approves of wiretaps an important position in a company that people trust with their data, seems like an unbelievably bad idea.

It's not just about whether someone in the company has an opinion I find despicable, it's about whether my own data is still safe.

mattzito2• 12 years ago

She's an independent board member. She does not have the ability, in practice, to do anything other than vote on compensation and various other corporate policies.

And if all it takes to get dropbox execs to turn over data is fiscal threats from a board member who is a former government employee, then they were going to give up long before Condi shows up on the board.

EDIT: and I just want to be clear. If you just don't like the idea of having someone who was involved with the war in Iraq/Afghanistan on the board of a company, you're entitled to your opinion (though I think it's pretty hard to be secretary of state or any other position of power in the govenrment without being involved in something evil).

But I find the idea that somehow Condi's presence on the board an indicator that they'll disclose my data to the government borderline ludicrous.

htns2• 12 years ago

To me, this looks like it may have been directly inspired by the Eich case. The whole premise is a little nonsensical. How will kicking her off the board change anything, when the shareholders (or whoever) who appointed her will remain? No time to answer questions like that when there is demagogy to do. It is a personal vendetta in a very similar vein as the Mozilla incident, even if the justifications may be better this time around.

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

I feel this is different. With Mozilla I don't think the guys personal opinion (right or wrong) would affect his job. In this case it's different. You're trusting Dropbox with your data and on their board is a woman who was a senior member of an administration that created PRISM. This could effect the product is serious negative ways.

ralfn2• 12 years ago

Wait .. are war-criminals now an oppressed minority? Not that i'm convinced she is a war-criminal, but it's not an easily refutable position, is it?.

On the other hand. It stands to reason Dropbox wants a well connected politician on their board, so they can lobby against the NSA style policies that are negatively affecting their international sales.

One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.

And this is just disingenious. This was not the case with the Mozilla guy, nor is this the case here. For starters: gays are still being persecuted in many US and international jurisdictions. That war, and it is a war for civil rights, is still ongoing. Secondly, it's not a group that is being targetted but specific individuals because of their complicity in what is essentially a hate-crime they just got away with. That's like arguing we shouldn't perscute/target nazi-collaborators in the middle of WWII. (although one can argue perscuting collaborators after the war, wasn't the moral high ground either)

But, on a more meta level. I think the tech sector is getting more into politics, because the politics are getting more into the tech sector. Consider the NSA, net-neutrality, DMCA or all the twitter powered revolutions. I mean, the internet is essentially fueling a proccess of globalisation and democratisation, that has a lot of political implications.

We can no longer pretend technology isn't a political weapon of change, because the powers that be, are getting more and more aware of this.

tomasien2• 12 years ago

Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source. Mozilla belongs to us in a very personal way, many of us have contributed code to Firefox personally.

But Condi Rice joining a completely private Dropbox as a board member - this is a non-issue. I'm as strongly anti-Bush administration and anti-war in general (especially the Iraq War - good grief) as anyone you could hope to meet, but this is ridiculously naive and short sighted to think that Condi being involved with Dropbox is something to get excited about. There are SO many people involved with private companies that are so much more partisan and support with no hesitation so many terrible things that if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you're going to be down there for a while my friends.

Edit: that Condi Rice is a "privacy" concern - ok. Fine. I think that's ridiculous but you know what - nothing is particularly ridiculous when it comes to privacy anymore. So I will accept that argument.

geekam• 12 years ago

>There are SO many people involved with private companies that are so much more partisan and support with no hesitation so many terrible things that if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you're going to be down there for a while my friends.

What do think we do then if we find that a decision-maker in a company is highly partisan and maybe bad for privacy?

mcv4• 12 years ago

It's not about partisanship, it's about whether your data is safe. Of course maybe data can never be safe in the hands of a US company, but I put significantly less trust in a company that hires someone who supported all the violations by various secret services, than in one that fights those violations.

EdiX• 12 years ago

Before this I could at least pretend they didn't play ball with the NSA, I knew it was self deception but I'm also very lazy. Now they might as well hang a "Friend of NSA" sign in front of their building. I downgraded my Pro account.

sdegutis2• 12 years ago

Can't we just keep software and politics separate? Do we really need to divide ourselves in yet another area because of differences of opinion?

humancontact• 12 years ago

Unfortunately there's no division as to where politics is allowed to interfere. From Wikipedia[1]:

Politics is the process observed in all human (and many non-human) group interactions by which groups make decisions, including activism on behalf of specific issues or causes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_%28disambiguation%29

icebraining4• 12 years ago

You can shut your eyes and pretend that they're separate, but that doesn't make it true. One's political and ethical views deeply influence how they act, particular towards others.

EDIT: This is a general point, not an opinion on the current issue.

sdegutis2• 12 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm pretty orthodox Catholic and thus firmly disagree with most software programmers on topics that are often discussed here. But I don't boycott emacs just because the authors are atheists (I actually use emacs full time for work now). And I don't boycott software whose maintainers are pro-choice or whatever else. Boycotting software because of political or religious differences isn't going to help software, it's only going to further unnecessary dissension instead of fostering understanding and personal change.

wrongc0ntinent• 12 years ago

The personal attachment that comes with using a good brand in this field isn't trivial, and it should be expected that users project their sensibilities on the brand. Being politically neutral in the view of its users should have been a priority for DP, regardless of which powerful gatekeepers to world markets are on Rice's speed dial.

frabcus• 12 years ago

This sounds like holding non-profits to higher standards than corporates. That seems a strange and grossly unfair thing to do, ultimately counterproductive to the very purpose of non-profits.

Of course, when it comes to their core values you have to hold non-profits to high standards - e.g. Mozilla on the open web.

But when it comes to things unrelated to their mission... Why should they be any more perfect than a for-profit corporation!

I like people holding organizations to high standards, its fantastic. But please, hold all of them to high standards - both for-profits and non-profits.

TylerE3• 12 years ago

This is rapidly turning very ugly, and I can't stand it. Is being "anti-gay" or "pro-war" or even just "republican" the new Communism? The new witchcraft?

mkr-hn7• 12 years ago

You have to pick your battles unless you're prepared to live as a hermit beyond the edge of civilization. We have plenty of choices in cloud storage, browsers, and fast food. With some things, like voting in a two party system and buying gas, you're choosing the less awful of the viable choices. Choosing in most cases is a matter of triage, not preference.

tomasien2• 12 years ago

Open Source, not non-profits. I'd have to think about the non-profit thing, but Open Source is a very particular thing - you're asking the public to work for you for FREE. People at Mozilla make good money, non-profit just means they don't have shareholders, and yet we work for them FOR FREE. And we like to! We have no problem doing it and we shouldn't - but yes, it does mean we get to hold them to our standard, whether that be higher or whatever.

cmiles744• 12 years ago

I believe that people are far more invested in non-profits to which they donate money, as opposed to companies whose products they merely purchase. I do not find it at all surprising that a person who wrote a check to Mozilla (possibly one of a handful of donations to non-profits they made that year) would feel more invested in Mozilla's actions than, say, someone who eats a lot of Nabisco Graham Crackers. Even when the money spent on their consumption of graham crackers over the same year period may exceed the amount of the Mozilla donation.

equalarrow3• 12 years ago

There's a big level of difference (in my mind) of being partisan and being in the crew that set the wheels in motion.

Dolimiter• 12 years ago

This is the logical conclusion after the Mozilla farce. Every new hire will be vetted for correct political affiliates, or the ISJP (Internet Social Justice Police) will do their McCarthyism thing.

We live in interesting times!

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

> "Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source. Mozilla belongs to us in a very personal way, many of us have contributed code to Firefox personally."

I feel the opposite. Eich's opinion (which I don't agree with) was unlikely to impact his work. Rice was part of the administration that created PRISM. I don't want her anywhere near a company I'm supposed to trust with all my files.

unreal372• 12 years ago

You have a point. One can say that Condi Rice's lies as the National Security Advisor led to 100,000+ civilian deaths in Iraq.

Yet some people see it worse that Eich, the inventor of Javascript which arguably powers the modern web, was the CEO of Mozilla.

It's an interesting rationalization process.

guptaneil• 12 years ago

You might have the opinion that universal health care is bad for this country. I would disagree with you, but that would be your personal opinion and I couldn't fault you for it, whatever I may think of you privately.

But if you believe all colored people should be enslaved and donate money towards making it happen, then we all should fault you because that's not an acceptable opinion, it's bigotry. Similarly, stripping gay men and women of their civil liberties is bigotry that should not be tolerated.

Rice's actions have also resulted in harming our civil liberties and I don't support her, but I can't fault Drew Houston for wanting her on their Board. Anybody who has the chance to add somebody as powerful and well-connected as Rice to their Board would be stupid not to. She is there to advise, not lead. I don't believe her presence on the Board will make Dropbox any more or less trustworthy with our data than before. If Dropbox is going to leak our private data now, then that's a company that would've done so without Rice as well.

wreegab• 12 years ago

That people will leverage this to at least bring some sort of accountability, I completely applaud.

ewoodrich• 12 years ago

I'm not very passionate about either the Eich situation or this new Dropbox issue, but I have to say that this feels much more "political" and relevant than with Mozilla. Eich privately opposed gay marriage, but the public disclosure threatened to hurt the foundation's image and his effectiveness. Rice was a unabashed supporter and post 2006, an architect of the Iraq War.

It would be closer to Mozilla hiring Mike Huckabee or similar as CEO.

subdane• 12 years ago

I had precisely the opposite view. I felt that Eich's politics weren't aligned with my beliefs but were personal and legal. Condi is in a whole other league - having to help prosecute an illegal war and intentionally mislead our citizenry.

spindritf• 12 years ago

Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source.

The leap from open source to pro-gay sounds like a complete non sequitur to me. What is the reasoning there?

I like the way Torvalds put it.

For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want.

Open source means just that.

midnitewarrior• 12 years ago

The leap from open source to pro-gay sounds like a complete non sequitur to me. What is the reasoning there?

Your characterization of it being a "leap to pro-gay" is a bit much. Supporters of Prop 8 are actively trying to deny other Americans rights, many people find this offensive, regardless of the grounds for denial. It echoes racial, gender and age discrimination of the past -- things that many find to be un-American. The fact that the people affected happen to be gay is secondary for many who opposed Prop 8. No American should be legislated as a second class citizen.

Open Source is about open access, both to contribute and use. Prop 8 was trying to deny people access to government, rights and benefits. These attitudes are in direct opposition.

Beyond the ideological friction, you are dividing the community of users and contributors -- people who support gay rights and marriage equality somehow feel like they are supporting somebody who is trying to change society by denying people rights.

Mozilla isn't driven by profit, it's driven by the goodwill of its users and contributors. Mr. Eich was well aware of the sensitive nature of people's attitudes towards his contribution -- he's tried for years to make it a non-issue, but it has kept following him.

It's not that Open Source is "pro-gay rights", it's that it is pro-open access and equality. Mr. Eich's contribution shows contempt for this ideal at some level. It appears that many had issue with this.

Additionally, Google, Mozilla's largest financial contributor, is a company that has actively taken a strongly anti-Prop 8 stance. Having the leader of the Mozilla Foundation be openly in opposition to Google's stance brings questions about if this will ultimately affect Mozilla's funding.

Mr. Eich's technical leadership and history with Mozilla probably qualifies him as a very competent leader for the organization, however the political realities of Mozilla's relationship with Google and the open source community's ideals creates doubt about the realities of his ability to manage these important relationships between Google, users and contributors.

sebastialonso2• 12 years ago

Thanks for that Tordvalds' gem.

As I can see now here in HN, a lot of people idealize the idea of Open Source to mean the stereotype of the current zeitgeist good side, when it does not.

mikeash16• 12 years ago

It strikes me as the opposite.

Eich's politics weren't all that important. There was a minor issue of whether it would cause trouble for Mozilla's gay employees (or employees who just felt strongly about it) and a big public relations problem, but the technical functioning of the company wouldn't be affected.

With Dropbox and Rice, I think there's a decent chance (not huge, but decent) that she's sitting down and giving everybody pointers for how they can most efficiently and effectively cooperate with the NSA. She's out of the administration but people like this never truly leave.

chr1• 12 years ago

From the side it looks like Dropping Mozilla because Eich, made sense to you because it was issue you cared about, and dead people in Iraq? well they are far away and probably didn't think like you anyway.

Same with contributing code to Firefox: of course my small patch for the bug affecting me personally looks like a big deal, but if i look at a big picture, my contribution isn't even comparable to what Brendan Eich did.

I don't say that dropping dropbox is a good thing, but i don't see how one can think logically that harassment of Eich was something for greater good, and this is a non-issue.

Unfortunately emotion is a strong thing, much stronger than logic.

Spooky23• 12 years ago

I think the Rice as a board member issue is a totally different concern, directly related to the delivery of the service.

Rice is a former National Security Advisor, and is looped into the political structure. So now, when the three letter agency of your choosing needs to have a frank conversation with someone at Dropbox, Condi will be a trusted conduit.

mjolk• 12 years ago

Eich also created JavaScript and I don't see a massive push to drop it everywhere. I think these sort of things are an outrage-economy with no serious or lasting effect.

jff• 12 years ago

I wish there was a massive push to drop it, though...

quaunaut2• 12 years ago

Because that's just unfeasible. Removing him as CEO is one thing, we can't even get another language on the web anymore as it is.

pbreit4• 12 years ago

Agreed. I think the Mozilla case was different due to the nature of the role, the nature of the company and how the person involved handled the whole situation.

ryguytilidie6• 12 years ago

Why do you think that it is "ridiculous" for people to be upset that a strong supporter of warrant-less wiretapping and PRISM is now a board member at the place they store their data?

tommo1232• 12 years ago

A lot of people here seem to have absolutely no issue with saying "I have no problem with the ethical ramifications of a company's actions or choice of representatives or the beneficiaries of a company's wealth that my support helps grow". I can't tell if you're sociopathic or just utterly clueless. Not taking a 'moral stand' isn't business -- it's taking a moral stand of not caring. Culpability can stem from inaction as well.

ezrameanshelp• 12 years ago

This is why my company's board is 100% cyborgs.

grannyg00se2• 12 years ago

I'm sure that bringing Brendan Eich's politics into question when he moved into CEO position has made this a more popular trend.

xenophonf• 12 years ago

Business leaders' politics have always been an issue, and people arrange boycotts all the time because of them (left, right, and center). It's called political speech, and it's actually a good thing. Heck, it even cuts both ways - for example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has definitely changed my opinion of the Microsoft founder, and in a good way.

digitalcraft• 12 years ago

drop everything, after all you have the NSA - silly

jays• 12 years ago

Dropbox certainly has lost some peoples trust.

What makes any of the other companies more trustworthy though? Has someone personally interviewed all the employees, performed a security audit of their system, and determined they are legit?

Seems like a false sense of security.

dctoedt4• 12 years ago

I'm as anti-war as the next guy; we military veterans tend to be more so than most, and I've gotten even more so as I've gotten older. Still, there are those who appreciate that:

(A) political leaders aren't supermen and -women. Like all of us, they have to make the best decisions they can with the limited information available to them at the time;

(A1) [ADDED:] the signal-to-noise ratio can be problematic; the available bits of information are often of varying quality and sometimes are flatly contradictory --- a major part of the leadership challenge is figuring out what the hell is really going on;

(B) most political leaders genuinely want to do a good job, even if that's mixed in with a larger- or smaller dollop of self-interest (as is the case with most of us);

(D) Saddam Hussein had irrefutably demonstrated that he was willing to use weapons of mass destruction in pursuit of his ambitions: he had used chemical weapons both on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians (and let's not forget his brutal conquest of Kuwait);

(E) it was unclear to what extent Hussein had made any progress on building -- or buying -- nuclear weapons;

(F) the downside of a false negative on that issue was considerable; and

(G) hindsight is 20-20, and there are always Monday-morning quarterbacks around who are certain they could have done better.

Touche4• 12 years ago

Sorry, but tempered reasoning like this is not acceptable in the maximalist society we have today. You must be absolutely certain about every issue and realize that those who disagree are evil, intentionally so, full-stop.

EC15• 12 years ago

You must be absolutely certain about every issue

When was the last time you were absolutely certain about something? Are you always absolutely certain in your day to day life, let alone in the shoes of someone like Rice?

unreal372• 12 years ago

You have to tag this with /sarcasm. Some may downvote you thinking you are serious.

equalarrow3• 12 years ago

H) Or, you start something like the PNAC and bide your time..

jshen5• 12 years ago

The bush admin asserted that it could detain anyone without a trial and torture them. You know, they were trying to do good. We should just let that slide.

frogpelt• 12 years ago

Let's see, is that better or worse than a drone strike?

I guess President Obama is trying to keep you alive so it's okay if he takes out a few miscreant citizens with drone strikes, right?

(And this is why these discussions belong somewhere else, not on Hacker News)

foobarqux5• 12 years ago

There is now ample evidence showing that WMD claims were simply a casus belli for a war that had been desired for some time for other reasons.

glesica3• 12 years ago

(C) Saddam Hussein had irrefutably demonstrated that he was willing to use weapons of mass destruction in pursuit of his ambitions: he had used chemical weapons both on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians (and let's not forget his brutal conquest of Kuwait);

And who let him have those weapons and told him to go ahead and use them against the Iranians? He looks lovely in that photo embracing Donald Rumsfeld... So by this standard, many members of the US government had also shown willingness to use weapons of mass destruction. If this disqualified Hussein as a legitimate world leader, then why was Rumsfeld allowed in government?

tptacek2• 12 years ago

What does this have to do with D.C.'s point?

nikcub• 12 years ago

it was unclear to what extent Hussein had made any progress on building -- or buying -- nuclear weapons;

It was very clear that he hadn't, the US government (just like the chemical weapons) chose to ignore their own intelligence because it didn't suit their purpose.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_r...

On March 1, 2002, INR published an intelligence assessment, Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely.

The Senate did an entire hearing on pre-war intelligence, you really should read it:

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=29877...

If you prefer something that you can sit and watch, see BBC Panorama's "The Spies who Fooled the World" - it is both interesting and frightening, especially the part where the single person who was the US source used in Powell's UN brief tells the interviewer he made everything up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3K9twuuU7g

dragonwriter6• 12 years ago

Saddam Hussein had irrefutably demonstrated that he was willing to use weapons of mass destruction in pursuit of his ambitions: he had used chemical weapons both on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians

With -- lest it be forgotten -- the full support and backing of the US government while he was actually doing it. Heck, when it first became public knowledge and world outrage started, the US rushed Donald Rumsfeld out to (1) demonstrate to the rest of the world that they should shut up and that the US stood side-by-side with Iraq, and (2) reassure Iraq that US support for their actions would continue.

tptacek2• 12 years ago

Without wading into the morass of litigating the Iraq war, which would be stupid, because we are converging on bipartisan consensus that it was a debacle: two wrongs don't make a right, and "the US government" over the course of two decades isn't a single coherent unified force.

mikeash16• 12 years ago

There are some severe problems with your point. Specifically:

(A) We know what information was available at the time and they clearly did not make the best decision they could. There was a consistent focus on information that supported the desired outcome and away from information that didn't.

(B) Good intentions and $5 will buy you a coffee at Starbucks. Hitler genuinely wanted to do a good job.

(C) Irrelevant. If our national leaders cannot think rationally years after a tragedy then they are unfit to be leaders and should resign. It's especially irrelevant given that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

(D) No disagreement there.

(E) Nonsense. Nuclear weapons are hard to build. It was blindingly obvious to anyone who was paying the least bit attention that Iraq had made no real progress on obtaining nuclear weapons. There was an outside possibility that, if left unchecked, Iraq might be able to build nuclear weapons a decade or two down the line, but even that was unlikely. It certainly wasn't an urgent problem that required a massive rush to invade the country.

(F) The downside of a false positive on that issue was also considerable. You can't just look at the negatives of one side and say "better safe than sorry" when the negatives on the other side are equally large. The invasion killed a huge number of people and went a good way toward bankrupting this country. Compare that against... what? Even if Iraq had managed to obtain nuclear weapons, they had no way to deliver them anywhere.

(G) It was obvious to a lot of people before the invasion that it was a crock of shit and that it would cost a huge amount of money and lives for no good reason. Those people were all correct. The implication that this is pure hindsight is completely wrong.

dctoedt4• 12 years ago

Nuclear weapons are hard to build

True, but I said "building -- or buying" nuclear weapons. See generally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#North_Korea.2...

Even if Iraq had managed to obtain nuclear weapons, they had no way to deliver them anywhere.

The possibility of a nuclear weapon concealed in a container aboard a cargo ship was a non-trivial concern back then. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuke.

Remember that Saddam Hussein was not exactly a model of transparency.

dingaling• 12 years ago

(and let's not forget his brutal conquest of Kuwait)

Oh! Fun with loaded words.

Between 300 and 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians were killed during the invasion and occupation.

I'm not one fo defend Mr Hussein's record, but that's pretty gentle as invasions go. The Russian bombardments of Grozny killed around 30,000 civilians; in one barrage on one day in October 1999 alone 120 were killed. Now that is brutal.

gbhn• 12 years ago

Hindsight is always good, but this neglects that there was a strong point of view before the invasion of Iraq that it was a mistake. It simply wasn't a popular one in the US. But if you look internationally, there were a lot of people who stuck their necks out and said "don't do this, the evidence isn't very good." There were people in the US who did the same thing (notably Feingold).

The tragedy of US politics is that we don't seem to hold people who made the worst foreign policy call in several decades accountable. Unreconsidered support for the Iraq war should just categorically disqualify one for a position either within national politics or as a commentator on them. Yet it doesn't. These people are either cynical liars, easy-to-dupe rubes, cynical spinsters that can't be trusted to say what they think, or vacillating receptacles. Perhaps several categories apply to some. The point is, any of these characteristics should be disqualifying for national leadership.

rodgerd2• 12 years ago

(C) in late 2002 and early 2003, memories of 9/11 were still raw;

So invading a completely unrelated country and killing and tourtoring its inhabitants is OK?

You have a very peculiar idea of "anti-war as the next guy".

joeblau• 12 years ago

That escalated quickly! This is a pretty strong digital political attacks to be lobbied against a tech company. I'm curious to see what response Dropbox will have.

Grue3• 12 years ago

Oh boy, yet another idiotic witch hunt. I'm sure the author uses only software written exclusively by people with purest intentions.

dkhenry• 12 years ago

Well I thought it would take longer for activists to start targeting companies in the wake of the Mozilla issue. I am actually surprised to see this happen so quickly. Its good to know that I am free to excersize my rights unless I want a job in the tech sector in which case I am required to conform to the social worldview of a selection of internet activists.

vdaniuk30• 12 years ago

Is it a human right to approve torture, work towards starting a war and helping installing mass surveillance? I might have missed the U.N. meeting protecting those "rights".

dzink7• 12 years ago

A board member does not decide on features or dig into your account to look for your political preferences. I can think of a dozen reasons why they would have invited her and all of them would be good for the company and good for users:

- advise on security matters and help keep the NSA out of my files.

- get government business for Dropbox thus maybe reducing bureaucracy for citizens and small business owners alike in this country and others.

- help the company navigate Washington in a lot of ways

My imagination is poor on the subject, but I think if a company gets a politically savvy partner who was chief diplomat in the most powerful country in the world for a while it is for the benefit of the company and it's users.

joshstrange10• 12 years ago

> advise on security matters and help keep the NSA out of my files

What about her past makes you think she would have this position? I'd argue if the options are "Help protect your data from the NSA" or "Hand over your data to the NSA" that she would be much more in favor of giving your data to the NSA.

talmand11• 12 years ago

What about her past makes you think she would have this position?

dzink7• 12 years ago

- Because by joining the board she has a fiduciary duty to protect the interests of the company, especially when those conflict with others including her personal interest.

- Because if CEO had to hire someone to help them do that, a former secretary of state would be one of the best choices (albeit Hillary might be a bit busy).

fredgrott• 12 years ago

Okay lets describe this with satire..

How Many of you Voted for Bush Sr? If you did you are just as guilty as dropbox..

Oh please...

dragonwriter6• 12 years ago

How Many of you Voted for Bush Sr?

What does Bush Sr. have to do with this?

pdpi• 12 years ago

I feel that at this point we might to coin the verb "to eich", meaning "to shitstorm a company into forcing a high-ranking manager to resign".

mkr-hn7• 12 years ago

The word is protest. It's a valid and useful form of speech. Not everyone wanted him out of a job. I don't even think that was the majority opinion. I only wanted to know that the new CEO's values lined up with the values of the company if I was going to continue using and supporting the company's products.

netcan3• 12 years ago

I'm not American, so this is a little removed for me. In truth I don't really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have.

What bother me here is not Condoleezza Rice specifically. Every ranking official of any country (or company) owns a big share of that country's sins and there are no "clean" administrations. Complicity is the price of admission and they all pay.

What does bother me is what this is a symptom of. Lets be honest about why board members are selected. Ex politicians wield political and corporate influence and a board seat is a way of renting that influence. At best its an elite club, at worst it's outright corruption but its always on that scale.

I guess that if pressed they would say that they bring experience and competence. That's as nonsensical as a large corporation justifying their political donations as an innocent, democratic expression of political preference. It's hard to say with a straight face.

Having ex politicians on a board is such a public display of stink. It's like when a politician who spends his entire life as a "civil servant" is obviously and publicly living a billionaire lifestyle with yhahts, mansions & private jets. They don't even bother to launder that dirty money. It's just displayed filth and all.

jshen5• 12 years ago

The bush administration asserted that it could detain anyone without a trial and torture them. This is not equivalent to any average administration as you implied.

bmj• 12 years ago

And the current, Democratic, administration hasn't exactly rolled back many of these changes, right? My point isn't to criticize the Obama administration, but rather ask: if Hillary Clinton was asked to serve on the board of $your_favorite_service, would you consider dropping that service?

maxcan• 12 years ago

The current administration asserted that it has the right to assassinate anyone it wants, American citizen or not, outside of a battlefield, without any oversight or due process.

netcan3• 12 years ago

I agree this was bad. I disagree that it was uniquely bad. I strongly feel that it's a red herring.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but Americans seem have become easier to whip into a tribal-political rage recently. That in itself is dangerous. It makes the country more susceptible to populism.

To me, this immediately registers as a visible hint at problems in the system which are never eliminated but need to be constantly challenged to keep them to a tolerable level.

It's a sign that there is a market where political capital and influence is being acquired, traded and sold. It implies crony capitalism, corruption, class entrenchment. If your reaction is 'Look a Republican! Charge!' then you bury the other stuff. The real, genuine, scary problems with the system, not a party and not an old administration.

jnbiche7• 12 years ago

Compared to the Obama administration's assertion that it can kill any American it wants without trial? Here's are reports on this policy from two traditionally liberal news organizations (the conservative ones are equally damning):

1. http://www.salon.com/2010/04/07/assassinations_2/

2. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/obama-assassin...

Don't get me wrong, I believe the Bush administration was horrific. But the Obama administration has turned out to be equally immoral, and in some cases (spying and assassinations) even more so.

chasing• 12 years ago

In truth I don't really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have.

Then you don't know American politics.

How different might the country be had Gore been seated as President in 2001 after winning the election?

shiven• 12 years ago

How different might the World be had Gore been seated as President in 2001 after winning the election?

biden4234• 12 years ago

Umm, I think you're the one who doesn't know American politics.

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

kolbe2• 12 years ago

I know right? It's like you have to have your head in the sand to not see the differences between the Bush and Obama administrations. I made a list a while back to give people an idea of the real differences between them.

-Likes beer and sports: both Obama and Bush

-Spends money the US doesn't have: both

-Directs Taxpayers' Money to Special Interests: both

-Supports Irresponsible Deficits: both

-Grants Taxpayer-Funded Corporate Bailouts: both

Disregards the Constitution via:

-Guantanamo Bay Detentions: both

-The Patriot Act: both

Fails to React to Domestic Disasters such as:

-Hurricane Katrina: only Bush

-Nashville Floods: only Obama

Supports NATO-led Killings in:

-Kosovo: only Bush

-Afghanistan: both

-Libya: only Obama

-Liberia: both

-Pakistan: both

-Supports US Occupation of Iraq: both

gnufied• 12 years ago

Agreed and this begs the question where does Dropbox sits with surveillance thing because US govt. makes it clear that non-americans are fair game.

So as a non-american I am asking - will Ms. Rice work to protect data that we trust Dropbox with or when Dropbox is asked to turn over our data (of non-americans) will she advise Dropbox board to play along and not give a damn about our data.

Knowingly I will not support a company that works with politician who are known to support and subvert privacy of individuals.

netcan3• 12 years ago

IMO, it's a fools game trying to figure out what exactly Rice & dropbox are getting from eachother. In the absence of knowledge, it's easy to just jump to a conclusion that it has something to do with one's pet issues. On HN that's probably NSA/privacy DMCA/copyright stuff, etc. In reality it could be to do with anything. Think of all the powerful people she has access to. It could be nonspecific.

I think we can be pretty sure that she's not on the board to give engineering advice though.

001sky• 12 years ago

Knowingly I will not support a company that works with politician who are known to support and subvert privacy of individuals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China

If people want open-access to technology around the world, do you really think a 28 year old founder is going to get a fair deal from Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Government/? The US Potus has a hard enough time (with all his staffers) dealing with the complexities of internatinal relations. The same goes elsewhere... So, one can show up un-prepared or not show up...again no easy answeers.

(also) http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china...

gdulli• 12 years ago

In truth I don't really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have.

Right at the beginning of the page: "This is not an issue of partisanship" and then it launches into detailed points about Rice as an individual.

gnopgnip2• 12 years ago

What would you suggest to improve the situation?

afterburner2• 12 years ago

While there is often little difference in foreign policy, their approach to social issues is vastly different. You probably don't pay any attention to this though. It does however ultimately affect you, since such a powerful but broken country could wield incredible damage abroad.

However even in foreign policy matters, there would have been different results with respect to the Iraq war. The invasion was a quick and massive pivot away from the more justifiable war in Afghanistan. Given that Saddam Hussein tried to have Bush jr.'s father killed, that leaving Hussein in power was possibly some unfinished business of that same father, that Cheney's pet company Haliburton made ridiculous profits on government war contracts, and that it was a Republican sub-faction of neo-cons who were so desperate to invade, I think there's a good case for there being a big difference between the parties. Not to mention the key personal opinions among top Republican admin officials seemed to drive the use of "enhanced interrogation".

cmsmith• 12 years ago

While there is often little difference in foreign policy, their approach to social issues is vastly different.

I think that this is a fiction put forth by the parties to inspire their more extreme members, but is false when you consider where the two parties fall on a full political spectrum. Take for example a couple of the most divisive social issues today:

Same Sex Marriage: Clinton signed DOMA 15 years ago, Obama was against SSM 3 years ago, and I would be surprised if the 2024 (or even 2020) republican presidential candidate wasn't OK with SSM. I would guess those numbers to be similar in opinion polls, meaning that Republican voters' opinions on SSM probably lag those of Democrats by about 10 years or so. It's hard for me to get behind the idea that one party is evil and worthy of divestment when the 'preferred' party only came around in the last 5 years.

Health care: One party wants a huge single payer system for the old and the poor, employer provided coverage for most others, and a highly privatized and mandatory system for the rest. The other party wants a huge single payer system for the old and the poor, employer provided coverage for most others, and a highly privatized and optional system for the rest. Who wants single payer for all? Who wants to abolish medicare?

saalweachter• 12 years ago

I don't really see a big difference between whatever political parties exist in whatever country you're in.

To go through a few places the two parties in the US differ substantially - voting rights, civil rights, healthcare, minimum wage, immigration, unemployment benefits, unionization, SNAP.

You know, small stuff.

zurn2• 12 years ago

Every ranking official of any country (or company) owns a big share of that country's sins and there are no "clean" administrations.

This sounds a lot like apogolism. These war crimes are VERY far removed from the standards of contemporary western civilized countries.

Obama administration continuing many of the evil policies doesn't make it any more acceptable, taking this as "the new normal" would be apathy bordering on nihilism.

From a broader POV, this line of reasoning exemplifies the syndrome "perfect is the enemy of good" (also known as the Nirvana fallacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy).

mahyarm• 12 years ago

What he is saying that ANY high level ex-politician will have the same issues. You can probably dig up similar dirt on Al Gore and boycott his seat on the apple board for example. In my foggy childhood memory, I remember a few wars, PGP & Clipper chip fiascos and so on when he was VP in the 90s.

Sammi• 12 years ago

He said every politician is guilty, and you're interpreting that as him saying they're all ok? I think you're reading what you want to read, not what he actually wrote.

whizzkid• 12 years ago

This is like being in the same boat with someone that caused a massive amount of people's life. Maybe that person has nothing against to you, or harmed you, and she can even be a the perfect captain for the boat.

But personally, If i have the option of another boat to board on, I would rather not be on the same one with her.

tambourine_man• 12 years ago

The only real alternative is building your own. I have, it was fun and it mostly works.

But suggesting that Box.com, Microsoft or Google are more trustworthy is misleading.

up_and_up2• 12 years ago

Seems like an extremely odd selection to me as well as politically charged.

edtechdev• 12 years ago

I've been looking for an excuse to finally copy over my stuff from dropbox to google drive, thanks, I was too lazy to bother with it before :)

joshdance• 12 years ago

I was hoping this would be a site that would review and compare cloud storage alternatives.

cruise02• 12 years ago

That might be even more convincing! :)

caiob• 12 years ago

I call this internet bullying. I'm most def not gonna stop using a product just because I don't agree with the ideas of one person in the team. This makes me wonder if Google, Microsoft, Box or even Amazon aren't behind this kinda message; y'know trying to make it viral and stuff...

efficientarch• 12 years ago

I think it's the historic actions of the person rather than their ideas that are bothering people. But I can't speak for them, of course.

sugarfactory• 12 years ago

You shouldn't use any of the alternatives listed here either. Because none of those supports encryption. All the cloud storage services which do not provide encryption are unexceptionally evil. Because given the easiness of implementing an encryption feature, not to implement it means the administrators of a service are willing to see users' files.

acconrad• 12 years ago

If we collectively invested 1/10th of this passion towards real problems (like boycotting mega banks for the billions they stole during the financial crisis) instead of whether or not my free hard drive is advised by a ex-high-ranking politician, we'd be getting a lot more done.

mattmaroon• 12 years ago

I love how it says it's not because she was a member of the Bush Administration and not partisan, then goes on to list a bunch of things she did as a member of the Bush Administration.

JackFr3• 12 years ago

Consider that when acting under uncertainty, intelligent, informed people of good will can examine the same set of facts and reach different conclusions.

It has become an article of faith that the Bush administration acted in bad faith about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while all that really has ever been shown is that they were tragically, woefully and extraordinarily wrong.

How intelligent, well educated people be so wrong, unless they were secretly evil? Groupthink for one, and in particular a failure to consider alternatives because of assumption of bad faith on the part of those who disagree with them.

I really don't care one way or another whether Condi is on the board of Dropbox or not, and I applaud you for refusing to do business with a company you believe is immoral. But I would be surprised (pleasantly) if this was a standard you were applying consistently, thoughtfully and evenly.

efectomendi• 12 years ago

What he said

Touche4• 12 years ago

The problem we have with our society today is that we gravitate towards absolute positions on every contentious issue. When you are absolutely certain about something it is a small leap to then believe that those who disagree are doing so maliciously.

To fix this we have to find a way to reward tempered opinions. The absolutism in our society is becoming stronger over time and it's further dividing us.

icebraining4• 12 years ago

If the action is destructive, and the person hasn't regretted it, does it become acceptable just because s/he has done it with the best of intentions?

On the contrary: "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience". If anything, it's even more dangerous to trust in someone who believed and continues to believe in what they were doing, than in someone who did it maliciously but has since truly regretted it.

vdaniuk30• 12 years ago

So were they uninformed about torture and widespread spying on general population, too?

tommo1232• 12 years ago

It's pretty firmly established that Bush lied and had been gunning for Iraq long before WMD became his casus belli and you have a wonderful resource called the world wide web if you have any interest at all in confirming that.

mikeash16• 12 years ago

It becomes difficult to draw that line when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of human lives.

When you're talking about preemptively invading an entire country then it is your moral imperative to do everything possible to 1) ensure your justification is correct and 2) ensure you carry out the decision in the best way possible.

For whatever reason, this did not happen. Decisions were rushed, conclusions were reached with insufficient evidence, alternative possibilities were not considered, dissenting voices were not listened to, etc.

Perhaps they still had good will throughout all of this. But does it even matter? The outcome was terrible and that is directly because they failed to do better when they most certainly could have.

You're also ignoring the other points made by the article. Are you going to make the same excuse about her approval of torture?

sp3322• 12 years ago

I'm going to feel really bad if I've been wrong about this, but I thought Bush admitted in his autobiography that WMD's were a made-up reason to invade Iraq. He thought he had the moral high ground in invading to depose Saddam Hussein, but his advisors convinced him that no one would support that reason for invasion.

mikeash16• 12 years ago

If you're "going to feel really bad" if you're wrong, why don't you go look it up and make sure before commenting?

chez172• 12 years ago

One thing I can't stand is about our hyper-partisan culture is that attacking someone from one side is seen as 100% political and there are posts like these that are trying to be "even" when, in fact, it's you yourself that is being partisan here.

It has become an article of faith that the Bush administration acted in bad faith about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while all that really has ever been shown is that they were tragically, woefully and extraordinarily wrong.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/index.html?...

It has been shown, conclusively, that they lied, that they lied knowingly, and that they lied a lot. Don't white wash history in an attempt to be "even" or see "both sides". There is objective truth here.

talmand11• 12 years ago

So, no chance they were simply wrong? Making a false statement doesn't necessarily mean lying.

I seem to recall that at the time EVERYBODY was making the same mistake or, in your words, lying about it.

JackFr3• 12 years ago

The article you point to, to be clear, relies on reports from two non-profit (not not non-partisan) journalism watchdogs. And what they come up with is 'false statements'. They won't go so far as to call them lies, because to be a lie the statement has to be believed to be false by the speaker.

You seem to reach the conclusion that it is inconceivable that the Bush Administration believed their own arguments. I not only find conceivable, I think its probably likely. Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. There's certainly room for moral revulsion for the Bush Administration -- negligently acting to cause destruction and loss of life at such a scale makes one culpable nonetheless.

I am not interested in arguing the WMD in Iraq debate. I ask you to please assume good faith on the part of your ideological opponents. Try to understand their arguments on their terms, and see where you differ fundamentally.

jebblue2• 12 years ago

> It has been shown, conclusively, that they lied, that they lied knowingly, and that they lied a lot.

Clinton lied? Who would have thought it possible.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcript...

shawn-furyan3• 12 years ago

I read the article you're linking to, and I don't see any allegations that the 900+ false statements were known to be false by the administration at the time[1]. This particular article certainly doesn't meet my standard for "[showing conclusively] that they lied, that they lied knowingly, and that that they lied a lot". Perhaps that evidence exists in another form, but I think you strengthen the GPs argument by presenting this as definitive evidence when it's not.

Addendum: The money quote from the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism run study is this: "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003". The use of the word erroneous here is problematic. It doesn't imply intention. If they had used a word that implied intention, then they would essentially be saying that the administration intentionally propagandized with information that they knew to be false toward the goal of leading the US into war with Iraq. But they don't go that far. They use the word erroneous. IF the administration was unaware of the eroneousness of the information, then there's no reason that "methodically propagating" it is immoral, I mean, this is called "consciousness raising" in other contexts. Perhaps the authors are just being cagey so as not to paint themselves into a corner, but this is not a clear statement that the administration lied.

[1] Perhaps my reading skills aren't up to par, and I missed it. If so, let me know.

[edit 11:06 CDT to add addendum]

grannyg00se2• 12 years ago

"informed people of good will can examine the same set of facts and reach different conclusions."

Except they weren't talking about available facts to be examined, and their conclusions. What they were doing was presenting a falsehood as a new fact. Without any evidence.

It's one thing to say "because of x,yz, we think they have WMDs".

What they did was: "THEY HAVE WMDs!!!" (evidence to be examined will be provided soon, promise)

jebblue2• 12 years ago

> What they were doing was presenting a falsehood as a new fact. Without any evidence.

Clinton stated they had WMD's long before Bush. There are mass grave sites in Iraq which proves they had them. The truth the anti-Bush people need to face is ... where are those weapons today?

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcript...

smutticus• 12 years ago

Then why did the Bush administration go out of its way to destroy Valerie Plame's career at the CIA? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair

People at the CIA were telling the administration that they had it wrong. They just didn't want to hear it since it didn't fit with their narrative, and didn't align with their goal of war. The truth was irrelevant at that point.

JackFr3• 12 years ago

It seems to me you're agreeing with me.

rbanffy6• 12 years ago

while all that really has ever been shown is that they were tragically, woefully and extraordinarily wrong.

I find it very odd that, despite the fact they had access to allegedly better intel than everybody else, they were the only ones who were that substantially and, adding to the oddity, conveniently wrong.

hawkharris• 12 years ago

The Chevron example came out of left-field. While the other sections focused on actions or positions that Rice had taken, the Chevron anecdote would have us believe that Rice is an unethical person simply because she had a relationship with the company.

This is one of many unfair generalizations about energy companies. In reality, Chevron is one of the greatest contributors to alternative energy research. Without it and ExxonMobil, there wouldn't have been half as much progress toward sustainable power.

_dark_matter_• 12 years ago

Well this is blatantly ignoring the anti-alternative energy contributions they've given. Although their own research may have contributed that much, the possible government funded research if they had not lobbied against it would have been that much more.[1] They've deliberately stifled research that would directly contribute to non-oil based energies.

I mean, just imagine if the subsidies and tax cuts the oil companies get went instead to alternative energy research. We would be decades ahead of where we are now. Look at this 2008 article from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/oil-politics.html.

[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-07...

CamperBob25• 12 years ago

Agreed, the Chevron section didn't belong on the page and weakens it substantially.

davexunit2• 12 years ago

Finally people realize that Dropbox is unethical. They've been denying your computing freedom for years now, but it took hiring Condoleezza Rice for people to start to catch on.

Replace dropbox with ownCloud. http://owncloud.org/

dhimes2• 12 years ago

I was looking at their site for a while and I really have no idea what they sell. I'm sure it's just a communication issue, but it seems kind of weird. Like I have to register to find out that I will get a client for free but pay $10K/month for the enterprise software or something.

How do they make money? Apparently you use your own server so you must buy the code?

davexunit2• 12 years ago

ownCloud is free software licensed under the AGPL. This means that you can run the software on one of your own machines or find a hosting provider. The company behind ownCloud offers enterprise installations, which is probably what confused you.

Personally, I haven't gotten around to self-hosting yet and use a small free account at https://owndrive.com/

Hope this helps.

sparkie3• 12 years ago

ownCloud is free/open source software - you have no obligation to use ownCloud's servers or pay them anything - you can download both the client and server source code, host the server on your own machine, and connect to that with the client.

ownCloud run a business where they can host a copy of the server software for you, if you don't have your own machine or a usable connection - but there's no requirement to use that - you could spin up an instance in Amazon's cloud or elsewhere too.

taivare• 12 years ago

Im going to'Dropbox'before I ever pick it up !

hueving• 12 years ago

Can someone explain to me how being involved with Chevron is unethical?

stephengillie• 12 years ago

I was expecting to see this response for their lacking reaction to Heartbleed, not to having Rice join their board...

microtherion• 12 years ago

For me, it's the combination of the two events that is disturbing. Dropbox was discovered to be vulnerable to an exploit that may have been planted to facilitate government surveillance, and around the same time, Dropbox brings on board one of the architects of the current government surveillance overreach.

higherpurpose3• 12 years ago

What a brain-dead decision by Dropbox. I can't believe they actually thought of this themselves and decided what a great idea it would be to have someone like Condoleezza Rice on the board.

For some reason I expected a little more from a YC star.

cschmidt• 12 years ago

Her 9 page CV is here:

http://politicalscience.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/sta...

From that she is currently on the corporate boards of KiOR, C3 Energy, and Makena Capital. She previously was on the boards of Schwab, Chevron, Transamerica, and HP.

stevehawk3• 12 years ago

I have full faith that that website is the dumbest thing I will have read this month.

cjoh• 12 years ago

While I wish people took more moral stances like this, I feel like it's nonsensical to worry about Condi Rice, and worry more about the broken incentives around the financial system that Dropbox is headed for. Goldman Sachs is a substantial investor in Dropbox. Where were the cries to drop dropbox then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Controversies

Or the ideology "fiduciary responsibility" for public companies, which involve companies like Google and Apple hoarding money offshore and using sophisticated accounting tricks to avoid paying taxes?

I'd like to see more of our "I AM OUTRAGED" efforts be aimed more towards the systems that cause our problems than the people who arise from them.

vdaniuk30• 12 years ago

Really, isn't this the case that a lot of people are constantly outraged about goldman sachs, current state of affairs in the valley and perverted incentives of the start-up ecosystem?

cm-t• 12 years ago

I linked this thread to /r/ubuntu since they might be concerned with the shutdown of Ubuntu One:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/22p14s/if_you_are_le...

davidkellis2• 12 years ago

Why is this on HN? This is just a political powder keg. Anyone who agrees with the article will upvote it and any comment supporting it. Anyone who disagrees with the article will downvote it and any comment opposing it.

The only "benefit" to this post is that the publicity given to the grievance (whether real or imagined) will sway Dropbox leadership to drop Condi. Whether that's a good thing or not for Dropbox as a business is not even considered. The content of the article has no real benefit to anyone.

captainmojo3• 12 years ago

Powder keg or not, a Privacy concern would certainly influence my decision of whether or not to use their APIs in my software, especially on behalf of consumers. They've been trying to attract developers to their API, and they just lost my interest.

davidkellis2• 12 years ago

I don't see the privacy concern. Is the fear that Condi is going to persuade Dropbox leadership to open the doors to govt. snooping?

MichaelGG• 12 years ago

It's also nonsensical. Dropbox deliberately and directly lied about customer security before. Anyone trusting them for private data was out-of-touch. They chose to build a system that easily allows for digging through customer data.

mantrax4• 12 years ago

Internet outrage - one the most promising resources of the 21st century.

It's cheap, it's renewable, and the Internet is producing more of it than we can handle.

If we could figure out how to power engines with Internet outrage, we'd solve all of our world's problems.

Right now it's mostly producing angry tweets and protest pages, but I'm sure if we work together we'll figure it out, eventually.

Until then, keep the outrage coming! I believe in outrage!

buckbova• 12 years ago

The internet outrage machine is highly inefficient and produces considerable less energy than put into it.

dangayle3• 12 years ago

But Guido van Rossum works for Dropbox, are we supposed to not support Guido?

These witch hunts hurt a lot of people, much more than the single figurehead that everyone get all up in arms over.

vdaniuk30• 12 years ago

I would really like Guido to quit dropbox. I can't imagine meeting the person responsible for numerous atrocities near the cooler and having a small talk about the weather, then returning to my workplace to continue business as usual.

edit: Guido is BDFL, it is expected of him to uphold professional and ethical standarts of the community, so this is directly related.

amcnett2• 12 years ago

"Figurehead" doesn't exactly apply in this case given her role specifically entailed the orchestration, coordination, and authorization of unconscionable (at worst) and morally repugnant (at best) acts.

geekymartian• 12 years ago

http://www.wikihow.com/Uninstall-Dropbox-from-a-Mac

pvnick• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I absolutely agree with most of the opposition to Condi Rice wrt the illegal war, warrantless wiretaps, torture, etc. On the other hand, I threw a hissy fit over the opposition to Eich based on his beliefs. I'm not sure how I can oppose Rice while standing up for Eich without inconsistency.

Anybody else feel conflicted and have some insight? I'm still probably going to cancel my Dropbox membership simply because I have free 100gigs google drive that I got when I bought my chromebook [1] and this gives me a great excuse to transfer over and save some money. But I don't know that I can go on the same kind of crusade for which I faulted the Eich lynch mob.

[1] Free 100 gigs google drive when you buy a chromebook, which if you install crouton makes for a cheap, decently powerful linux machine (great deal!). I recommend the hp chromebook 14 with 4 gigs ram since it comes with free 200mb 4G tmobile internet every month for life.

JasonFruit2• 12 years ago

If you cancel your Dropbox membership now, you will affect their measurements as though you're doing it in response to this kerfuffle. I'm in exactly the same position you are — I've found a better service, so I'm backing up my Dropbox stuff to it and letting Dropbox idle until this blows over. I don't want to encourage political and moral witch-hunts in tech (or other) companies.

nollidge6• 12 years ago

So you're participating in the "witch-hunt", you just don't want it to seem like you are?

arjie• 12 years ago

Others are reporting that there is a box to state your reason when you close your account. You may be able to do exactly what you want without having another item on your to-do list (and without paying, if that's what you're doing).

If you want to, that is. I'm not advocating anything.

vdaniuk30• 12 years ago

Rice is much more evil then Eich, that's one reason for you. I just cant trust people running Dropbox anymore. Will they go in the board meeting, shake their hands with Rice and discuss business matters? That's not a kind of people I'd like to support. My 2c.

spktrthhrts• 12 years ago

There is a difference between Eich and Rice.

Eich didn't torture and murder people.

steve_benjamins• 12 years ago

You are inferring that being in a US administration while US sanctioned murder and torture occurs, means that the leader therefore murdered and tortured people.

Which puts Condi in a large group of people: nearly every member of a US administration in the last century.

Edit: Jesus. A lot of people missed the point of what I said. All I did was argue the issue is more nuanced than "[Condi Rice] tortured and murdered people"

My mistake for trying to broaden a Hacker News discussion.

eigenvalue• 12 years ago

It seems to me that there is a big difference between making a modest financial contribution to a bad cause, versus being a primary actor in furtherance of bad causes. At the risk of invoking Godwin's law, it's like comparing a high ranking party member to someone who voted for the dictator and went to some rallies. Both are bad, but only one results in war crime tribunals.

jtreminio• 12 years ago

One person wanted to rob people of their right to marry whom they wish; the other person helped lead the push to a war that has killed thousands and thousands of innocent civilians.

You make the call.

Taylorious• 12 years ago

I feel similarly, I'm just not sure where I draw the line because it makes me feel like a hypocrite. I see a lot of people on HN criticizing the Obama administration for drones, NSA, Guantanamo, etc., but how many of them have stopped using tech companies whose leadership contributed large amounts of money to Obama's campaigns? I can't help but feel like there is a something deeper resonating with people when it comes to this Condi issue. I'm guessing if Hilary Clinton quit tomorrow and joined DigitalOcean,the people up in arms about this wouldn't be outraged.

fennecfoxen2• 12 years ago

Well, it's actually quite simple some people want to turn Silicon Valley into an arm of their preferred political party. Oh, they don't want that outright, certainly, but they certainly want it and everyone in it to be aligned with the party's principles, especially at the leadership level.

avenger1232• 12 years ago

This is an overt support of someone that is highly controversial. The aftermath of the Iraq war isn't going way because the US isn't involved as much anymore. There is already a sense that accountability hasn't really been high with the Iraq war. Oops, we made a mistake doesn't cut it too much. With this appointment, it further amplifies the sentiment that there is absolutely no real accountability. I would say this is why a lot of people would feel strongly about this.

_hgt1• 12 years ago

Unlike Eich, Rice went far beyond simply holding beliefs and making donations. She held real power and used it in unconscionable ways.

Given the current climate, I find it incredible that a cloud storage company would be involved with someone who actually wiretapped members of the UN Security Council. It's almost like they're saying "thanks for all the data, oh and f* you".

mokus• 12 years ago

This is the key point. The things she is being called out on are things that actually relate to her trustworthiness in the position she has entered, and as a cloud service provider trust should be very important to Dropbox.

rmc2• 12 years ago

Yeah, Eich donated $1,000 to a campaign. Rice ran the campaign.

panarky4• 12 years ago

I just deleted my Dropbox account.

Dropbox provides a space to explain why you're leaving. I said Rice's actions resulted in the unnecessary death and injury of many thousands of innocent people, and I will not entrust my data or my money to a company with such a person on the board.

I'm sure my small action won't make any difference, but maybe by making this visible we achieve collectively what we can't achieve individually.

viggity• 12 years ago

Wiretapping members of the UN Security Council

You realize that is part of the reason we have the NSA, right? Only in a fantasy world do the other members not attempt to spy on the US. The reason why the NSA spying issue is wrong is because they were violating the consitutional rights of US Citizens. The German Chancellor is not a US Citizen and we have every reason to spy on her, the same goes for every other country in the world.

sreya• 12 years ago

If you don't believe every country in the world doesn't try to bug any country they have an investment in, rather it be ally or enemy, you're naive. I can't believe it even came as surprise that US bugged its allies, you don't believe our allies do the same thing, or at least try to, to us?

orblivion2• 12 years ago

Funny I feel the opposite way. I (barely) decided the opposition to Eich was okay because of the nature of Mozilla as a company, and the progressive culture around it. (I'm not a progressive myself, which is why I was iffy about it). But if it's any other organization, I decided, it actually starts to become bullying.

pohl• 12 years ago

That's the perfect meme to consolidate power at the top. First we get the Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC rulings, making money "free expression" for the rich. And now we associate the Little Guy's "free expression" with their meager consumer dollars with "bullying", "witch hunts", etc...

Bravo, I say. Machiavellian!

king_jester2• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I absolutely agree with most of the opposition to Condi Rice wrt the illegal war, warrantless wiretaps, torture, etc. On the other hand, I threw a hissy fit over the opposition to Eich based on his beliefs. I'm not sure how I can oppose Rice while standing up for Eich without inconsistency.

The issue here isn't just about someone's personal beliefs. Eich and Rice both operate at very high levels within their organizations and that means they both have a leadership role and are representatives of those companies to the larger public. When people have a problem with those people's actions and point of view, they most certainly have a right to voice that disagreement.

It is important to note that a personal belief which is discriminatory (Eich) does not make that belief legitimate. Why exactly should Eich be defended at all? Support of legalized discrimination against groups of people is morally reprehensible, even if you think marriage isn't that big of an issue. In the case of Rice, a track record of getting people tortured and killed is horrifying and this person should not be supported.

When a business selects someone to join a C-level position or its board of directors, they are endorsing that person completely, including the unseemly things they do or endorse that do not directly relate to the company. You can't separate the two, a company is empowering a person to a degree when they get that position and that is a form of direct support of that person.

facepalm4• 12 years ago

Gay marriage really isn't such an obvious case. Marriage means subventions by the government. So I suppose you could argue that the subventions are really for promoting families with the ultimate goal of having children. Even though gay families can adopt, you could argue that promoting gay marriage does not bring more children into the world.

Not saying that is my opinion, or that marriage is currently perfectly designed for that goal (after all, childless couples can marry too and get some benefits). But I can understand if people feel "if I am paying for other people's marriage, I want to pay for more children being brought into the world in my country" - or something like that. Then I think it would be acceptable to oppose (gay) marriage on that ground.

Just an example - I am not big on the theory of gay marriage, just saying that there can be reasons to oppose it.

It's not a question of denying people the right to be together, but a question of what the community should pay for.

From my European perspective it seems much less ethical to deny people health care (talk about basic human rights), yet I am sure many who support gay marriage are opposed to public health care for a variety of reasons (they don't want to live in a socialist country or whatever).

janj7• 12 years ago

They can keep her on their board but it's our duty to react in ways that are consistent with our own personal values. My wife was recruited this morning for an HR position with Dropbox. We briefly imagined how exciting the opportunity might be but I quickly recoiled at the thought of her being so closely affiliated with a war criminal. It's their decision to have whomever they want on their board, it's our duty to respond appropriately.

orochi2359• 12 years ago

I hated the Eich thing and I hate this too. Even if she has been wrong about basically everything she was ever put in charge of, this is not how we settle political disputes in a civil society. If you want to stop using Dropbox, fine. If you're a stakeholder in Dropbox, then you have a legitimate interest here. But no one else does.

bronbron• 12 years ago

this is not how we settle political disputes in a civil society

Um.. what? We don't settle political disputes in a civil society by boycotting entities who choose to associate with actors we believe are immoral?

That's silly. I don't think it gets much more civil than this.

jsutton3• 12 years ago

How would you settle political disputes like this in a civil manner? Doesn't get much better than withdrawing support for a product, at least for regular people.

vdaniuk30• 12 years ago

Do you even know who the stakeholders are? Anyone who finished Entrepreneurship 101 will tell you the stakeholders include users, general public and various advocate groups. So yeah, stakeholders are making their voice heard.

mikeash16• 12 years ago

Excuse me? Not doing business with companies who do things we dislike is exactly how we settle political disputes in a civil society.

Seriously, what the hell is with all these idiots lately saying that we're not supposed to even vote with our wallets anymore? I apologize for my harsh language but I'm just so flabbergasted, and it's such a stupid thing to say that I think "idiots" is justified. Do you really think that we should limit the expression of our dissatisfaction to the ballot box and the internet comment box? Why shouldn't we change how we do business to make a point?

The way some people react to this stuff, you'd think we were talking about assassinating political opponents, rather than criticizing them and taking our business elsewhere.

BobMarin• 12 years ago

I'm not sure It's the same thing. Eich was forced out on the grounds of his beliefs, yes, but people are condemning Dropbox because Rice is a filthy politician that was a part of a war mongering administration. Not the same.

I'm definitely switching over from Dropbox. I was planning to do it anyway. I know this sounds bad but - the fact that I can't store illegal files just bugs me to no end.

[1]MaidSafe is launching it's token sale (Safecoins) effort in 10 days and I will switch my business over to them completely. I know it's not as slick or developed as Dropbox but it's private, decentralized, anonymous and free(I know it sound ridiculous but that's what you get when you combine the concepts of a distributed systems network and Bitcoin)

Not to mention that I have the chance of participating in something great as the possible birth of a decentralized and anonymous internet with a built in payment network.

[1]https://github.com/maidsafe/Whitepapers

rakoo2• 12 years ago

I do see a difference.

Eich's stance was (and is) personal, and I'm pretty sure it would have stayed that way. I would have kept using Firefox because of the Mozilla position on privacy and openness, and despite its CEO position.

On the other hand, Dropbox is a private company. They don't stand for you, they stand for themselves. They are their own first priority. Having someone as important as Mrs Rice on board is certainly not something that will be beneficial to the public. If she's not there for the public but for Dropbox, then yes, we must fear the worst.

MartinCron2• 12 years ago

Eich's stance was (and is) personal, and I'm pretty sure it would have stayed that way

I think that political contributions are (and should be) fundamentally public acts. You can think all the reprehensible things you want, but once you start materially supporting reprehensible campaigns, it's a different thing altogether.

podperson• 12 years ago

Clearly being an actual war criminal probably outweighs donating to prop 8, so there's that.

In any event, I think your problem is you took the wrong position on Eich -- first, there was no "lynch mob" -- being denied a high profile, well-paid job as head of a non-profit is not the same as being lynched. Second, no-one forced Eich to donate to prop 8, and the outcome was quite foreseeable. Isn't a bit of judgment an important job skill for the CEO of a non-profit?

droopybuns7• 12 years ago

I find this offensive and foolish.

People should put more effort into holding their politicians accountable while they are in office- not for settling idealogical scores after they reenter private life.

We the people have no one to blame but ourselves for this. It is the voter's fault that these people are able to flourish. If we don't take our civic responsibilities seriously, then these kinds of campaigns are petty and destructive.

Americans that act in these kind of thought police exercises instead of actually investing in the system should be ASHAMED of themselves. Is what she did illegal? Nominate politicians that will instill FBI leaders who will prosecute crimes. WORK FOR IT. Don't just talk. You need to do more than vote.

jaboutboul• 12 years ago

smartest comment on this story.

jnbiche7• 12 years ago

Americans that act in these kind of thought police exercises instead of actually investing in the system should be ASHAMED of themselves. Is what she did illegal? Nominate politicians that will instill FBI leaders who will prosecute crimes. WORK FOR IT. Don't just talk. You need to do more than vote.

Yeah, many of us did exactly that back in 2007/2008. We nominated and worked hard to promote and to get elected a politician we believed -- based on our candidate's deeply-persuasive statements -- who would be "different". We did much more than vote. We built amazing software systems for our candidate, went door-to-door in places that almost got us shot, worked 80 hour weeks at the grass roots level, and in some cases estranged ourselves from our families. And of course we voted for him.

And look how things turned out.

So don't go fucking blaming the victims here. Our political system is deeply flawed and heading toward a cliff -- with both parties at the helm.

mikeash16• 12 years ago

"You need to do more than vote."

Could you be more specific? It doesn't help to berate me for not doing more without actually telling me what I can do. Because I feel pretty helpless here and I have no idea what I can do besides vote and talk to people.

ia• 12 years ago

i usually don't jump into these debates, but your comment strikes me as at best impossibly naive and at worst inexcusably ignorant. take a look at the various laws being passed to disenfranchise minority/elderly voters. look at the misinformation being spread via special interest-controlled media. read up on Edward Snowden. "victim blaming" is 100% what you're doing here.

i agree with your stance that action needs to be taken, but completely disagree that we have "no one to blame but ourselves".

dguaraglia• 12 years ago

There's a big difference between Eich, who comes from a technological background (he created JS, for crying out loud) and just happens to support policies I don't agree with, and Condoleezza Rice who comes from a majorly political background.

I don't know, there's something that feels just wrong about having a political figurehead mixed in with a company that is (arguably) one of the success examples of Silicon Valley. It just... difficult to describe with words.

jsutton3• 12 years ago

Consumer power is the only power most of us normal folks have. This is one of the best ways we can exercise it--by refusing to buy or use products that conflict with our moral or ethical codes.

facepalm4• 12 years ago

I suppose everybody has to draw their own line. I feel differently about Eich because I think he just participated in a democratic process and he has an unpopular opinion. I can understand reasons to be against gay marriage (even though I am personally in favor of it). But it seems to me he always was honest and upfront. There is no reason for me to believe he would not accept a democratic vote pro gay marriage. I would have felt differently if I had seen any evidence of him being an actual homophobe.

Rice seems to have gone far far wider than that (beyond democracy). But of course you could argue that she nevertheless remained true to her beliefs or whatever. So at the end of the day, it's a personal decision...

aryastark• 12 years ago

participated in a democratic process and he has an unpopular opinion

It may be unpopular in certain circles, but the majority of California first voted yes on Prop 22 and then again on Prop 8. Hard to get more mainstream than that.

But then again, Bush won a 2nd term as well. I guess we can only conclude that democracy doesn't work because the masses are stupid.

IvyMike• 12 years ago

Let me say up front, my politics and Rice's are at odds.

But specifically to this issue, my views and Rice's views on privacy are diametrically opposed. When it comes down to it I simply do not trust her with my data. So it's not so much that I dislike her politics, it's that I think her decisions could have a direct impact on me as a customer.

I know dropbox has terms and conditions on what they will do with my data, but once again, my take is that Rice has a history of weaseling out of those kind of things.

tomkarlo• 12 years ago

It's one thing to express and/or support a political view that others may disagree with, within the accepted bounds of our democratic process. (You can disagree with the viewpoint, but the act of making the donatio itself isn't illegal or immoral.)

It's another thing to subvert our system of government via deception, surveillance and/or intimidation, either by taking action outside the bounds of legal limits, or working to redefine those limits to suit your own purposes. There's a fair argument that these two situations are not comparable, regardless of how you feel about Eich's donation.

Eliezer• 12 years ago

So my first thought looking at this was, "Companies in modern times are forced to pay dues of this type as a cost of doing business and not having the government randomly shut them down." In other words, that Dropbox doesn't have much of a choice in the modern business environment.

Does anyone in a position to know, by which I mean that they've actually been in politics at the national level, care to tell me whether I'm right?

jessaustin2• 12 years ago

I'm not in a position to know anything, but your question reminds me of the situation when I worked at Lucent in Asia years ago. There were various middle-manager/jr. exec types one would meet occasionally who were obviously useless and non-contributing, in that they had no direct reports and hadn't ever been on a project or sales effort. I was young and stupid so I would ask other people what was up. One time, I got an honest reply, from someone who looked over his shoulder first: "That guy? His uncle is the chair of some Senate committee. AT&T had him on the payroll so now we do. If you know what's good for you, don't ask about him again."

peterwwillis• 12 years ago

If there's verifiable facts that prove Rice has acted in an unethical way in her job, then it would be a bad decision to give her more power and responsibility. If, on the other hand, it's found only that she made decisions in good faith based on the information given to her, you can't really fault her in terms of her occupational duties.

But there's a separate question to that, which is the moral ethics of a person who would do things (even in good faith) that they know will result in hurting others. Will Rice make decisions at Dropbox that she knows will hurt people, even if it's the right "business" decision?

With regard to the warrantless wiretaps, it's clear that if there was an actual terrorist that she was trying to put in jail, a warrantless wiretap may help accomplish that goal. She would in effect be acting in good faith while trying to accomplish the goals of her job. But at the same time, she's violating someone's privacy and potentially violating the law. If a similar situation came up at Dropbox, where violating someone's privacy could help the business, would you still want that person employed?

mindslight• 12 years ago

A big difference is that Eich is a well-respected contributor to his organization who independently has an unpopular political viewpoint, and his actions only became notable in the context of Mozilla. Whereas Rice is known generally for her actions, has not been involved in creating Dropbox, and was most likely hired precisely for the skills that people despise.

But I also think this backlash comes from people being reminded about the fundamental reality of Dropbox. It's always been a centralized technology with a controller that's free to do whatever it pleases with your data, either for their own gain or simply out of expediency - any sane hacker should have been recommending avoiding Dropbox and its ilk this whole time. Appointing someone who's directly associated with facilitating and justifying hostile acts reminds everyone of this inconvenient truth, which makes those in denial uncomfortable.

MartinCron2• 12 years ago

I think it's really great how you're grappling with an internal political inconsistency. Most people (of all political stripes) aren't intellectually honest enough to do that.

ryguytilidie6• 12 years ago

"But I don't know that I can go on the same kind of crusade for which I faulted the Eich lynch mob."

This is so insanely hyperbolic I don't even know where to begin. We're now using the term "lynch mob" for a situation where people a) boycotted the product and b) wrote a lot of things about how what Brandon did was wrong and how he is the wrong choice for CEO. So, lynch mob, which means, "a mob that kills a person for some presumed offense without legal authority" is used for a situation where there was zero violence, zero murder and everyone was perfectly within their legal rights. Want to reconsider?

Furthermore, your use of "crusade" makes no sense either. The thing you described was you deleting your dropbox account. How is this anything other than a normal rational thing. I'm really worried that people now seem to view "people opposing an idea in a nonviolent way" as a lynch mob and deleting your account for a web service is a crusade. Isn't this just you exercising the same freedom of expression that you believe Brandon deserves but his opponents don't?

humanrebar2• 12 years ago

"so insanely hyperbolic"

steveklabnik• 12 years ago

For more on the historical and present-day usage of 'lynch mob': http://rarlindseysmash.com/posts/2013-03-19-you-have-no-idea...

vacri8• 12 years ago

There is an irony in accusing someone else of hyperbole, but demanding that the literal interpretation of their terms be used.

Florin_Andrei• 12 years ago

Rice did something of material, substantial consequence. People got killed because what she did.

Eich had opinions based on mythology. And his impact on people's lives, in terms of health, security and happiness, was orders of magnitude less.

rbx• 12 years ago

Seeing the comparison to Eich is ridiculous tbh.

Do I want to drink a beer with Eich? Looking at his donation record - no. Will his contribution improve the Mozilla product? Looking at his history as a technologist with Mozilla and JavaScript - probably yes.

Do I want to drink a beer with Rice? Looking at her career history - no. Will her contribution improve Dropbox? Looking at her career history - can't imagine any positive effect, probably negative, especially in the privacy area.

Definitely going to try some Dropbox alternatives now.

steven20124• 12 years ago

Of course you're being hypocritical. It's because you feel a lot stronger about the Iraq War than you do about gay marriage.

Now put the shoe on the other foot. Think about all those people that feel as strongly about gay marriage as you do about the Iraq War. Their belief that they should protest against Mozilla doesn't feel that much different than your own protest, does it?

harpyeagle• 12 years ago

I'd like like to redirect you back to adnam's comment.

Unlike Eich, Rice went far beyond simply holding beliefs and making donations. She held real power and used it in unconscionable ways.

All I can say is that personally I find Eich and Condoleezza to be worlds apart. Nor do I think it is hypocritical to feel stronger about the Iraq War than about gay marriage. People will have different priorities.

ripter2• 12 years ago

I'm in the same boat. Other people have pointed out how she's done things far worse than Eich. But here is my reasoning.

If you disagree with the board of a company and you want to stop using them, thats fine. Doesn't matter if it's Eich or Rice. Don't like them, stop using their products/services.

What isn't right is personally attacking either of them. Don't like Rice, that fine, you can post a blog or say whatever you want. Crossing the line is harassing them and sending death threats.

If the whole Eich thing would have stayed with people talking about how they don't like him, I wouldn't have a problem. When people started harassing him and it became popular to harass him it crossed the line. So far I haven't heard of anyone harassing Rice. (Maybe people do and they "disappear", I don't know.)

rlu• 12 years ago

Are those free 100 gigs permanent or only for X amount of time? Microsoft has a similar program when you get a Surface 2, but the extra space only lasts for 2 years :\

nathas2• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how I can oppose Rice while standing up for Eich without inconsistency

Politics vs Ethics. "I think marriage equality is politically correct" vs "I think someone who violated their own country's privacy law and had a hand invading a foreign country which resulted in the deaths of thousands shouldn't own my data".

One is inherently a political issue - state-issue marriage licenses. States can say "yes this marriage is valid." The other is non-political, a bigger question of human-kind and what is always correct.

morgante2• 12 years ago

I likewise supported Eich and oppose Rice.

This is because it's a matter of looking at whether there's a conflict between their stated beliefs and the way I'd like their companies to be run.

In Eich's case, he was opposed to marriage equality. While I disagree with him, this does not affect his work because (thankfully) private corporations don't issue marriage licenses.

In Rice's case, she supports warrantless wiretaps. This attitude (that government requests can and should be responded to even if they lack warrants) is directly applicable to the decisions and policies she'll guide for Dropbox. My privacy will be directly compromised.

It's a matter of applicability and impact, not politics.

DonGateley• 12 years ago

Be aware that with a Google Drive account you explicitly give Google unfettered access to all of your data to do with what they want.

loupeabody2• 12 years ago

I find the explicit images of war and torture very distasteful. Especially alongside a goofy illustration of Condoleezza's head in the Dropbox logo. There are certainly more appropriate ways to communicate your message besides FUD.

Crito2• 12 years ago

I find the explicit images of war and torture very distasteful.

Really? You find the images distasteful, rather than what the images represent? You should be far more distressed by war and torture themselves than depictions of them. Sort out your priorities.

loupeabody2• 12 years ago

I suppose if you interpret my words literally, you're correct.

Sorry if I was unclear, but I meant that the presence of war and torture images (which in turn themselves automatically represent something, which is in this case, actual war and torture) is grossly out of proportion to the message being presented in the parent link. Out of proportion, that is, to the very mundane event of someone becoming one of Dropbox's board of directors.

There's an implication here that Dr. Rice, by being a board member, will guide Dropbox into committing acts of war and torture. This implication is most strongly suggested by the presence of those images.

I could make a webpage which looped a video montage of people being beaten and murdered by police officers and upon it superimpose the message "DON'T ARGUE WITH POLICEMEN". Certainly there are more civil and dignified ways to convince people to not argue with police officers?

camus2• 12 years ago

well here is more images for you ( NSFW )

http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2009/10/03/rape-iraqi-women...

so what's the FUD is all about again?

vvpan• 12 years ago

This article reminded me - why aren't the people from Bush administration in prison?

whistlerbrk• 12 years ago

Oh please. Every American here, myself included, started the war in Iraq and helped pass the Patriot Act by electing these buffoons and not throwing them out of office. The fault is within ourselves.

cpt11382• 12 years ago

And how do you suggest throwing them out of office?

paulhauggis• 12 years ago

Why does it seem like all of these campaigns are against right-leaning people?

if this is the kind of tactics you need to use to win, I hope you never win.

mason240• 12 years ago

Looks like we are living a new age of McCarthyism.

CamperBob25• 12 years ago

Except McCarthy was seeking to destroy numerous people who had done nothing wrong. Other than that, yeah, it's the same.

macinjosh2• 12 years ago

Hindsight is 20/20. At the time I'm sure many people believed those targeted by McCarthy had done things wrong.

ozh• 12 years ago

3 words: not gonna happen.

microjesus3• 12 years ago

So as a vocal, technically proficient and wealthy segment; we are now basically a lobby group. Minus third party funding, hidden agendas and three piece suits. I love this. I think that using our significant influence to form an opinion followed by digital exertion of will is simply of mirror of formal politics. Game on.

jcolemorr11• 12 years ago

Maybe I'm the only one who's thinking like this but...

...It's just Dropbox.

"But she access to ALL THE THINGS!"

I highly doubt Dropbox will intentionally jeopardize the meat of their business model. And again. It's just Dropbox. Not the golden keys to nuclear warfare or even a tech mover and shaker like Google.

What I want to know is why a highly educated, over qualified, former leader of the country is joining a cloud storage company. Her skill set could be leveraged so much better elsewhere. It's just...what the hell. That's what's confusing me. Not her wielding political influence to rename my file extensions to .nsa or .chevy.

atmosx4• 12 years ago

Just did actually. Was it easier that I originally thought. I was about to start using 'Google drive' but I'll try handle my staff off-line first, then see how this plays out.

There are things I don't mind keeping online, Google drive comes handy because I work with 2 macs and a chromebook.

But I will take some time and review my options before proceeding. Here are some hints for others looking for another service:

* Wuala: Servers in Switzerland, owned by Lacy, iPhone/Android/Mobile Windows clients ready.

* SpiderOak: Everything should be encrypted (servers in the US though). Don't know about mobile integration but I guess it's there

* Google Cloud: Nice if you don't mind Google having your files.

* OwnCloud: For to be considered secure, you need a VPS (~100 USD/year) + OpenSSL certificate + time to set-it-up and manage the VPS. Has mobile clients.

I'm closer to Google Cloud for the time being..

infra178• 12 years ago

This is not an issue of partisanship.

That's exactly what it is.

bsaul5• 12 years ago

This post is wrong on so many level it's not even fun...

Instead of denouncing the fact that a corporate has to hire political figures for their influence ( upon whom ?) it's a never ending list of clichés about good politician ( like obama letting the syrian people die, i suppose ?) vs bad politicians ( the world would have been such a better place with saddamn hussein !) from the point of view of a 5 year old.

Grow up a bit, please.

macinjosh2• 12 years ago

I thought Silicon Valley was dying for more women and minorities to join their ranks! Rice is both so shouldn't we all be elated?!

Oh, she's a Republican? Fuck her.

Tyrannosaurs2• 12 years ago

How about she has a questionable approach to privacy and Dropbox is an application where privacy is key?

pbreit4• 12 years ago

How about, she's in a remarkable position to help Dropbox become the leading provider with respect to privacy?

usingpond3• 12 years ago

Holy shit, are you implying that everything in the post about direct complicity in wiretapping, war crimes, lying to the American public, killing of civilians, and torture is just being another Republican?

Because that's the only way your post would make any kind of sense without being a clear-cut textbook strawman.

jader201• 12 years ago

I see shades of gray all over the present and future of this thread. Pretty sure if there were ever an appropriate thread for enabling pending comments [1], it is this one.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304

CamperBob25• 12 years ago

The link to http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/22/bush-adviser-rice... is broken on the page. There's no contact link to the drop-dropbox.com admins, so maybe they'll see it here...

gesman• 12 years ago

If one's major business depends on DropBox's righteousness and nobility - then these points become more or less valid.

For millions of others who use it just to backup stuff - what matters much more is the cost of the service rather then the resume of board members.

It's good for everyone to stir the waters though to show that the world at large is not sleeping any more.

BetterLateThan• 12 years ago

1. Uninstalled. 2. In 2014, every business faces the choice to either quit businessing or collaborate with the government. This choice will soon trickle to individuals, if Rome, Germany and the USSR are any reference.

mschuster91• 12 years ago

Recommend Google Drive and MS OneDrive? As if those two were any better. Google mines your data and MS sleeps with the NSA.

mcherm3• 12 years ago

Attacking companies for working with leaders who happen to have a conservative political viewpoint is simply unacceptable.

For goodness sake, Condoleezza Rice was the US Secretary of State! There are a substantial number of people who found her to be an excellent leader -- including at least 2/3 of the US Senate.

I am quite liberal, but I do not believe in blacklisting people because of their political beliefs. At one point, this country blacklisted "Communists" because of their beliefs -- it was not enforced directly by the government, but the blacklisting was nevertheless quite real. Let us not recreate that sad chapter in our history with "Conservatives" replacing the "Communists".

insuffi6• 12 years ago

This has nothing to do with political beliefs or a conservative background.

You can be a conservative in all possible ways and still uphold moral principles. The last time I checked morality does not include lying, undermining human rights, waging foreign wars.

mcherm3• 12 years ago

In the Brendan Eich case (and yes, I know that's not the same as Ms. Rice) his only objectionable actions were to contribute a small amount to a political campaign and to not publicly repudiate that donation. That case was 100% about political beliefs.

In the case of Condoleezza Rice, there are plenty of actions to object to including undermining human rights and helping to wage wars. By all means, prosecute Ms. Rice for violations of human rights and then ban her from the board as a convicted felon. I wouldn't even mind an outcry against her participation on Dropbox's board because of her stance on government surveillance of data storage companies. But to me, an outcry against her for war crimes smells of overdone politics.

That being said... I don't mind any person choosing to boycott a company for any reason they choose (including association with Ms. Rice). What I object to is a hue and cry that effectively blacklists her (and others) for their political beliefs.

rjohnk3• 12 years ago

It has everything to do with her political beliefs and conservative background. Just admit it. You can still disagree with her and boycott Dropbox. Just say that you disagree with her political beliefs. The things the article referenced are all political.

joshstrange10• 12 years ago

> Attacking companies for working with leaders who happen to have a conservative political viewpoint is simply unacceptable.

Yes it would be if her "viewpoint" was all that was brought into question but it's not. She assisted in lying to the American public to start a war and she has come out multiple times in support for warrantless wiretapping. This isn't about what she thinks or which political party she belongs to it's about what she DID.

exodust• 12 years ago

It's not enough reason to drop dropbox.

I'd need a more serious reason, like if the service deleted all my data.

BTW, I recommend Keepass in combination with dropbox for a good reliable password manager. The file is encrypted before sent to dropbox, so Rice won't be able to snoop in your passwords.... Or will she? ;-)

elwell2• 12 years ago

It should be noted that her consulting firm [0] has been advising Dropbox for the last year.

[0] http://www.ricehadleygates.com/

aridiculous• 12 years ago

Just had a look at their website. It's like a dream team of awful people.

hrish2006• 12 years ago

Bit torrent sync!

it_learnses• 12 years ago

These are exciting times! Companies and their leaders are actually being held accountable directly by the people for their unethical, immoral behaviours by diverting their business elsewhere. It's amazing to know that so many in the tech industry care about these issues.

bagels• 12 years ago

I read through the whole site... where are the instructions on deleting a Dropbox account?

Not that it was very hard, but the link is non obvious in the Dropbox account settings, spent a couple more minutes than I'd like.

For those interested, this is a link from the support page:

https://www.dropbox.com/account/delete

speeder• 12 years ago

Thanks!

As someone that is from a country that suffered from US meddling, and someone that was very critical of Condolezza Rice even before the actual war on Iraq started because of her role back then, I had to delete my account, I don't even bothered to make a backup, I just deleted it.

mkr-hn7• 12 years ago

This seems like a prime candidate for being moderated off the front page, but it's still at #1.

general_failure• 12 years ago

Why what's wrong with it?

mkr-hn7• 12 years ago

Every link on the Mozilla thing was demoted. What the mod said about doing it seemed very reasonable, but I can't recall the details at the moment.

orochi2359• 12 years ago

I can't help but notice that whoever is behind this campaign found it necessary to give attribution to the people who produced the images on the page, and provided helpful links to Dropbox's CEO's social media accounts, but didn't bother to sign his own name to the cause. That's the very definition of gutless.

ewams• 12 years ago

https://AlwaySyncd.com

diestl• 12 years ago

I just switched to Google Drive, it's cheaper as well.

VMG• 12 years ago

I'd use it also if there was a Linux client.

donnfelker• 12 years ago

"Its not about who you know, its about who knows you."

don_draper• 12 years ago

What's a good sync solution for 1Password that doesn't use Dropbox?

jkelsey• 12 years ago

iCloud is the other featured cloud provider that AgileBits proclaims on their website, although I wouldn't recommend it. Not a knock against Apple, but I prefer to diversify my technology and not get locked-in into any one service.

I just switched back to 1Password from LastPass, and I'm just syncing between my iPhone and my MacBook (my only computer ATM) using wi-fi sync, and backing up my 1Password data on my MacBook to tarsnap.

I've seen someone else say they sync their 1Password data using BitTorrent. Haven't tried it myself, but that seems interesting.

api3• 12 years ago

Funny the reaction of so many against this. If it's okay to vote by ballot, why is it not okay to vote by dollar? They're your dollars. It's perfectly fine to choose not to give them to companies that do things or whose leadership holds views you disagree with.

Dollars are far more powerful mechanisms of voting than ballots IMHO. Imagine if everyone investigated the leadership of companies they did business with and refused to buy from companies whose leadership supported unnecessary war, discrimination, etc.? If indeed it is corporate leadership that really leads the country, then corporate leadership might be a more important target for change than governmental leadership.

htns2• 12 years ago

Because voting by dollar is not democracy.

api3• 12 years ago

Then let's ban for-pay lobbying.

Rofu2000• 12 years ago

I approve of any thought process that allows me to narrow down the amount of awesome cloud services out there to choose from. Making choices is really hard for me. Also, I prefer ethical reasons because it makes me feel warm at night.

ewindisch• 12 years ago

The fact is that the IC (Intelligence Community) has infiltrated most companies of strategic intelligence value. That's not really up for debate. However, it's also clandestine and presumably against the foreknowledge of the infiltrated companies. While as user, these actions are concerning, it's understandable that infiltrated companies may not be willing divulging their customer's data. While it's easy to point fingers, I'm willing to look beyond a certain amount of corporate ignorance stemming from a pre-Snowden world.

In a post-Snowden world, continued ignorance of embedded security assets in the corporate infrastructure is no longer acceptable. I say this with some hesitation, as I'm friends with several such assets and wish no ill will toward them as individuals. Yet, it cannot be ignored that companies should be expected to limit their trust of those whom have sworn oaths in conflict with their corporate interests, especially when their actions have spoken louder than their words.

Condolezza Rice has repeatedly shown that her interests lie too close to the agenda of the Intelligence Community and are at conflict with the expectations of security and privacy that I expect of a service such as Dropbox.

This is what I told Dropbox when I deleted my account.

joyeuse6701• 12 years ago

Hah, you know, back in the day, when people had a problem with a political action it usually ended up in a serious sacrifice e.g. seppuku, self-immolation, revolt, crucifixion... guillotines, assasinations. Nowadays one can disagree vehemently with a leader just as before, but simply stop using a service related to them to help with some passive aggressive need of absolution from the shame you somehow internalized! Grand. Absolutely. Grand. I mean, sure if you have an issue with the deaths this woman is tied to...DEATHS, you know, for emphasis, you'd think that that would have been the last straw, that you would have given up your citizenship and moved elsewhere in at least some sign of protest against the U.S. Government as a Service. But no, this...this is the last straw, because now you can 'fight' her on your terms that won't hurt you too bad, show the world your 'mettle'. The sacrifice is symbolic enough you can tell your friends about it, but not so much that it actually hurts you, which really isn't a sacrifice at all. All you can do here is express an opinion, and change your money flow, which really doesn't alter anything, you've stalemated the battle, but the war is still lost.

fennecfoxen2• 12 years ago

Allow me to quote (gay rights activist) Andrew Sullivan, via The Economist, over the Eich issue. I think it mostly applies here -- http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/04/to...

"The ability to work alongside or for people with whom we have a deep political disagreement is not a minor issue in a liberal society. It is a core foundation of toleration. We either develop the ability to tolerate those with whom we deeply disagree, or liberal society is basically impossible. Civil conversation becomes culture war; arguments and reason cede to emotion and anger."

Also available at above link: select quotations from John Locke.

Postscript. Oh, of course I'm going to be modded down for this. Civil conversation has been replaced with culture war. Well, maybe not culture war, but a close analogue. :P

kutenai• 12 years ago

This is the best post yet. The rest are just biased dribble.

quaunaut2• 12 years ago

Postscript. Oh, of course I'm going to be modded down for this. Civil conversation has been replaced with culture war. Well, maybe not culture war, but a close analogue. :P

Lets not get into that.

However, to your point: This is one of those areas where I'm forced to wonder just how strongly everyone felt. Did I like Eich representing me, as an open source contributor? No, certainly not. Did I feel that strongly about it? No, not really. I wasn't going to boycott anything, I wasn't going to speak out against Mozilla. I'd be mildly disappointed he was their choice, then I would move on.

I sincerely have to wonder how many others would have felt the same if not worked into a lather.

caycep• 12 years ago

One could argue she was the temporizing influence in that administration...without her, Cheney and co would have had unchecked free reign...

sidcool3• 12 years ago

I appreciate your feelings towards the matter, but I don't support your action. An open letter to Drew Houston would have been enough. It's a corporation, we cannot force it to do something we want to. Boycotting them is not a good option.

vdaniuk30• 12 years ago

Why it is not a good option to boycott them? I'd say this is a great option to putting pressure on a corporation.

sidcool3• 12 years ago

It's almost like Socialism, where a populist sentiment is tried to be shoved down the throats of the corporations. I don't use dropbox, but I for sure appreciate their creative genius. It's their prerogative to appoint anyone they wish.

You might say it's your privilege to boycott, but then mass boycott is like mob mentality.

elwell2• 12 years ago

Just curious; what services would you not abandon if say, Bashar Al-Assad were to join the board?

I thought maybe GMail for me, but then I decided maybe there aren't any services I wouldn't leave.

Mindless21122• 12 years ago

First Mozilla for Brenden Eich and now Dropbox for Condoleezza Rice -- is this what Hacker News is now? a tool for the Internet lynch mob? Disgusting.

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me." [1]

Some will say "But Dropbox/Condoleezza Rice is no victim here! They're just reaping the results of their actions." But that's exactly the point, isn't it: it's all fair until the Internet mob turns on you for something you've done that they don't approve of.

I'm not saying I approve of Condoleezza Rice being on the Board at Dropbox, but using HN for this sort of activism disgusts me.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_....

mike_hearn• 12 years ago

In this case, "them coming" just means a consumer boycott, at worst. It is in absolutely no way comparable to goons dragging people off to death chambers and you demean this debate by implying it is.

Mindless21122• 12 years ago

The death chambers may be missing, but the goons are definitely there. Feel free to tell Brendan Eich that it was a consumer boycott, at worst.

buzaga41• 12 years ago

Nobody is forcing you or anyone to agree with this, nobody is coming for anyone, it's just a statement and a call for whoever agrees to join and make the statement louder. You can absolute ignore it!

This right-wing victimization syndrome trips me out.

cmiles744• 12 years ago

To my mind, the most relevant issue here is that someone asked Rice something along the lines of "Should we illegally wiretap these people" and Rice then said "Yes." It seems clear that she believes the government, law enforcement, etc. should have access to whatever data they feel that they need.

With her on the board of Dropbox, it seems reasonable to fear that she'll err on the side of providing data to government and law enforcement rather than fighting to keep Dropbox data private. This alone strikes me as a good reason to want her off the board and, consequently, to move to another product.

I don't see this as being a direct parallel to the issues around Eich and Mozilla. In that situation, many people didn't feel that his personal beliefs and personal behavior would materially effect the quality of Firefox or it's feature set. In this case, it seems we're talking about almost the opposite situation: wondering how a person's past professional behavior and views they publicly held while in their past professional roles might effect their decisions in their new business role.

mac1175• 12 years ago

There should have been some warning on this link. That picture of that grieving (I assume) father was too much. I get the point the author is trying to make but it didn't have to be an /r/wtf subreddit.

glisom• 12 years ago

Eich donated $1,000 to a campaign he agreed with. Rice helped run part of the country you are lucky enough to live in. Get over yourselves. I bet everyone of you would work at Dropbox or Mozilla in an instance, even if they were prominent figures in the company.

news_to_me• 12 years ago

I disagree with product boycotts in general, including this one. It means we're "voting with dollars", which means people with more dollars have more votes.

ptbello• 12 years ago

Just delete your account already instead of tweeting empty promises

https://www.dropbox.com/account/delete

Reason: Other

Care to elaborate: Condoleezza Rice

avenger1232• 12 years ago

I am sure this has been brought up already.

Why would a company that can store people's potentially most sensitive documents want to bring someone on board that directly or indirectly was a part of shaping the NSA programs?

That boggles my mind. How does the conversation go in this situation? "Hey, we don't leak your information but guess what, we just brought someone on our board that fully believes taking a peek at your documents is A OK and was involved with making sure the government could take a look."

That to me is a bit mind boggling.

taksintik• 12 years ago

Very troubling hire. Very bad pr move by Dropbox. I relly don'why they would choose such a polarizing person.

capitalisthakr• 12 years ago

Money.

Just a guess.

rjohnk3• 12 years ago

Why is this? Because she was a part of the Bush administration? Because she is a Republican and we should hate Republicans? I mean, come on, isn't Al Gore on Apple's Board? He's no saint! No. This is not an issue of partisanship."

They then proceed to bring mostly partisan viewpoints to the table. This is usually what those on the left do (yes, yes, I know, not all). Set things up as non-partisan and then proceed partisan attacks. We have A) Iraq War was wrong B) Torture and Bush lacky C)Warrant-less wiretaps D) BIG SCARY OIL

Let us back up and acknowledge that Congress okayed much of this, so any member at the time who is now a board member of any company should also be tarred and feathered.

You have the right to disagree with dropbox, but come on, drop the "this isn't partisan" partisan arguments.

jokoon• 12 years ago

dropbox is not a good product, and will never be. so I'm not concerned. tech unsavvy people use those kinds of products, and that's how you spy on so many people.

I'm not surprised, and I don't care, because most people don't really care to understand the implications of technology and the implications it can have, and that's exactly how you rule over uneducated smartphone and computer users.

captainmojo3• 12 years ago

I don't feel this site goes far enough. As someone who values privacy, I feel I've already been slighted with this decision, and I don't plan on forgiving Dropbox for it if they change their mind. I'm cancelling my paid subscription this weekend.

DanielBMarkham2• 12 years ago

I'm not even going to ask you guys to stop with the angry villager thing. Almost a thousand of you upvoted it, you must be enjoying yourselves.

But I will ask that you take this off HN. All kinds of people in the world. They do all kinds of things and hold all kinds of opinions. I don't want to visit HN each morning and find the top item is the result of the latest googling and angry mob. Go get a room or something. It's not only that it's not interesting, it's actively non-productive. Every minute you spend with this is a minute you could be doing something better with your life -- the current person of outrage has nothing to do with anything. Trust me, there'll be a new one next week.

Just get a room. Take it somewhere else. Please.

mkr-hn7• 12 years ago

I'm half with you on this. People can choose software based on their needs and values, and they should be free to encourage others to do so. It's perfectly valid to make a campaign like this. But HN has proven itself uniquely incapable of discussing political matters without making a mess of itself, so it doesn't fit here.

DanielBMarkham2• 12 years ago

I deeply support people's right to talk about these things, boycott, and so on.

I'm even in favor of talking about moral issues here. As technologists, we bear a lot of the blame for many bad things that go on in the world. Too many times we like to feel like we're somehow above the fray.

My problem from a system standpoint is that we're starting to see a trend of engineering these things. Person X joins tech company. They get googled -- or they're just controversial. Then I got the top 3 spots of my HN feed full of Person X.

If it happened once a year it'd be one thing, but I'm feeling like this is going to be a new trend for us, and frankly, that's bullshit. The goal here isn't to have a conversation, it's to form up into little groups and go to war with each other. It's manipulative.

Nobody is going to read this thread and suddenly decide "you know, maybe I was wrong about that Iraq war decision all along" We're in cable news land, where we just want drama.

Today was the first time I actually felt that HN actively didn't want me here.

That's not the community I joined.

amcnett2• 12 years ago

All this time I thought the line item reading "roll my own dropbox clone with a raspberry pi or something" on my Someday Maybe Projects list might always stay buried low on the stank rank.

Then this news broke. My personal digital exodus has commenced. Best not to wait until she conveys the authorization of Dropbox's administration to submit user data and activity in a privacy-flouting fashion.

"The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against Torture," she replied. "So that's -- and by the way, I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency . . .By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture." - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-trounstine/stanford-anti-...

macca3212• 12 years ago

You can always spin up http://owncloud.org/ - it sets up a WebDAV thingy, and there is an android photo sync app.

grandalf2• 12 years ago

I am also fairly disappointed by this news. Rice was complicit in the Bush administration's war crimes and crimes against humanity. She also led the propaganda effort to dehumanize the Iraqi people in the minds of intellectuals.

It's a very strange feeling of disappointment... as if something precious, Silicon Valley innovation, talent, success, can somehow not succeed without the blessing/involvement/connections of government officials.

This definitely makes me question the ethics of Dropbox as a company.

This is not about politics at all, war crimes are clearly defined. FWIW Obama has also committed many and I'd be equally disappointed if he or one of his top warmongers was added to the Dropbox board.

twcooper• 12 years ago

Basically, the argument is to Drop Dropbox because Condi was a part of the Bush administration and is a Republican.

dfa0• 12 years ago

Vote with your bits[and dollars] if you disagree.

Nerd rage alone is fruitless without tangible follow-thru.

macca3212• 12 years ago

Boom. Downgraded my account to free. Now I have 8 months to accept OneDrive into my life.

It feels quite empowering to have the ability to protest the Iraq war with my wallet, more so than not voting Labour did.

ep1032• 12 years ago

Bittorrent share is actually an amazing dropbox replacement, and actually has a number of really good privacy implementations built in from the start. I'd highly recommend it, if anyone sees this comment.

ep1032• 12 years ago

Bittorrent sync is actually an amazing dropbox replacement, and actually has a number of really good privacy implementations built in from the start. I'd highly recommend it, if anyone sees this comment.

pjreddie• 12 years ago

Bittorrent Sync is an amazing product, I'd recommend switching even if you don't have political issues with dropbox. I use it to keep work files in sync between 3 different computers as well as to backup 100s of GBs of pictures, something that would cost a non-trivial amount to do with cloud providers.

huntleydavis• 12 years ago

I think it's safe to say that when a tech company reaches a certain size, especially ones that have a substantial amount of user data, it's impossible to be politically neutral on the war on data. If a company doesn't outright say where there position lies, it will come out in the leadership actions that are taken. I agree with this opposition against Dropbox because a company like Dropbox has to adamantly say, both with words and actions, that they are in favor of data privacy. Without this strong declaration, I can't do anything but assume that their integrity in regards to data privacy is weak or that they are outright in favor of exposing sensitive data in exchange for powerful partnerships.

payapp• 12 years ago

Drew@dropboox - bad move...

knightofmars• 12 years ago

I'm a little suspicious about this whole thing. I want to know who authored this website. Otherwise I hate to say it but I have to assume it is a hit-piece produced by "Box.com" to get people to leave Dropbox.

estebanrules• 12 years ago

I'm floored by this news, and extremely disappointed with Dropbox. From the beginning I have been a huge proponent of Dropbox. I was lucky enough to get a free 50 GB account, and I use it for probably 30+ daily automated tasks. I will absolutely not be using Dropbox for any reason whatsoever if she remains on the board...I'm going to wait a week and see if they remove her and if not, bye bye.

MrBlue• 12 years ago

sudo apt-get remove dropbox; rm -rvf ~/.dropbox ~/.dropbox-dist

done!

mkr-hn7• 12 years ago

What about the files on Dropbox's servers?

sebastialonso2• 12 years ago

Why is this? Because she was a part of the Bush administration? Because she is a Republican and we should hate Republicans? I mean, come on, isn't Al Gore on Apple's Board? He's no saint!
No. This is not an issue of partisanship.

Okay, let's read on then...

3 of the 4 reasons OP explained are directly linked with her being a part of the Bush Administration.

I do believe having Ms. Rice on board is a bad idea. But please don't say one say one thing ("it's not because she was a part of the Bush administration") and then do other ("IT IS because she was a part of the Bush administration").

Bad way to get people behind you, and makes you look painfully unserious.

fnimick• 12 years ago

It's not because she was part of the Bush Administration, but what she did while she was there. There's a difference.

ixmatus• 12 years ago

I'm moving over to BtSync ASAP; I really wish there was a Tarsnap like service but synced my data across multiple devices :( I can only really use it for backups...

gress6• 12 years ago

This is a great way to express political opinion in a capitalist society where the ballot box is ineffectual. I hope we see more of it.

peeze• 12 years ago

I thought this was going to be about Heartbleed...darn.

mbeattie• 12 years ago

"HEY HERE ARE SOME NON-PARTISAN REASONS TO NOT LIKE CONDI: partisan reason number 1 partisan reason number 2 reason 3 is valid partisan reason number 4"

micahroberson• 12 years ago

Aside from personal views, I question why Dropbox would make a move like this knowing that there would some backlash at the very minimum. There are other people out there that would make just as good of a board member without the potential that Condi has for stirring up discontent. If they didn't anticipate this or consider the ramifications of adding Condi, then the execs behind the decision need some help.

grellas• 12 years ago

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center in the apparent belief that ideological purity is now a litmus test for who can serve on a board of directors in the startup world.

In a free society, people can unite in their business ventures even though they might be far apart in how they view the world generally. Startup culture thirty years ago had a decidedly American flavor. Today, it does not because the world is big and diverse and because entrepreneurs today who do startups come from all sorts of cultures and backgrounds. Surely, those who come from such divergent backgrounds hold differing political and religious views. Some are conservative, others liberal, still others apolitical. Some are theists, others atheists. The variations are many but one thing is certain: not all people think alike on political, religious, or social topics. These are issues that inherently will divide.

What happens, then, when people attempt to set political, social, or religious tests as criteria for who can hold important positions in a business organization? Well, it gets about as ugly as it can get, just as such tests proved ugly when used historically by, say, Christians to exclude Jews from holding important positions in society or to punish atheists for not holding to some prescribed creed.

One might say, "this is different" because we are not holding to an arbitrary creed but rather to fundamental principles that ought to govern all humanity. Well, that is precisely how those who sought to impose thought control in other eras rationalized their conduct. "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party" is a question that destroyed many careers as the blacklists proliferated back in the 1950s. That was indeed a repulsive set of events by which many innocent persons were hurt and today our national conscience wishes it could take back the damage done to them.

So why is this any different? It is easy enough to whip oneself up into a lather over Ms. Rice’s policies if one disagrees with them but what about the half of America (or whatever significant percentage) that does not. And why should this be relevant to board service?

Politics, religion, and social worldviews divide people and have no place as limiting tests in a business environment. Scolding and finger-wagging was bad enough coming from a first-grade teacher trying to promote sanctimonious values back in the 1950s. Do we really want a counterpart agenda now setting rules for who can be a founder, who can be an investor, who can be a director, who can be a CEO, or who can otherwise take a prominent role in the startup world? The answer should be an emphatic no.

Principle is more important here than a particular outcome. What happens with Ms. Rice is not the issue here. What matters is upholding the abiding principle (precious in a free society) that people can hold divergent views on such topics as politics, religion, and society without being punished for their views in a business context. People can and ought to be able to unite to form great companies without having to compare notes on how they voted in the last election or some similar matter having nothing whatever to do with whether someone can add value to the venture. This is central to startup culture. Let us not lose sight of something so basic.

mikemoka• 12 years ago

Dear everyone,

I think we should not forget about this slide: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/PRISM-...

so basically this move, in my opinion, just means that dropbox has been added to that very list and there is no point in using other providers shown as an alternative (e.g. google) or even just hope that dropbox will care more about privacy after she steps down eventually.

antjanus• 12 years ago

That's kind of my point. Rice is not getting a pushback from HN because she's Republican, or because she worked in the government under Bush or anything else. It's not about a single group.

It's what the move symbolizes. If there is someone on board who pushed for warrantless searches/taps/etc and someone who probably would be in favor of PRISM and was in favor of past other programs, then I don't want to be affiliated with that company. And Rice was a public figure who spoke about the Patriot Act, searches, doing things in the name of "national security", wars, blacklisting etc.

That makes me question the person's morals, and shakes my belief in how the company will be run if someone on the board has these kinds of morals and will be making decisions that may affect my data and my person.

Zigurd4• 12 years ago

One might say "This is different" because trust in US products and services and tens to hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake.

As for the "politics" of it, "Are you, or have you ever been part of the surveillance state?" is not a question about one's political views. It is more like the question in Germany "Were you a Stasi officer or informant?"

api3• 12 years ago

IMHO actively helping launch an unnecessary war that killed tens of thousands (a very conservative estimate) of civilians while costing hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been spent in ways that benefit the American taxpayer is much worse than supporting PRISM or working for the NSA.

I'm kind of floored that anyone in our industry would appoint a former Bushevik at all.

JonFish85• 12 years ago

To be fair, the Mozilla thing was much more the "Are you now, or have you ever supported a political issue we don't agree with?" in nature. I'm not saying I agree with it, but that's the same type of question...

forrestthewoods3• 12 years ago

People are increasingly incapable of living and working with people with whom they deeply disagree. Quite frankly I consider that behavior childish and immature. Unfortunately it appears that we are living in a world full of children.

I am not looking forward to the future where no one shares any opinion they may or may not have due to this type of blacklisting.

ripter2• 12 years ago

The older I get the more I realize that adults don't exist. The world has always been run by children pretending to be adults.

insuffi6• 12 years ago

Except her opinions have far reaching consequences, such as killing people.

Am I not allowed to blacklist her because of that? I'm sure the people she's indirectly killed would blacklist her. No?

homulilly3• 12 years ago

What I'm seeing is minorities and people who care about human rights finally getting fed up with the status quo and at least trying to get people to talk about it. I'm sorry that makes people like you feel threatened.

nine_k• 12 years ago

While I agree with your general sentiment, the case of Ms Rice is more substantial. She has a track record of relevant actions (not views), such as legal support of warrantless wiretapping, that have a direct relation to DropBox's core business of storing users' information.

OTOH I wonder why people are so upset about perspectives of snooping on their data stored in DropBox and its likes. If the data can be snooped on, it will be, should the powers that be decide so.

I suppose that you consider any data you store in a public cloud also public, and not expect much privacy. The only way to store data in a private way on machines you don't control is to store it encrypted, and never trust the encryption key to anyone. This is how SpiderOak works, for instance: they are incapable of disclosing any clients' data even if they badly wanted to.

Gracana2• 12 years ago

Your predicted dystopian future is laughable to anyone who is outside the sphere of "straight, white, affluent, and male." That "blacklisting" already occurs all around us... Bigots and warmongers aren't the first people to have these problems.

Panoramix• 12 years ago

Indeed, I have a large problem with giving my money to somebody with whom I hold partly responsible for the deaths and misery of hundreds of thousands. I have a large problem with giving all my data to somebody with a track record of illegal wiretapping. And I have the possibility to change this with little to no impact for myself.

Could you please elaborate on how that makes me childish? - Maybe I misread your comment.

Also I found your last sentence somewhat ironic, because yes, we live in a world were lots of people actually die from wars originated by disagreements. I'd say that's worse than tragically childish.

darkarmani• 12 years ago

People are increasingly incapable of living and working with people with whom they deeply disagree.

You mean like people that complicit with the death of thousands of people and don't get the benefit of the doubt because they were lying to everyone all along?

vdaniuk30• 12 years ago

Companies are not benevolent or useful for society per se. The positive or negative externalities of their actions are defined by their business models, business strategies, top management and board of directors.

If Dropbox board of directors is fine to sit in the same room with the person who was connected with patriot act, iraq war, massive surveillance and torture, I, personally, don't want to have anything in common with such board and such top management and the products they make.

1337biz• 12 years ago

What I find more revealing that, while similar politically loaded, this topic remains untouched by the moderators.

Interfering with the "community" system is such a slippery slope and we are apparently watching another one of these revealing moments.

jmharvey• 12 years ago

This seems like an "avoid the appearance of impropriety" situation. The HN mods don't want it to devolve into a political board, but killing a controversial story about the model YC company would certainly generate accusations of favoritism.

irisnt• 12 years ago

Almost. See: http://i.imgur.com/qymKtS3.png (see http://hnrankings.info/ for actual page)

VikingCoder3• 12 years ago

I want a company to actively fight the government's intrusion into my data, to ensure that my rights are defended.

With this appointment, I have no faith that the Dropbox Board of Directors see their role this way.

callmeed• 12 years ago

If you want that from a company, isn't having someone who used to be deeply involved in the other side a great way to do it?

I'm not saying that's what they'll do, but we don't know either way do we?

cmiles744• 12 years ago

I believe this is different precisely because we aren't necessarily using "political, social, or religious tests as criteria". In this case it's pretty nearly the polar opposite: we're using her past public performance in past professional roles. No one is digging into her private history, quite the opposite; people are looking into past statements that she's made to the public (at hearings, in newspaper interviews, etc.)

Rice has clearly demonstrated that she favors sharing information with the government and law enforcement if they claim that they need that information, by any means necessary. It seems both reasonable and proper that those who would prefer Dropbox to hold a stronger position on the privacy of their customers would see this as an ominous sign.

joshstrange10• 12 years ago

Exactly, no one is saying "If you are a Republican you shouldn't be on the DB board" they are saying "If you support warrantless wiretapping and were an accomplice in lying to the American public in order to start a war then you shouldn't be on the DB board". This isn't because of her political affiliation but because of what she did.

wellboy• 12 years ago

It's not about an opinion or belonging to a certain group such as Jews, Christians or communists here.

It's about preventing people to rise to power who are in favour of crimes against humanity such as hate and suppression against certain demographics (gays) or killings of hundreds of thousands thousands of people, just as if they were in favour of other crimes against humanity such as racism, slavery or freedom of speech.

danjrog• 12 years ago

Free speech is not the same as murdering civilians and torturing prisoners.

badsock• 12 years ago

You're conflating views with actions.

The linked page talks nothing about Rice's views, it talks about the way that she has used her power in this world, and what the outcomes have been.

If you're advocating that the business context should be somehow special, a place where people should be free of the consequences of their actions in other realms, I'm going to have to disagree with you.

bambax3• 12 years ago

compare notes on how they voted in the last election

This is mildly insulting. You know of course that the problem isn't who Ms Rice voted for in the last election "or some similar matter"; the matter is very dissimilar.

This downplaying of stakes isn't fooling anyone; it's unclear to me why you're even trying.

gatehouse• 12 years ago

You have to draw the line somewhere. Instructing your minions to torture a prisoner is way, way over the line for a lot of people, myself included.

Sure, the Iraq war was a trillion dollar mistake, but that's just money. Live by the sword die by the sword and all that. A lot of Americans have a Christian upbringing, whether or not they ultimately believe in God. Torture is what Satan does -- that's the Satan, the personification of evil. This is the rock bottom of the moral scale.

chrisBob3• 12 years ago

Historically, its also what Christians do.

Tloewald• 12 years ago

So you're invoking antisemitism and McCarthyism (but not quite getting to Nazism) in discussing people reacting badly to the appointment of someone widely considered a war criminal to a board position (type "condaleeza rice war" into Google and it will autocomplete for you -- handy).

"What matters is upholding the abiding principle (precious in a free society) that people can hold divergent views on such topics as politics, religion, and society without being punished for their views in a business context."

In a free society, is business the most important thing?

janj7• 12 years ago

Starting an unnecessary war is a big deal. Denying due process and torturing detainees is a big deal. The Patriot Act was one of the most un-American acts of Congress. Rice had a significant role in destroying the values I once thought were vitally important in claiming American exceptionalism. We can never get that back. We are now a country that starts unnecessary wars, tortures detainees and denies due process and spends vast resources on surveilling every citizen and she had a role in that. We will never be the country we once were before Rice and the Bush administration. I am proud to have always been vocally against the war, torture and the Patriot Act. I will continue to oppose the people who led these efforts and oppose anything they are involved with, staying true to my own personal values requires this.

sergiosgc5• 12 years ago

Big deal as it may be, the parent comment was placing the discussion in a plane you totally missed in your response.

The type of blackballing practiced by this campaign is similar to the kind of blackballing that ousted Brendan Eich. It is also a slippery slope.

Slippery slopes are dangerous. At each step of the way, you can reason about your present decision and easily justify it. Add all the steps and the picture is suddenly not so pretty. That is where the parent comment author aimed its reasoning.

You can only reason about slippery slopes by taking the long view; seeing where the slope leads to. Your comment takes the short view.

itistoday2• 12 years ago

Thank you. You rightfully point out that her past actions remain relevant today, and that attempting to dismiss them by labeling them as "merely political viewpoints" does a great disservice to everybody.

This woman is directly and indirectly responsible for destroying hundreds of thousands of lives. That should somehow reflect on her resumé, shouldn't it?

Now she's being placed in charge of people's personal data. That's not just bad politics, it's bad ethics, and it's bad business.

donatj• 12 years ago

Luckily I don't think dropbox has enough employee's for an army nor the desire to use one. I really don't think this affects Dropbox's day to day at all.

naa42• 12 years ago

I support your opinion, but have to mention that pre-Bush US was not any better. US was starting unnecessary wars for more than 200 years now, nothing has changed. Note though, that the same is true for almost any other country.

MarkPNeyer2• 12 years ago

I am proud to have always been vocally against the war, torture and the Patriot Act. I will continue to oppose the people who led these efforts and oppose anything they are involved with, staying true to my own personal values requires this.

I hope this extends to opposing the Obama administration, which has continued and extended war, torture, and the patriot act. If the tech community dumps anyone from any party who supports these policies, that's awesome.

Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Mark Benoiff at SalesForce, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt at Google all gave large contributions to Obama, who extended the patriot act, defended bush torture, and maintains a 'kill list' that took the life of an american citizen without trial. None of them are getting this kind of outrage.

I would love it if they were! I'd love it if we held these tech leaders accountable for the horrendous policies their supported leaders have put in place. You can't say you value your users' privacy and then give money to candidates who don't share that value, unless you say "but these other policies that he supports matter more to me" - and then fine, give us a list of what you value more than protecting my privacy. Show me where I fall on this list of yours. A president who decides he supports gave marriage when it's poitically convient is not as important to me as a president who insists on defending my privacy.

So far this looks to be partisan. I hope it isn't. To be honest, I miss having GWB as a president, because then the smart people were all outraged at the horrible stuff the president was doing. Now the president is still doing the same horrible stuff, plus some new stuff, but the smart people aren't as upset anymore.

stingraycharles3• 12 years ago

Ok, I really hate so say this, but this has hardly been the first time the US has gone into an unnecessary war. While you have also entered necessary wars, for which we, the other western countries, are truly grateful, you simply cannot say that with the Bush administration this is the first time something like this happens.

For me, an anonymous person living in the Netherlands, it feels like these things happen whenever a republican president is elected. The world expects this, goes along with it, and personally I'm afraid of what will happen when the first republican president post-Obama is elected.

Giving dr Reece this much heat is unfair and missing Grellas' very important point: just like freedom of speech is very important to a free press, freedom of political beliefs are very important in a free market.

mrweasel• 12 years ago

I'm sorry.... You're going to show discontent with the actions of Rice and Bush by boycotting Dropbox.

It's not that I disagree with you in terms of the consequences of the actions of the Bush government, but boycotting Dropbox is like hitting a "Like" button on Facebook to "cure cancer".

clarky0715• 12 years ago

You act like someone else in her position would have done something different. Everyone hated Bush. Spending too much money, unnecessary war, over reaching surveillance. Obama will be our hope and change! Yay! Hmm, spending significantly more money, continuing unnecessary wars, and reaching significantly further into surveillance. When the war started 64% of Americans were in favor of it. Sure it turns out they didn't have a nuke, but they had already used bio weapons. While it cost way more in terms of lives and money than anyone would have liked, the world is likely a better place without Saddam Hussein.

If you want to boycott any company that has politicians on their board, that's one thing. To boycott Dropbox because of Rice is absurd. She is an incredibly smart, talented, and connected person capable of doing a good job on their board.

a80003• 12 years ago

I think you have misconceptions about what American policy has been in the past. Remember all the US backed coups in South and Central America, accompied by mass slaughter of political opposition (e.g. Contras in Nicaragua) often by groups trained in US military schools, the extensive bombing campaigns in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with 100k-1m lives lost, all the US backed dictators (Suharto, Irans Shah,...), to name just a few.

ForrestN2• 12 years ago

No one is proposing laws about who can hold given positions. There is no free speech angle here. What's happening on HN is exactly what our system wants to happen: answer speech you don't like with more speech!

There's a lot at stake here, which is why people are reacting so forcefully. What kind of values does the SV community have? What kind of values do Y Combinator and HN have? People are coming here because HN and Y Combinator very much helped make Dropbox what it is, and if that creation is now paying and giving prestige to a person who has gravely harmed the world, for bad reasons, a lot of people will object and are objecting to that.

A free society has the right to determine what it values. I hope our community decides to value ethics and humanitarianism. One way we can express those values is to speak out against companies that help criminals launder their reputations.

pauleastlund• 12 years ago

No one is proposing laws about who can hold given positions. There is no free speech angle here.

This is a total straw man. The comment you are responding to does not mention "free speech" once.

The point is: you are part of a significant, vocal group that is enjoying using its clout to blackball public figures from the tech industry over certain political views that are only held by a minority in tech. Should any of your views ever put you distinctly in the minority, you will understand why the precedent you are setting is a dangerous one.

Nursie2• 12 years ago

> Politics, religion, and social worldviews divide people and have no place as limiting tests in a business environment.

Of course they do.

Voting with our wallets is almost the only democratic right remaining to us lowly consumers these days. Choosing which companies to support directly impacts the sort of society we build.

> Do we really want a counterpart agenda now setting rules for who can be a founder, who can be an investor, who can be a director, who can be a CEO, or who can otherwise take a prominent role in the startup world? The answer should be an emphatic no.

Who's setting rules? People are saying 'if you take on this person, whose views I disagree with so very fundamentally, I can no longer have any trust in your organisation meeting my needs'.

There is nothing at all wrong with this.

Xdes• 12 years ago

The economy is increasingly moving away from a market model and into a social model. This requires conformity and homogeneity since the economy is driven by morals and ethics instead of voluntary mutual benefit. This means that every world view you possess will be as important as the skills you offer.

fumar• 12 years ago

Can you elaborate on this statement, "This means that every world view you possess will be as important as the skills you offer" Is this a trend you are citing from anecdotal information? Or is there data to show this as a trend in the macro-economy?

jcc80• 12 years ago

Ideological purity tests, references to communist witch hunts and a plea to unite? Interesting framing of this. Noticed another commenter mention you're mixing views & actions. It's like naming a fast food CEO to the Department of Health or someone who worked to undermine safety standards to OSHA. I really don't care whether it's a man or woman, black or white, republican or democrat, christian or atheist - it's about the product and the message this sends to users isn't good.

skeltoac• 12 years ago

Shunning is a healthy, grassroots, social expression of disapproval. It is right and fair that people should express their opinions via economic choices. It is not enough to vote only once every few years. You must tolerate grassroots action like this or you will help to entrench totalitarianism.

Nobody is saying there ought to be a law. They are exercising their freedom peacefully and lawfully. You should celebrate that even when you disagree.

Dropbox is free to hire Ms. Rice. Everyone else is free to shun them for it.

Dropbox news is HN fodder. The political nature of Ms. Rice's reputation does not make the topic any less relevant to HN.

usingpond3• 12 years ago

I could see how you'd think this is purely political, but it isn't necessarily. Everything the post brought up is pretty antithetical to the ethics of most of Silicon Valley and startup culture in general. Sure, many Republicans might agree with her but many Republicans also think that gay people should be put to death.

Bad ethics should be called out as so, in this case I think hiding behind "politics" is a bit of a cop-out. It's not inherently liberal at all to make a case against Rice, in fact many conservatives would do the same.

foenix• 12 years ago

While some of the vitriolic response to Ms. Rice's appointment to the Dropbox board stems from her political affiliations, we should take a step back to explore her resource-management and business decisions.

Personally, I know I have a lot of political mis-givings about appointing Ms. Rice, but that's not the main reason I would feel uncomfortable working under her direction in a technology company. I would probably be more concerned about her lack of fore-thought and poor decision-making. I would be concerned about my ability to trust her.

I know that I, and quite a few others in the tech community have a political bias, but even looking past that, there are many business-related reasons to feel that this is a wrong choice.

swamp40• 12 years ago

Couldn't agree with you more, grellas.

I've been considering moving out to SF from the Midwest, but this very thread has me reconsidering things.

I'm not interesting in being hung from a lamppost if I happen to accidentally blurt out a conservative opinion in a moment of forgetfulness.

j2kun• 12 years ago

I think the most salient point in this comment is whether the story belongs on HN (or, that its presence says something about HN readers/mods).

As to the rest, people can, should, and do judge leaders in business and politics by their worldviews. That is how democracy and free speech operate. If your customers want to express their opinion about a CEO's views and the potential insecurity of their product or the immorality of things going on behind the scenes, they have every right to boycott and publicly protest. This is especially considering that HN users are a good representative sample of Dropbox users and the technically literate, while the "rest" of America are unlikely to be affected either way. In fact, protest and boycott are the ONLY powers Dropbox customers have to address the problems they see, so denying them this power by shame or nostalgia for an American Flavor is decidedly unAmerican.

To give a less politically-charged example: I refuse to eat at Jimmy-John's Sandwiches because the owner/creator is a known poacher of endangered animals. You're telling me that I should ignore that because his political view is that preserving endangered animals is less important than hunting sport, and that's irrelevant to the business. Well to me a sandwich is less important than making a statement.

On the other hand, no company should be legally prevented from willfully hiring or appointing whomever they can get. But to say that everyone should avert their eyes as long as the decisions appear ethical from the outside is ludicrous.

eternalban• 12 years ago

"... Politics, religion, and social worldviews divide people and have no place as limiting tests in a business environment."

Technology is not just "business". We are building the very fabric of future civil societies. There is, in my opinion, no other area of human endeavor today that requires greater care and reflection than "technology".

The 'HN party line' that this is just "business" is socially irresponsible.

codegeek• 12 years ago

".. people can hold divergent views on such topics as politics, religion, and society without being punished for their views in a business context."

I think the problem here is that it is more than just holding divergent views. Rice was a major contributor in planning/executing the Iraq War which majority of Americans have opposed in the long run. Not to mention the number of civilian casualty just because we thought they had weapons of mass destruction.

Anyone is free to hold any views they want. But their actions based on those views have consequences.

sebular• 12 years ago

Your comment and the fact that it's the top-voted one are disturbing in what they imply about the moral attitudes of this community.

Everything you've so passionately stated with such deep concern can be summarized as, "Let's not persecute people in the startup world for their political beliefs."

I would agree with that statement, however it is entirely irrelevant in this case-- the first three items in that article were entirely non-political. Inciting a war on false pretenses, aiding the administration in violating the Geneva convention, and violating civil liberties via warrantless wiretap have nothing to do with Democrats vs. Republicans.

These things aren't controversial political stances, they are international crimes. People are outraged at her appointment to Dropbox because there's a large body of evidence suggesting that she's a war criminal, not because she's a Republican.

Domestically, we've somehow decided that the Iraq war is a moot point, something better left in the past. But internationally, where our former president has actually been convicted of war crimes in absentia, you can't just lamely pretend that this is just a matter of "different strokes for different folks."

It's comforting to frame this as a political issue rather than a criminal one, because the alternative is too exhausting and frightening to grapple with. Unfortunately, none of the perpetrators of these war crimes are ever likely to face charges and be tried in court. But at the very least, we can prevent these international suspects and convicted criminals from enjoying high-paying careers in the private sector.

For the record, even though I am staunchly in favor of marriage equality, I did not agree with the witch hunt surrounding Brendan Eich. That was a political issue; it should be easy for you to tell the difference.

x86_64Ubuntu• 12 years ago

Great, I am not the only one. I'm kind of taken aback how an optional war that was started by Ms. Rice that left 100s of thousands dead is somehow being chalked up to "free speech".

rodgerd2• 12 years ago

Your comment and the fact that it's the top-voted one are disturbing in what they imply about the moral attitudes of this community.

I can only presume a large chunk of the SV and HN commentariat would have considered the most important thing about the 50s and 60s black boycotts of segregated businesses in the US south was the "victimisation of business owners."

aytekin• 12 years ago

"Your comment and the fact that it's the top-voted"

I wonder if it is really top-voted.

yypark4• 12 years ago

When does something turn from "political" into "criminal"? Crimes are defined by politics - thus war criminal and international law are completely political. Similar to how someone can say "Aaron Swartz's case is not political at all, he violated criminal hacking laws!" And yet at some point, politicians decided to enact the laws that criminalized his behavior.

Similarly, someone has to set the laws for war as well, to define what a "war crime" and "false pretenses" are.

Everyone believes his or her point of view, that one specific version of war crimes is correct and above the realm of politics. Ultimately though, everything is "different strokes for different folks". Abortion? Killing unborn children, or denying women's rights?

Who has convicted any of George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, etc. for war crimes?

And who ultimately gets to decide and enforce the actions of an international court? Whoever has the biggest army. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". No one has a big enough army to put Americans on trial for any war (bet it Vietnam, Korea, Kosovo, Iraq)

The one thing I agree most with is that Rice's actions are far more substantial and far-reaching than Eich's. On her imaginary resume somewhere is presumably "Secretary of State" and everyone's mental bullet point of "Iraq War" - that is part of her professional career and she should be judged upon that for job fitness. As offputting or not one may consider Eich's actions (what if it were not gay marriage but some other minority position in the tech world, say pro-life or anti-marijuana legalization he had donated to?), his were pretty much completely separated from his professional career.

thelettere• 12 years ago

Corporations wield far more power today than they ever had in history. Where you spend your money likely influences the world (for better or worse) far more than who you vote for.

Some corporations care only for profit, others are concerned about the responsibilities implied by their success and influence. I want to support the later and not the former. I don't see anything unreasonable about that.

Who a company hires in a leadership role is inevitably a reflection of their values. It hints at what they will prioritize and how they will use the money I am paying them. Putting Rice on the board strongly suggests that they don't care what she believes, they only care about profit. Or, worse still, that they agree with her.

I don't want to support a corporation that is for profit alone, nor one whose values are at odds with basic human rights.

*edited for grammar and wording

sdm• 12 years ago

None of what you addresses what's really going on. This is not about politics; especially for us non-Americans. Rice is integral to warrant-less wiretapping. As such she should be kept as far away from my data as possible as she has proven she simply can't be trusted with it. This is an issue of trust, don't try to make it into a political issue.

pkinsky• 12 years ago

You state that the actions taken by Condoleeza Rice in the political sphere are not sufficient cause to blackball her. If contributing to launching a war of aggression and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians is not sufficient cause, what is?

Surely you don't believe Eichmann should have been judged solely on his organizational skills? My 'violation' of Godwin's here is entirely intentional. This woman commited crimes against humanity different in no way other than scale from those that were prosecuted at Nuremberg.

unclebucknasty• 12 years ago

I find your line of reasoning very strange. It's also a red herring.

This is not about simply holding "different political views". In fact, the article doesn't mention political ideology (except to dismiss it as its rationale). This is about actual actions taken, some of which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, torture, and the destruction of fundamental American principles.

So, your comment, which frames it as some sort of thought-policing or ideological litmus-testing in the startup world, is entirely misleading. Instead, what you are effectively doing is taking exception to the idea that she should face any consequences for her actions.

In fact, there are many who feel that she is guilty of war crimes and should be tried as such. No matter where you come down on that issue, it is difficult to argue that it is completely unreasonable. So, as far as Ms. Rice is concerned, perhaps she should be grateful that the consequences of her actions are so thoroughly muted as to only potentially cost her a board seat.

At the end of the day, asking people to vote with their dollars as to whether they want to support a company that has a relationship with someone whose actions they find deplorable (and possibly illegal) seems completely reasonable.

panarky4• 12 years ago

Yes! Let's not fall for the false equivalence of competing ideologies. Unnecessarily killing and injuring innocents is evil, full stop.

bguthrie• 12 years ago

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center

It means that a bunch of people who once thought they were somehow above or apart from politics find that they are not, and that the things that happen in the world constitute news of real interest to hackers. That's growth.

It's also misleading to talk about this as an issue of ideological purity. People talk about purity when the politics of the public figure in question are not extreme enough. The problem is that she helped start a war that killed rather a lot of people, none of whom are now able to lend their voices to the discussion, and those who wish to remember those people are obliged to speak on their behalf. You don't mind her politics, and that's cool. But no one's forcing me to pay Dropbox anything. So I won't anymore.

panarky4• 12 years ago

That's growth.

Exactly right. Everything we build has a political dimension. Every dollar or euro we spend is a vote.

We have the knowledge, we have the skills, we have the power. But as long as we compartmentalize life and work, others use our talents for evil.

The HN community has always held strong beliefs about political issues, but what did we do about it?

It's time to exercise our power and ensure our money and our skills are used for worthy purposes.

mindcrime4• 12 years ago

That's growth.

So is cancer.

HN really isn't the place for political discussions. It's even in the guidlines[1].

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon

OK, yeah, they're fun in a way; and I've made the mistake of participating in a few myself (largely NSA stuff). But the thing is, there are plenty of other forums for discussing politics. There's no real reason for discussing politics here unless it has a specifically technical aspect to it.

Personally, I'd like to see HN get back to a focus on technology and business, and the intersection of the two. If the front-page were nothing but stories about Erlang, D, Javascript, acquisition announcements, new tech announcements, and "Show HN: Rate my Startup" posts, that would be a Good Thing, IMO.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

burntroots3• 12 years ago

And Brendan Eich gave $1000 to an organization people don't approve of. A guy made a joke at a convention about dongles and got fired. A whole lot of Sci-Fi authors were prevented from publishing at Tor because they identify themselves as politically conservative.

This particular pattern has been growing over the last decade or two. The politics in question are growing more extreme and the required level of political correctness demanded is also getting more extreme. One exception does not disprove the pattern.

icarus_drowning• 12 years ago

Unless the views that "unite" them are repulsive. If Rice's viewpoints were the polar opposite and we were all jumping on the bandwagon to boycott dropbox because they didn't support torture enough, would that be "growth"?

Of course not.

You don't like Rice's views on this issue, and want to convince people-- including the HN community-- that she was wrong on this issue, and that her views on other issues (warantless wiretaps, etc.) are dangerous for a business like dropbox. Moreover, you don't want to support dropbox now that Rice is a board member. Fine. But to claim that just because we all (or at least most of us) disagree with her views, that in and of itself means that we're "growing" as a community is genuinely dangerous-- because at some point, most of us are going to be wrong about something, and arguing on ideological merit is going to be the only thing that can "save" us. Simply saying that "we all agree, and that's growth" will just ensure that we're all wrong forever.

interpares• 12 years ago

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center

We've all been learning that large technology companies cannot escape politics -- whether it's Edward Snowden's revelations or Turkey's ban on Twitter. Seeing this conversation here may have less to do with a changing Hacker News culture and more to do with a realization that technology & politics are intertwined.

nollidge6• 12 years ago

So why is this any different?

I don't know, I guess it's that free citizens voting with their wallets is not at all similar to powerful governmental figures conducting an oppressive inquisition?

thebokehwokeh2• 12 years ago

This isn't the same issue as Mozilla's Brendan Eich stepping down because he held views against gay marriage. That is a free speech issue that has 0 consequence to his capacity to contribute to a better free and open web.

Your last paragraph rings true. But this is so far removed from simply allowing a business person to contribute to businesses, in spite of their political, religious, and societal beliefs. This is a person who was instrumental to the patriot act. More than that, Dropbox, which at its core, is a decentralized store of information, now has a member of the board who was instrumental in implementing the capacity for governments to peep into information without warrant.

This goes much further than simply allowing a person to hold different beliefs than ours. This is about a person, who has implemented legislation that has taken away fundamental rights of individuals, and who is now a member of the board of a go-to app for plenty of individuals and businesses.

thwest2• 12 years ago

You're making a deeply political claim here that individual morality should be secondary to business interests. Which unsurprisingly is a claim that will divide people. This attitude is a shining example of the consequences of the kind of liberalism that lets capitalism run amok, i.e. valuing individualism over any individual's actual values.

You seek to unite people, but for what purpose? I have yet to see business interests or _especially_ 'startup culture' tackle the real inequities and tragedies of our time. Startup culture is good at addressing the lifestyle issues of well off technophiles, not at preventing war, or justly distributing food or housing. (I am interested to see if Watsi can do anything better than Doctors Without Borders, or if it is just more focus on individuals rather than statistically significant outcomes). We ought to be looking for ways to transcend the limitations of business practices and reassert moral claims.

Note that people asking for Eich and Rice to get out of their lives aren't asking for government intervention or any formal rules set in place. If dropbox or mozilla want to lose their massive user base and keep profitable amoral corporate clients, that's fine, we'll leave them alone. If the economy eventually bifurcates and passionate progressive people replace large swaths of infrastructure with open, democratic organizations that seek to distance themselves from the corporate tradition I think it would be an enormous boon to the species.

Are we so adrift that we can't create a strong distinction between McCarthyism/Jewish persecution and asking our leaders to be cautious to war/pro-marriage? You actually see these positions as interchangeable and arbitrary? Should we simply abandon any moral or aesthetic position and let capitalism run its course?

johnrob• 12 years ago

Why is it ok discuss the legality of Uber or Airbnb? Aren't those political issues? We all claim that HN is not a political forum, but in the end we have a subjective standard. That standard is probably just the gut feeling of the moderators. So... if the thread is still here then it's appropriate by definition.

grandalf2• 12 years ago

Throughout your comment you refer to "politics" as if we're talking about which cable tv host we find less annoying.

Rice was one of the architects of one of the largest human atrocities in the past 50 years.

It stopped being politics around the time that the first concentration camp was built in Iraq after the US invaded.

joerich• 12 years ago

Grellas I think your point of view is very well. I got some conclusions from your comment and are that “this is business”, “we have to be open-minded to respect others opinions/ideas/decisions” and “we have to be empathic” even if DH wants to hire Ms Rice. I agree.

However, it has to be the other way around from DH. He is going to modify the image and the charisma of his company… and it may have negative consequences in his company (as we can see in the article and in these posts) and he will have to accept them like some people will stop using his service. If you hire someone who is going to make you lose some clients and stain your image… you better hire another one… there are plenty of people able to work in that position with a record as good as Ms Rice without all that suppose cr*p beneath them.

I think big companies shouldn’t mix with politicians with controversial records… even though they do... IMHO!

Clanan• 12 years ago

Board Member 1: Do we really want to business with Bob? Isn't he pro-slavery? Board Member 2: Of course we do! His cotton production is the cheapest in the country!

honksillet• 12 years ago

Well put.

dhimes2• 12 years ago

We can disagree. But she was a participant in something that I find horrible. I was one of the people she and her group fooled at the time.

Yes, indeed, I will hold it against her. Her morality is abhorrent, and it, frankly, is wrong to think that it should not have broader consequences for her living in society.

I think that if we got rid of this idea that "it's only business" or "she did what she had to do" or any of these other little slogans that allow us to dismiss antisocial behavior outside of the context in which it occurred, then we would be revoking some sort of implicit permission that so many seem to be willing to grant to people who wish to do bad things.

bowlofpetunias• 12 years ago

Deceit, torture, violation of civil rights, homophobia.

These things are not about politics or religion. This is about willfully and intentionally hurting others.

Please stop representing this as being merely about the personal political or religious views of the people involved. This is about people who either have, or had the intention of inflicting very real pain on others.

Others that include our friends, our families, our neighbors. People have every right and reason to protest putting these people in these position, and it has nothing to do with political intolerance.

parasubvert• 12 years ago

This has everything to do with political (in)tolerance.

There is nothing to be gained from asking a person to step down over their past political beliefs and actions, other than engendering fear and heightening mistrust among people with different points of view. It also happens to be illegal to fire employees over their beliefs in many states.

  Tolerating difference and changing minds can enact positive social change, destroying the heathens does little.

bambax3• 12 years ago

Does this line of reasoning always work though? Would you mind using Dropbox if they hired a convicted child rapist, or a white supremacist, as a member of the board and a likely spokesperson for the company?

Or is it just that you personally consider that the past actions of Ms Rice weren't a big deal, and that you don't understand why anyone would feel differently?

But holding people responsible for their questionable political views happens all the time; in 2010 Rick Sánchez was fired for calling Jon Stewart "a bigot". Once. Outside of his regular show. Were you upset then? (Maybe you were, I don't know; but it seems you should have been.)

nathas2• 12 years ago

No, it's not political, it's ethical.

I'm giving my data to a company to hold. They appoint someone who has no problem spying on my personal data and using it for their own _political_ ends, who has no strong concept of privacy? I dislike their ethical conduct. I'll be taking my data else where, thanks.

I don't inherently disagree with her politics, I disagree with the ethical clash. It's a social contract: I'll give Dropbox my data if you promise to be kind with it, and then they appoint someone who doesn't give a fuck about that concept.

abalone2• 12 years ago

Your language is calculated to make it sound as if it's just a difference of views. She was directly involved in mass murder, the destruction of a society and the crime of international aggression. If the Nuremberg laws were applied she'd be hanged. If it's OK to refuse felons board seats then it's certainly just to refuse war criminals.

EliAndrewC4• 12 years ago

Debates on Brendan Eich and Condoleezza Rice seem to boil down three separate questions:

1) Is there any belief or action not directly related to someone's job that should disqualify them from their position?

2) If the answer to #1 is yes, does this specific issue cross that threshold?

3) Does the answer to #1 change based on their position within a company, e.g. a regular employee vs a CEO?

I've seen well-reasoned arguments for many different combinations of those opinions, and I have a lot of respect for most of the combinations I've seen, e.g.

- Even if a white separatist contributed money to a campaign to revive "separate but equal" Jim Crow legislation, we shouldn't oppose their employment if they have a history of working well with all co-workers/employees in a diverse company.

- Some political beliefs/actions would disqualify someone, but gay marriage equality is not (yet) beyond the pale, especially given the high percentage of Americans who hold the same beliefs.

- Gay marriage is indeed an issue that should reasonably factor into employment positions, but only for a select few leadership positions such as CEO due to the disproportionate power within a company held by people in those few positions.

What makes these debates problematic is people talking past each other without realizing they're debating different questions. This gets worse because each of the 3 questions I listed have many sub-categories.

Since grellas' posted about question #1, I hope people recognize that and tailor their responses to the argument he is actually making, in the spirit of "colleagues trying to reason out the truth together". Because he argued for employment to be belief-neutral, I'll summarize the three arguments I'm seeing on these threads which are relevant to that specific question:

1) Past behavior is a signal for future action, and Rice's position on the Board of Directors sends an unacceptable signal about how seriously Dropbox takes privacy. Even a person against boycotts based on political or religious beliefs has strong reason to oppose Rice's appointment to the Board.

2) Rice is a war criminal who happens to have not been prosecuted. Refusing to do business with a company who appointed a criminal who'd committed equivalently-serious-but-non-political crimes and escaped prosecution wouldn't raise any eyebrows, so why should this?

3) All people have a responsibility to discourage behaviors which are provably detrimental to the functioning of a well-ordered society. General litmus-testing of beliefs (or even actions) causes more problems than it solves, but Rice's behavior was so far over the line that we are morally obligated to marginalize her and all of her colleagues who behaved similarly during the Bush administration.

I'm not sure whether I agree with any of the above arguments, but I respect each of them, and I hope that either Hacker News figures out how to debate them civilly or that the moderators pull all stories like this off the frontpage.

peteretep• 12 years ago

Mozilla is a community with a corporation attached. That community (as with most communities) is built on a set of shared values, and arguably needs to be led by someone sharing those values.

Dropbox is a company who exists to enrich their shareholders, and has customers, not community members.

That's the fundamental difference here.

gklitt• 12 years ago

Thank you for doing a fantastic job synthesizing others' arguments. HN could benefit from more level headed comments like this on controversial threads.

supersystem• 12 years ago

Since grellas' post was an argument about question #1, I hope people are able to recognize that and tailor their responses to the argument he is actually making, in the spirit of "colleagues trying to reason out the truth together".

I think grellas comment was tactless. He used his karma to publish a largely meta argument, ignoring the debate as well as the link and not responding to anyone else afterwards. This isn't "colleagues trying to reason out the truth together" to me. It's also indistinguishable from the type of comment you would post if you wanted to derail the more specific discussion. Often because your viewpoint lacks good arguments.

sigzero3• 12 years ago

What about people that can separate their personal from their business? Eich never did anything at all at Mozilla to push his point of view on gay marriage. If #1 is true, then that plays to him not doing so as well as CEO.

Rice is a different story I guess. You have to decide if you think #2 is right or not. I don't happen to think she is but I can see why people are hesitant for her to be on the board.

theorique2• 12 years ago

Rice is a war criminal who happens to have not been prosecuted.

That's a pretty serious claim, and more a matter of opinion. Depending on the situation, one could point such a charge at any person who was in a position of authority in a government of a nation that was fighting a war, if one were so inclined.

Shouldn't a person's status as a war criminal depend on whether they've actually been charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced?

RoadLinds• 12 years ago

I think there are three very different questions to consider here:

1) Should an employee be held accountable for his/her political beliefs. (Heck no.)

2) If someone with different political beliefs than I runs a company, will I boycott it? Ex - Owner of Whole Foods is against Universal Healthcare, so I'm boycotting, though I approve of him running the company. In such a case we support our ideologies through capitalism.

3) Should someone who runs a technology company - a multi-billion, multi-national that shapes our future and impacts our daily work lives & culture - should someone who actively holds and acts upon prejudice be allowed to run such a powerful company? No.

That third one is important - and somewhat scary - to consider. We've crossed a threshold. Large technology companies - and many startups - are literally creating the future. We are shaping the world in a way that goes way beyond the capacity of companies in decades past. There is a far greater responsibility to consider.

lynndylanhurley• 12 years ago

This isn't about a vague ideology (re: Eich). It's about ACTIONS that Condoleezza Rice, personally, has taken in the past, and using those actions to predict what she will probably do in the future. She has shown us, with her actions, that she cannot be trusted with sensitive data.

dylandrop• 12 years ago

If we allow people who we consider morally reprehensible to practice their business without question and profit off of us, perhaps there is something flawed with the business-as-usual approach.* It is only when you take a stand against these business-as-usual mindsets that pervade our culture do things change. We can't always expect perfection by people speaking out, but if we yell and scream at people who are angry and browbeat them into complacence, the problems (Rice's awful track record) are deemed acceptable by society and are likely to repeat themselves.

*By business-as-usual, I'm referring to your statement -- that someone can freely practice business no matter what acts they've committed, or wrongs they've perpetrated on humanity.

belorn2• 12 years ago

This is different, because a person who has been caught lying to push an agenda (or be perceived to do so) is not suitable for important positions in a business organization, regardless of their political, religious, or social believes.

If this was the past CEO of Enron, no one would care about his political, religious, or social believes. He would be unsuitable because what he has done (or said as in the role of Enron CEO).

bsder• 12 years ago

The fact that the NSA simply ignored everybody finally triggered this. We now live in a different tech world.

Techies are trying to figure out how to have an actual impact that affects the people and institutions in power. And are discovering that with a bit of creativity they can upend some of this.

I, personally, think these boycotts are good things. People are voting with their money and that actually gets attention. And, it is also subject to vote; those who disagree can spend their money there and oppose the boycott.

Both capitalism and democracy at work.

guelo• 12 years ago

It's a bit insane for a cloud company to hire a chief government wiretapper. It sends a strong signal that Dropbox stands on the wrong side of one of the big issues of the day.

Curmudgel• 12 years ago

ideological purity is now a litmus test for who can serve on a board of directors in the startup world.

Most of the negative comments on this thread are about her actions, not her ideological purity. The criticisms focus on her role in the Iraq War, 9/11, Katrina, not her political affiliation. Critics are outraged that the candidate hired for her decision making ability has a record of making very poor decisions that had severe deleterious effects.

It is easy enough to whip oneself up into a lather over Ms. Rice’s policies if one disagrees with them but what about the half of America (or whatever significant percentage) that does not. And why should this be relevant to board service?

Ms. Rice has expressed support for warrantless wiretapping and mass surveillance. Many users are concerned that these views are inappropriate for someone working at a company that hosts our data.

Politics, religion, and social worldviews divide people and have no place as limiting tests in a business environment. Scolding and finger-wagging...

Her support for mass surveillance is very relevant to Dropbox's business.

I disagree strongly with your supercilious characterization of the outrage as an example of close mindedness and bigotry. I believe that you made your post in earnest but it is hard not to see it as malicious. Your fatuous attempts to classify the outrage about the hiring of a supporter of mass surveillance, torture, and the Iraq War as similar to the oppression of minorities and the blacklisting of suspected Communists in the 1950s is so outrageous that it is offensive.

Ms. Rice is not a founder, and she is not being persecuted for her political views. She is disliked because of her actions, not her views, and your failure to distinguish between the two is troubling.

vacri8• 12 years ago

Her track record is detestable, but there is a very salient issue that is relevant to her being a director of a data holding company: her previous authorisation of data invasion.

Whether or not you are for or against her other activities, they are irrelevant to her position as director. But taking data without warrants? That is something that is directly relevant to Dropbox's core product.

That's not a matter of 'free opinion', it's a serious warning for clients of the company, that there is a new director that is personally responsible for expanding surveillance and authorising the taking of private data without due process.

mmanfrin• 12 years ago

    What matters is upholding the abiding principle (precious in a free society) that people can hold divergent views on such topics as politics, religion, and society

There is a wide gap of difference between holding a specific political view, and being a part of an administration that pushed and enacted a specific political agenda that did actual harm to our country/world.

microjesus3• 12 years ago

Regardless of driving factors (you state religion, politics) the end result is someone that advocated for warrantless taps, torture and war. It does not come down to anything other than "should a person like this have access or even advice bearing responsibilities on my data?". You're way off point here bud.

insulanus• 12 years ago

I don't think anyone should drop Drop box because they hired Ms. Rice. I do think people should drop drop box if they think that will increase the odds of their dropbix account being hoovered up by government affiliated agencies unknown.

EricDeb• 12 years ago

That's the issue though. Libertarians often say things like "If you don't like Walmart, don't shop there," which is fine, but puts the responsibility on the consumer to know the various ideologies of the businesses they choose to support. If we want to live in a society in which this responsibility lies with the consumer, then the people who make up a company's board of directors are an important part of this decision making process.

rasz_pl• 12 years ago

Lets Godwin this bitch right up.

Would you like Hitler on board of directors? Sure, he invaded half of Europe, Asia and Africa, then there is holocaust.

On the other hand he will guarantee mad money for your company. We are talking IBM money, Hugo Boss money, VW/Mercedes/Bosch money.

  SCREW the dead, we are rich baby!

pipukamal• 12 years ago

http://www.eteamz.com/6423568/

araftery• 12 years ago

No. This is not an issue of partisanship.

Yes it is. Nearly every reason on there is partisan. Say what you want about "trustworthiness" and the fact that having an "untrustworthy" person on a cloud service provider's board is worrisome. Frankly, it's not. Even if Rice were untrustworthy, I don't think my data would be in any danger.

If you're going to make complaints on partisan grounds, at least don't veil them as some kind of assessment of character.

Shivetya• 12 years ago

Wholly disagree.

However I am always amazed how much effort so many here put into trying to take offense, show their claimed offense, instead of acting when similar if not worse is coming from the current administration.

Really guys, grow the fuck up.

We do not know all the facts that Rice and others in her position had let alone the options available. We did however have our time back them to rail against them yet the same railing against her are fawning over the drone assassin we have in office now.

So honest, take your fake angst, your damnable wannabe clique and shove it. You do nothing with the evil at your door today only to jump on the train of least resistance.

Oh, its easy to pillory Rice, Bush, or any of those evil Republicans, but damn if you stand up to those in power now. At least Snowden did, he has done more than the rest of this site will ever do.

jmnicolas• 12 years ago

I just closed my DropBox account with the reason "Condoleezza Rice". I want those people to know there are consequences to their actions.

Now if I was rational about it and it was as easy as living without DropBox, I would stop using Microsoft softwares.

thesis• 12 years ago

I've kind of been waiting for a reason to switch to Google Drive because of (mainly) price and a few other factors. While not the main reason, this is the tip of the iceberg.

kayoone• 12 years ago

How Dropbox could possibly not expect a shitstorm like this is beyond me.

ajsharp3• 12 years ago

What makes you say they didn't? They probably just don't care.

scottydelta2• 12 years ago

Well I have been planning to host my own dropbox like service on my own server for myself and I think now is the high time that I do!! Bye bye Dropbox!!

VikingCoder3• 12 years ago

Who's next on their Board of Directors, Linda Tripp?

dmourati• 12 years ago

Pol Pot?

boston1999• 12 years ago

Politics aside, I don't see what she can contribute to a technology company like Dropbox!

smsm42• 12 years ago

Government connections -> contracts -> profit.

homulilly3• 12 years ago

Dropbox has made it pretty clear in the past that security and privacy isn't a major priority for them and this appointment makes it even more obvious.

That said, any US company doesn't have much choice when it comes to handing over information so I don't know how big of an impact this will have in practice.

cpt11382• 12 years ago

Rice brings Enterprise and Government contracts. In terms of Dropbox's valuation, I don't really see consumer dollars justifying any business model they have. Just look to Palantir if you want to see an example of a service that does very well with no consumer dollars at all.

mikeash16• 12 years ago

Here are some things I've "learned" from the comments in this thread:

1. Public discussion and encouraging people to vote with their wallet does not belong in a civil society.

2. Nonviolent grassroots campaigns are anti-democratic.

3. It's OK to do terrible things as long as you had good intentions.

Seriously, are you guys all completely insane? The quality of these comments is just amazingly bad. It goes beyond the standard "internet bad" comments full of trolling and bad reasoning, and over the edge into "actively ridiculous".

I'm sure there are good arguments to be made against this but they aren't being made here. Please think about what you're about to write makes any kind of sense before you comment.

Edit: if I were more conspiracy minded, I'd be wondering if the Brendan Eich affair was deliberately created as a weak example to create a wedge and discredit the whole idea of attacking companies based on the politics of their high-level people. It certainly strikes me as unlikely that there would be so many negative comments towards this if the Eich business hadn't first put so many people in that mood.

ebiester• 12 years ago

Within the progressive community, and other activist communities from all sides (in and out of the US), there is a line of thinking that individuals should actively seek to do business with companies that share their values, use neutral companies when avoidable, and endure discomfort before using products of companies actively doing evil.

I think that before we can discuss the "hypocrisy" of this versus Mozilla, or of the merit of such protests, we should first ask ourselves whether we agree with the above statement as part of our core values.

After that, we can discuss what actions line up within the three categories, and if the actions of the company are equivalent to the actions of the leadership.

To me, the Iraq issue is important, but it is not as important to me as my right to be a first class citizen of this society. My friends who work on the issue would have a different perspective.

Thus, to me, this is a warning indicator that Dropbox may not align with my values, and is worth investigating, but isn't worth making a quick decision. That said, I felt the same way about Mozilla.

Many of the comments that I've seen here are indirectly addressing this issue, but I think this is a value proposition that we each have to make within ourselves first.

davidgaw• 12 years ago

The way I would "drop Dropbox" if they or Rice give in to this shameful attack on diversity of thought. Otherwise, thanks in part to this effort, I will remain a loyal Dropbox customer for life.

pbreit4• 12 years ago

At first, this Democrat thought this was a joke. I'm prepared to believe it still might be a show of how ridiculous this line of thinking is.

Rice is a huge "get" for Dropbox who I think has a good chance to be a significant asset for Dropbox once all this dust blows over. Rice has demonstrated time and again that she works for her team. In this case, that could mean making Dropbox the strongest, securest offering in the market. She is bright, well-connected and effective. Hardly anyone is mentioning her tenure at Stanford which is obviously a big plus for the company.

I don't see strong parallels to the Mozilla case. Different role, different company, different subject.

havaze• 12 years ago

This is insane. All that's done here is seeking a scapegoat that can be hold responsible for everything. This is nonsense, the American people are responsible for the decisions of the very same people they voted for, and nobody else. She never has held a democratically elected office you say? That doesn't matter either, the system which allowed this to happen was.

Now I'm not saying dropping dropbox is an unreasonable decision, privacy concerns come to mind, but what's one of the options the article suggests as replacement? Ah yes Microsoft, one of the most "evil" companies in existence. So we trade one evil for another, but wait there is more! What's about the companies that made you mobile phone, clothing, car and the other thousand things you use in your daily life? Well, if you finished checking every single one of them, and dropping products from the "evil" ones then please send me an email with a list of goodies that can be considered ethical. Or wait, you'll not have a computer any more at this point.

crazy1van• 12 years ago

My thoughts as I read this article:

"She helped start the Iraq War" Ok, that was a costly war with a lousy outcome.

"She was involved in the creation of the Bush administration's torture program" Ok, torture and no due process seems pretty antithetical to a free society.

"Rice not only supports warrantless wiretaps, she authorized several" Ok, I like the 4th amendment and that weakened it even more.

"Rice was on the Board of Directors at Chevron" Omg, what did Chevron do on the same order as torture and warrantless wiretapping??? Oh, turns out nothing. Or at least this article offers no evidence. Kinda weakens the whole argument.

sfk• 12 years ago

Comparing this voicing of disapproval to Mc Carthyism is completely disingenuous, and I'm surprised that you do not know better.

In the 1950s it was the government who harassed innocent citizens. You cannot escape the government, because it has absolute power.

What we are seeing here on the other hand is a peaceful protest of free citizens exercising their right to free speech.

KhalilK• 12 years ago

There's a broken reference in the site: <a href="www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/22/bush-adviser-rice-gave-ok-waterboard/">lied about the extent to which she was involved</a>

Fix: Add http:// to the link.

Ryel• 12 years ago

It sounds like Dropbox is giving the middle finger to everyday consumers and this is simply a move to get Dropbox on every government machine.

avani• 12 years ago

I'm not about to read through 600 comments to find out if someone has already asked, so apologies in advance, but what is the state of viable dropbox alternatives right now? Through their college promotions and puzzle hunts, I have ~20GB of free storage there (afaik in perpetuity). Is there anything comparable?

mkr-hn7• 12 years ago

I've used Copy for a while. I wrote a post on it comparing features with Dropbox: http://mkronline.com/2013/09/25/dropbox-vs-copy-a-comparison...

beggi• 12 years ago

I dropped Dropbox about a year ago, after realizing I only used it for backups. Although a nice feature in idea I actually never accessed my files on other computers, so I dropped Dropbox and switched to Arq backups. I recommend it for anyone with the same dilemma.

Zelphyr• 12 years ago

For those comparing this to the ouster of Brendan Eich: It seems to me there is a distinction in that he, despite his ignorant views, was able to keep them separate from his work.

Making this country less free and more war-like (e.g.; less safe) WAS her work and she did it all too well. Her ties to the NSA alone are serious cause for concern. Do we really want someone in a position of power at a place that stores massive amounts of (supposedly) private user data?

I already removed 99.9% of my data from Dropbox after the NSA revelations with the assumption that the latter had access regardless of whether Dropbox was complicit. I assumed they weren't. With former Secretary Rice on the board I now assume Dropbox will become complicit and so I will delete my account altogether.

brudgers• 12 years ago

The most positive aspect of Rice's appointment is that it is a clear signal as to how DropBox is likely to act when evaluating claims that a particular course of action will affect the United State's national security interests as those interests have been defined in recent years. It expresses that DropBox's operations are likely to be in accord with a particular interpretation of American patriotism.

Whether one as an American agrees with that interpretation of American patriotism or holds an orthogonal view, or whether a non-American sees that interpretation as right or not, individuals will now be able to make an informed choice about if, when, and how they use DropBox. There should be no wishful thinking, DropBox has declared itself part of the American military-industrial complex.

Such honesty is refreshing irrespective of my opinion regarding the nature of patriotism or what constitutes superior forms of its expression.

nextstep• 12 years ago

Ok, I agree with most of this. What is the best Dropbox alternative?

alecco• 12 years ago

Dropbox board and CEO decided this was a good move. They know it will alienate the original userbase, the tech savy, the first movers. In exchange they'll access old money, the old school corporations and government agencies.

They decided to screw the current userbase for a new userbase. It's over, just get over it. The maximum you can do now is refuse to use Dropbox.

It's sad how tech is getting to a cycle of befriend-and-switch on the community. This will surely make people more cynical and will make it much harder for upcoming startups. This is the highest cost we'll pay about this new trend.

AznHisoka• 12 years ago

exactly. I dun even understand the love affair ppl have with DropBox. It's just a cute GUI over FTP.

jalfresi• 12 years ago

(With apologies to Zed Shaw, I am just using him as a high profile example)

Zed Shaw can be an asshole. But that guy can sure sling code, and I'll eat up anything he programs. Hire him as CEO of a large public company? Now we have a problem...

Brendan Eich actively opposes gay marriage. But he programs at Netscape and invents Javascript. Love the guys work. Hire him as CEO? Now we have a problem...

Hopefully this shows that the responsibilities at different levels within a business have differing impacts on society. So what if Zed Shaw is an asshole as a software developer? At that level he lacks the political clout to negatively impact society on such a large scale. We can then see that his short temper and sometimes vicious (and often hilarious) barbs are confined in reach. But what if he was President of the United States, sat in a room with Putin, discussing the Ukrane situation? Diplomacy may suffer.

This is why I had a problem with Eich as CEO of Mozilla. His backwards political views would have the political clout and mechanisms to negatively impact society.

As for Rice being appointed to Dropbox? I simply do not trust someone who has been shown to lie for political ends, to the point of invasion of a soverign nation and promote, participate in and endorse war crimes. I require COMPLETE TRUST in any data storage provider I use and as such deleted my dropbox account.

dinduks• 12 years ago

I find it surprising that people are so desperate they beg the Dropbox company and still want to use the software after this.

1) You CAN live without Dropbox. There are alternatives (I personally use BTSync, which is great). 2) You shouldn't NOT be using an American service that holds and versions your data in first place. It is not new that all these services are wiretrapped, or at least easily accessible by the gov (not mentioning they sell/use your privacy to make money). 3) They won't kick out such an "extremely brilliant and accomplished individual". 4) Even if she gets kicked or leaves, this is yet another reason to not trust them, since they're blind/careless enough to hire her.

mattbeck• 12 years ago

LOL.

I was just hilariously accused of being a racist for tweeting the #dropdropbox hash tag.

frik• 12 years ago

Wow the HN anti flamewar algo (as someone mentioned)...

As Dropbox is a YC alumi it puts also a bad light on HN.

chrisBob3• 12 years ago

If you really don't like dropbox you won't tell people to quit. You will tell them to get free accounts and:

dd if=/dev/random of=~/Dropbox/junkFile bs=1024 count=1000000 Adjusting the count according to the account size (obviously).

If you do it again a few minutes later they will even help you out and store both copies!

jon_black• 12 years ago

I'm tempted to write nothing more than the following quote:

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi

But of course, Ms. Rice would probably have said the same thing about the reasons why she made the decisions she did.

We are all struggling with the same thing. I want/expect/believe the following, and here is my excuse/reason/proof of it. I find it hard to be open minded when so many are driven by their dirty ideals - myself included.

VuongN• 12 years ago

If you find yourself needing to use Dropbox (or other cloud providers) for one reason or another, I would humbly suggest giving us a try: https://www.ncryptedcloud.com/. We try to remedy the situation by allowing what cloud storage providers do best: syncing & sharing of data and we secure them. Having the data without the correct key render the data useless to any prying eyes.

dbg31415• 12 years ago

Worked at Firefox... should work at Dropbox, right?

Houshalter• 12 years ago

This is incredibly childish HN. First the guy from firefox and now this. Politics is the Mind-Killer.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

bogwog• 12 years ago

The only thing this article said which I agreed with was the wiretapping part. The other stuff: torture, Chevron, the war in Iraq, etc had nothing to do with Dropbox

msoad• 12 years ago

I'm from Middle East. I can't be the one who make Ms. Rice richer and happier. Goodbye Dropbox.

mkhalil• 12 years ago

I am happy to hear more people understanding the notion that every dollar you spend is a vote. No matter what one may believe, being ignorant to the fact that business and politics have a lot to do with each other does not make you innocent. Spend your dollars responsibly. In fact, I'd even go as far to say that the way people spend their money can impact their government/politics/society in a much more drastic way than voting in the booths.

Rice was a war monger. She broke many laws-including international laws which we tend to throw out of the way when it comes to us-that were put in to protect us, the people. You think politicians don't choose their which business they invest in based on politics of people involved think again.

We need to change the way we spend our real vote, money, if we want real reform in our society. We need to show our influence and have politicians think again before passing the next SOPA act, or invading our privacy.

morgante2• 12 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree with this cause, but think the framing is terrible. It's clouding the picture by making things political when they don't need to be.

Rice's support of the Iraq war does not matter. Dropbox will not be starting wars or having anything to do with them, besides possibly getting lucrative DoD contracts.

Rice's position on torture does not matter. Dropbox has no reason or likelihood of torture.

Rice's involvement with Chevron does not matter. If anything, this is evidence that she might be an okay choice.

The only thing which matters is her position on warrantless wiretapping. It's not political. I'm just not comfortable having someone make key privacy decisions who, on the record, doesn't believe in my right to privacy.

Even if (bizarrely) you think mass surveillance might be acceptable, you should oppose Rice being on the board. Our system works best when there's an adversarial relationship between actors—when the government comes knocking, corporations will at least ask a couple questions about why, even just to verify this is a legitimate government request. Having someone who designed, and firmly believes in, the surveillance state on BOTH sides of the table destroys that.

So, yes, drop Dropbox.

newsreader2• 12 years ago

Dropbox deciding to employ Condoleezza Rice is not reason enough for me to drop Dropbox; sorry. I will continue to use Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, and whatever else is out there.

jliptzin• 12 years ago

I've been meaning to switch to Google Drive for a while now, this is a nice catalyst to actually get me to do it.

p0nce• 12 years ago

HubiC is 25 free gigs.

krick• 12 years ago

I don't know who author of that mentions by saying "we", but I somehow don't feel I should respond to his call. I don't even really know who is that woman he is speaking about, I don't know about politics, I don't want to know. I can't even recall without googling who's running Dropbox right now and I surely don't know (I wonder if I could!) if they are good or bad people. I know Dropbox. Dropbox is a service that does something valuable to me. So, why should I be concerned?

I could be concerned if author explained me why and how is that Dropbox does something "bad". If it'd show that it will hurt customers or dolphins or whatever. I surely would be concerned if it'd show that there's no way we can trust Dropbox anymore because of that. But if it would be so I don't think I should trust them anyway, because, you know, Condoleezza Rice doesn't fall from the sky right in the directors chair usually, she's invited first. They are already connected somehow.

But manifesting some organization (that does something useful, which rarely the manifesting ones do) because of some woman-who-supported-war (or man-who-is-against-gay-marriages, for that sake) is sitting the hight chair in it is stupid. I don't think I could use anything if I protested about every company having some personality I disagree with in its owners/directors list (however their names may be somewhat less known than "Condoleezza Rice").

And if you want to hurt that Rice specifically for some reason — too bad, but I don't think that's big problem for her. I believe she has money to avoid dying of starvation anyway already.

shittyanalogy• 12 years ago

Just remember; Dropbox is convenient, and with that convenience come Condoleezza Rice having possession of your data.

rodolphoarruda• 12 years ago

That picture of a dead girl is really disturbing. The link should have some sort of warning for graphic content.

sys32768• 12 years ago

Safe to assume the persons behind the 900+ comments here approve of the political views and actions of the Hacker News owners and staff?

Dang, I guess I do!

rpowers• 12 years ago

No. This is not a trend I wish to support. Turning private business decisions into politicized movements is not cool.

lohankin• 12 years ago

If I open a thread "Drop HN", will it be published here? The site did more than enough during the last week to promote hate and intolerance. What do you think?

johnpowell• 12 years ago

On 20 March 2003 I was a student studying accounting at Portland State University. By the end of the night I tried to block the Burnside bridge and the cops beat the shit out of me on the south-side steps for protesting the war..

jqm• 12 years ago

I just deleted my Dropbox account. It was a free account anyway. I found it contained about GB of files I hadn't accessed in a couple of years.

Then I realized....

What a wise move on the part of Dropbox to bring Rice on board. They probably will free up a few Petabytes of space from non-paying geeks:)

Drop Dropbox

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