Mozilla Moving Forward

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/14/mozilla-moving-forward/

by tweakz • 12 years ago

175 251 12 years ago

blog.mozilla.org

simbolit• 12 years ago

also read: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2014/04/12/earth-to-mozilla...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7584900

was on HN homepage earlier in the day.

natural219• 12 years ago

I'm still mad about the Brendan Eich thing. Like, mad. I'm totally fine with anybody pursuing whatever kind of political agenda they want, but at the moment you start to derail real progress, the moment you attack one of the best organizations who has literally been busting its ass for the last decade to change the world for no profit...

Well, you declared war. I think this whole debacle should be a rallying cry that we're not going to accept this kind of bullying anymore.

The worst part is, the progressive platform has some really important things to say about the way we live. We're not an equal society yet. We still have more changes we need to make to secure the freedom and happiness of everybody, especially groups that have been historically marginalized.

All the more reason to shut down the bullies who have domineered the narrative, produced nothing but useless bickering, and have sought nothing but divisiveness at every turn in the everlasting quest for more pageviews. I'm looking at you, Gawker.

Don't tolerate this any more. Brendan Eich was just one casualty. It's time to start sticking up for ourselves.

pgrote• 12 years ago

"It's time to start sticking up for ourselves"

Can you clarify what group does "ourselves" reference?

k__• 12 years ago

Probably people with other opinions than the masses.

bkor4• 12 years ago

"the moment you attack one of the best organizations"

Nobody attacked Mozilla. You're totally off base.

i80and• 12 years ago

Some people fell just one step shy of demanding that others boycott Firefox. I'd call that an attack on Mozilla.

M2Ys4U• 12 years ago

Plenty of people did attack Mozilla, though, and it was quite disheartening to watch.

carlio6• 12 years ago

OKCupid did - they told people to ditch Firefox - http://news.yahoo.com/okcupid-urges-boycott-mozilla-cites-ce...

6cxs2hd6• 12 years ago

People have strong feelings about this on all sides (and I think there are more than two sides).

However hopefully everyone on that whole spectrum will agree -- and never forget -- how OkCupid and Sam Yagan decided to step into it and act like opportunistic hypocrites.

And hopefully everyone on that spectrum will give their support to Mozilla now, because it makes the internet a better place for all of us.

bzbarsky9• 12 years ago

Death threats against Mozilla employees and contributors don't count as attacks on Mozilla in your book?

Yoric6• 12 years ago

I work at Mozilla and, really, it looks very much like an attack.

Several calls to boycotts, several petitions asking for the resignation of our CEO, demonstrations, insults, death threats, ...

Note that the situation is pretty symmetric: we now get from the conservatives what we got from the liberals two weeks ago.

danso2• 12 years ago

Sorry, but "sticking up" for what exactly? Eich's defenders seem to treat him like a child...like, he doesn't know how to phrase a statement like, "I'm against civil unions, not gays, which is why I donated to Prop 8". This isn't about Eich being punished for a "mistake" back in 2008, his detractors are unhappy that Eich does not believe that Prop 8 was a mistake, back in 2008 and today, six years later.

I'm not going to get into a debate about whether Prop 8 was right or wrong. But don't treat this like it's a witch hunt for long past grievances. Until he says otherwise, Eich is a supporter of Prop 8. That doesn't make him evil, that doesn't make him incapable of holding leadership. But for people for whom Prop 8 is a big deal, I think it's understandable why they would continue to press the issue with Eich and his leadership.

saraid216• 12 years ago

Effectively, people are saying that we should defend Eich for the same reason we should defend weev: less that they are people and more that they are pawns.

smsm423• 12 years ago

Prop 8 was not about civil unions. If you want to discuss it, at least get your facts right. Benefits equality, etc. that is commonly understood under civil union umbrella existed in California long before prop 8, and prop 8 was not going to change that. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_Califo... For people for whom prop 8 is a big deal it would be a good thing to at least know what it was about.

wwweston2• 12 years ago

I'm not going to get into a debate about whether Prop 8 was right or wrong.

Take a look at why you wrote that statement, and you start to understand why Eich didn't want to make it about that either.

Also take a look at what he did say:

https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

if we're going to talk about his ability to phrase statements.

EDIT: downvoted into fairly negative territory for linking to Eich's statement and pointing out that prop 8 discussion is hazardous? Really? That reinforces the point, not contradicts it.

patrickg_zill2• 12 years ago

I think your point is (paraphrasing), we canned a very productive engineer and manager over his un-PC views expressed in his personal life, but which no one at his organization was affected by; and in return, since none of the people criticizing him or pushing for his departure has the ability to truly replace his talent, we have the prospect of the unproductive people criticizing the people who actually get things done.

How accurate am I in understanding your view?

rjzzleep• 12 years ago

i think the real bitter irony here is that brendan eich not only helped build, but also protected the platform that helped oust him. when i say the platform, I don't mean the web, I mean the open web, where you can freely express yourself as aggressively as you want(which is a good thing).

not to step on anyones toes, but we effectively ousted a very productive engineer from a company he helped found to replace him with a marketing guy(no offense really, i know he's been with mozilla forever, and loyalty deserves to be rewarded).

i really hope i won't have this moment in 10 years thinking back, man where did mozilla ideals move so much away from mine, and i know everyone is going to jump on this part of cynic good ol me, especially all the mozillians here, but i still very well remember the time i spent in irc ~20 years ago, where the people thinking about mass surveillance were a select few stamped as insane anti social paranoid geeks.

king_jester3• 12 years ago

but which no one at his organization was affected by;

Uh what? There are most certainly LGBTQ folks who work for Mozilla in some capacity or another and they most certainly are affected by nationally focused political efforts to deny them access to a basic institution.

wonderzombie9• 12 years ago

Un-PC is a nice way to gloss over actively denying a group of people their human rights on a half-assed reading of a religious text.

And who the heck are you to make such a blanket statement about who's productive and who isn't? It's a false dichotomy. Moreover your statement evokes an incredible amount of arrogance and hubris.

crystaln2• 12 years ago

I read this twice, and I still have no idea what you are trying to say, which side of any issue you are on, or what makes you any different from over-reacting haters on either side.

bane• 12 years ago

He must be talking about Eich, since he was clearly supporting the group of bullies who were so flagrant and pernicious that they'd even pass a law to prevent grown consenting adults from having meaningful relationships with each other.

kourt2• 12 years ago

"which side of any issue you are on"

Maybe he's on everybody's side. What freedom is more important than the freedom to be true to one's self? What good is free speech[1] when the private, individual exercise thereof results in the professional equivalent of capital punishment?

[1] Whether campaign contributions are always identical to speech in all contexts is immaterial here: in this case, they're close enough.

homulilly4• 12 years ago

Pretending to be on one side while implicitly supporting the other. Fairly common line of thinking amongst self-proclaimed moderates who try to hide, or wont acknowledge their own reactionary politics.

jhonovich• 12 years ago

"produced nothing but useless bickering"

Brendan Eich produced _nothing_ but useless bickering?

kaonashi• 12 years ago

I find absolutely nothing wrong with the way he was treated.

To say that somehow he was the victim of bullying, when he was the one who was taking action to deny other people their rights, is so morally backwards I have a hard time conceding that you're arguing in good faith.

radmuzom• 12 years ago

It's strange that this is getting downvoted. Nobody went and physically abused Eich to remove him as CEO. It's strange that those who are supporting Eich for his right to his own views are against our right to express outrage.

nostromo2• 12 years ago

And where do you draw the line?

Are you going to defend people that oppose Women's Suffrage too? What about slavery supporters?

These were just political opinions once too. But today you'll find that they get you fired as CEO. And for good reason: blacks and women (and gays) are your customers and employees and business partners.

batmansbelt• 12 years ago

And friends, family, and neighbours.

twoodfin6• 12 years ago

I'm genuinely curious where you would draw your line. Would you support firing Mozilla's CEO if it's revealed he voted for Mitt Romney? What if he gave his campaign $1000?

Mikeb858• 12 years ago

Well let's just fire all Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus since those religions all traditionally are against homosexuality and also have sexist elements.

leoc• 12 years ago

How about Stalin apologists? Should they be tolerated in high-ranking technical or creative jobs?

jessriedel2• 12 years ago

The classic reference here is "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mills.

http://www.bartleby.com/130/

He persuasively advocates that the line shouldn't be drawn based on the acceptability or reasonability of the opinion, but on whether the behavior is mere communication (i.e. leaflets, speeches, opinions, blogs, TV ads) or actual action. In particular, when the causal influence of the alleged wrong doing propagates through the minds of voting citizens, this is not something that ought to be retaliated against (by the government or by individuals).

Incidentally, Mills strongly argues that speech should be protected even under the assumption that it is wrong and that its suppression would not have slippery slope effects. If you can't see why what would make sense, I encourage you to read him.

For more on arguments like Mills, as well as some modern push-back grounded in the principle of offense, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/

outside12342• 12 years ago

I'm going to draw the line at conflating people's personal opinions with their professional ones.

I totally disagree with Brendan's position on gay rights, but I completely support his right to have his own personal opinions.

If we don't separate these issues, we are only enabling other corporations to fire leaders because they _DO_ personally support gay rights.

That's not acceptable - but we can't have it both ways.

baddox8• 12 years ago

It sounds like you need to be able to predict the future in order to know what political views are currently acceptable for CEOs to support. What if in the future we live in a stateless socialist society, and the idea of wage labor or private ownership of means of production is widely considered immoral or repugnant? Or what if in the future we live in a stateless capitalist society, where the idea of taxation or economic regulation is widely considered morally repugnant? Or worse yet, what if society reverts back to considering slavery acceptable and abolitionism repugnant?

coldtea5• 12 years ago

Are you going to defend people that oppose Women's Suffrage too? What about slavery supporters? These were just political opinions once too.

Still are. And a lover of democracy and freedom should defend (not to be conflated with "advocate for") all of these people.

They are entitles to their opinions, they are entitled to have their opinions battle other opinions in the court of public opinion, and they are entitled not to lose their jobs or be beaten etc over them.

Now, if they do something against the law inspired by those opinions, they should of course be punished. But merely having them it's totally their right.

Free speech is only free insofar as it comes with no other consequences besides counter-arguments.

For, those that believe otherwise, I'd say that their opinoon means that people who talked against slavery in 1840 and were fired, ostracized from their community or beaten up were also living in a "free speach" environment.

m52go• 12 years ago

Time considerations are vital.

Supporting slavery right now is immoral. Opposing gay marriage right now is NOT immoral right now however much you can't stand it.

macrael• 12 years ago

I actually really liked Marco Arment's take on this. http://www.marco.org/2014/04/04/political-views

As time marches forward our society's tolerance for certain viewpoints has changed. This is a good thing.

zobzu• 12 years ago

Or.. this is a bad thing.

It goes totally both ways. What if tolerance for your viewpoint is lower? You're not longer allowed to have an opinion not shared by the majority?

Not sure how that's a good thing at all.

Imagine you are 100 years ago and your viewpoint is "gay marriage should be allowed"? in fact, back then, some people would probably be killed for thinking that. The vast majority of the collective conscientiousness certainly thought this was wrong.

And look where we are today.

rmrfrmrf• 12 years ago

I would take a step back and reflect on why you're so upset. The reaction you've posted is almost awkwardly inappropriate given the circumstances.

arrrg5• 12 years ago

“I don’t think having a CEO who represents the company that donated to prevent gay marriage is cool. I will stop using the product of the company. I ask you to do the same.”

That was the most common reaction. I think that’s completely harmless and unproblematic. That’s how responsible adults should act. So I’m not really sure what you are angry about.

benatkin• 12 years ago

Cool story. A more marketing-oriented person being CEO is a better choice for a community-oriented organization, and should have been made by the board in the first place. This [1] puts it succinctly. "The mistake made was not made by Brendan Eich" and "The people who messed up here are the board of the Mozilla Corporation." This is Mozilla's board doing what they should have done all along, except that Brendan Eich can't be CTO anymore.

1: http://seldo.com/weblog/2014/04/04/on_brendan_eich_equality_...

homulilly4• 12 years ago

Brendan Eich was working pretty hard to derail real progress too, ironically. It's pretty understandable for people to be upset about the appointment of someone unqualified to CEO of an organization they strongly care about and someone who actively works against equal rights is incredibly unqualified to lead an organization like Mozilla, no matter their technical or business expertise.

hackuser7• 12 years ago

Brendan Eich was working pretty hard to derail real progress

I don't support what he did, but did he do anything beyond make the donation?

ebbv• 12 years ago

Oh please. Bullying my ass. People found his views repugnant and reacted accordingly.

Maybe you don't think supporting Prop 8 is repugnant, but lots of us do.

This isn't a question of him supporting second amendment rights, or thinking the ACA is over-reaching. This is him actively supporting the squashing of the civil rights of a minority group because he doesn't approve of their relationship. Not only the donating to Prop 8, but even now in 2014 standing by those views.

It is certainly his right to hold those views, but they are repellant enough that I no longer felt OK using Mozilla products. Other people shared my view. Enough people that Mozilla felt compelled to react.

This is not bullying. This is freedom of speech all around and a free market, and a result of that.

You and Andrew Sullivan pretending Eich is a victim of bullying are being ridiculous. If he had been a member of NAMBLA would anyone say it was bullying? No. Prop 8 support may not be as bad as NAMBLA, but it's pretty awful in my view all the same.

lotsofmangos• 12 years ago

I think it was good that Eich stepped down as he was a bad choice for CEO as it is a leadership role in which politics matters.

Your militancy on this however is poisonous, there is a need for people building things here, not preparing for one of these abstract wars on concepts that folk seem to so love.

Mozilla is a software collaboration and it needs to ship, the last thing they need is social warriors stirring the pot. If you want to help, fix bugs.

Nobody won anything here, at best we all maybe learned something.

Tloewald3• 12 years ago

I'm totally fine with anybody pursuing whatever kind of political agenda they want, but at the moment you start to derail real progress, the moment you attack one of the best organizations who has literally been busting its ass for the last decade to change the world for no profit

1) So you're contradicting yourself in one sentence.

I wish to pursue an equal rights agenda, and in so doing protest, loudly, when people who publicly act against equal rights are promoted to prominent positions. Now, I didn't expect Brendan Eich to be fired (he wasn't) or step down (which he did) but maybe to actually explain himself (he didn't). If his feelings are so strongly held, and he values free speech so much, then by all means let him make his case.

2) Mozilla is a non-profit, but plenty of the people working for it make perfectly decent salaries.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Mozilla-Salaries-E19129.htm

All the more reason to shut down the bullies who have domineered the narrative, produced nothing but useless bickering, and have sought nothing but divisiveness at every turn in the everlasting quest for more pageviews. I'm looking at you, Gawker.

3) Seems to me like it's the pot calling the kettle black.

king_jester3• 12 years ago

I feel like there's a bingo card that has all of your half-assed excuses on it.

I'm totally fine with anybody pursuing whatever kind of political agenda they want, but at the moment you start to derail real progress, the moment you attack one of the best organizations who has literally been busting its ass for the last decade to change the world for no profit...

I'm fine with pursuing your politics until I feel your politics are inconvenient.

Well, you declared war. I think this whole debacle should be a rallying cry that we're not going to accept this kind of bullying anymore.

Not tolerating bullies that seek to curtail your existence through law does not make you a bully.

The worst part is, the progressive platform has some really important things to say about the way we live. We're not an equal society yet. We still have more changes we need to make to secure the freedom and happiness of everybody, especially groups that have been historically marginalized.

How exactly are you going to do that by letting the CEO of Mozilla be a supporter of Prop 8? How exactly are you helping anyone by outright enshrining in law a discrimination against gay folks?

All the more reason to shut down the bullies who have domineered the narrative, produced nothing but useless bickering, and have sought nothing but divisiveness at every turn in the everlasting quest for more pageviews. I'm looking at you, Gawker.

Of course, all those people who are affected by this are just being decisive and mean, leave Brendan Eich alone!

Don't tolerate this any more. Brendan Eich was just one casualty. It's time to start sticking up for ourselves.

Sticking up for ourselves is what people were doing by voicing their complaints with Eich and his support for Prop 8. Nobody was launching a campaign to strip him of his rights in law.

jdp23• 12 years ago

I feel like there's a bingo card that has all of your half-assed excuses on it.

You mean something along these lines? https://twitter.com/eassumption/status/451921312609361922

qwerta• 12 years ago

I think most people hate him subconsciously for inventing JavaScript abomination. The current back splash is just an camouflage for that :-)

generalk• 12 years ago

I don't understand a thing you're saying.

but at the moment you start to derail real progress, the moment you attack one of the best organizations who has literally been busting its ass for the last decade to change the world for no profit...Well, you declared war.

I'm not familiar with anyone that attacked Mozilla. The heaviest I saw were boycotts. That doesn't sound like "war" to me, that sounds like the right tack to take. Calling it "war" is overly-dramatic.

Don't tolerate this any more. Brendan Eich was just one casualty. It's time to start sticking up for ourselves.

Let's start looking at reality. Brendon Eich had MANY opportunities to assure both his detractors and Mozilla's LGBTQ employees that he was dedicated to ensuring that Mozilla would remain inclusive regardless of sexual orientation. He pursued none of them.

Look, I can't speak to Eich's effectiveness as CEO, but it seems like handling a PR situation is part-and-parcel of being a CEO. Eich chose to resign.

We're not an equal society yet. We still have more changes we need to make to secure the freedom and happiness of everybody, especially groups that have been historically marginalized.

Steps that include speaking out against and boycotting entities that put bigots in charge. (Bigot may be a strong word here, I don't know Eich personally, but he did donate to get Prop 8 passed, which certainly sounds like bigoted behavior.)

What else would you have the aggrieved parties do?

All the more reason to shut down the bullies that [...] produced nothing but useless bickering

The irony burns.

msbarnett9• 12 years ago

To crib a very old phrase:

I cannot rightly apprehend the confusion of ideas that would lead one to believe that it was ok for Brandon Eich to exercise his Freedom of Speech to support an attempt to relegate many mozillans and other Californians to second-class citizenship, but that it was not ok for others to exercise their Freedom of Speech to express their feelings about Eich and his suitableness as a public-facing representative of Mozilla.

invalidOrTaken• 12 years ago

...to express their feelings about Eich and his suitableness as a public-facing representative of Mozilla.

But who made him "unsuitable?" Was Eich trumpeting his donations?

This whole thing has a "Answer me when I talk to you, boy! ----> Don't talk back to me, boy!" feel to it.

sergiosgc• 12 years ago

Do a mental exercise. Imagine a very vocal group of anti-gay activists causing a tech company to get cold feet about promoting an LGBT supporter to CEO. That's the dual scenario. Does your opinion still hold? This is the Pandora box that was opened here.

coldtea5• 12 years ago

His act was his right under freedom of speech, in a public democratic process. In fact the majority (or close to it) of the voting public agreed with him, IIRC. If an issue is under vote, it's the voter's right to take whatever side he likes.

The counter-action was an ad-hoc protest to strip him from his position. That is, an interference with something not under vote, and in a field not related to his "offending" action. Essentially a vocal group bullying for his firing.

I don't see much "confusion of ideas".

pjbrunet• 12 years ago

"we're not going to accept this kind of bullying anymore."

What are you proposing? Can you force OKCupid to treat all browsers the same?

mbrutsch• 12 years ago

The way I understand it, you're free to say what you please, and free to get called out for it. Having the internet harass your business is a distraction, regardless of how "right" it may be, and it's understandable that concessions mus be made to keep the business running smoothly, lest you endanger the livelihoods of everyone who works there.

LaGrange• 12 years ago

"I'm totally fine with anybody pursuing whatever kind of political agenda they want, but at the moment you start to derail real progress,"

Exactly why Eich had to go.

"Well, you declared war."

Yes, the right wingers did.

"we're not going to accept this kind of bullying anymore."

Exactly why Eich had to go.

"It's time to start sticking up for ourselves."

Said people bullied by people like Eich, and stuck up for themselves.

Yes, I do think that LGBT rights are far more important than Mozilla.

temphn• 12 years ago

The answer is to stop arguing with words and start targeting Gawker's business model. Their advertiser list is in plain view. Go to their about page to see all the megacorps that have done sponsored ads with them. Now take the worst things Gawker has ever written and send it to the people who run the advertising accounts at those companies (you can get their names off LinkedIn or whatever).

For example, send the #GawkingatRapeCulture hashtag to the Coke rep who chose to advertise on Gawker and ask them whther Coke is intentionally supporting rape culture by donating to Gawker. Make sure not do this purely as a solo op; once you have the data on their advertisers, pull together a website that makes it easy for anyone to chip in via one click.

Those who run sites with advertising inventory can also donate ad slots at lower CPMs to the sponsors of Gawker in order to pull revenue away from Gawker.

They profit from clickbait. So we need to hit these people in the wallet.

badman_ting• 12 years ago

Stop it, that was not an attack.

rebelidealist• 12 years ago

There is a stark contrast with how Drew Houston of Dropbox defended Condi Rice vs Mozilla's lack of effort in defending someone that instrumental part of what Mozilla is today.

https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/04/our-commitment-to-your-righ...

His pointed response is short and stern. "We’re honored to have Dr. Rice join our board"

Mozilla's was apologetic.

"We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better."

If Drew is the chairman of Mozilla, he would said. "In 16 years that Eich was in leadership position in Mozilla, he welcomed and worked with everyone with different personal beliefs, religious values, and sexual orientation. We are honored to have the creator of Javascript as our CEO". End of story.

GuiA2• 12 years ago

You can't really compare Dropbox and Mozilla. They don't have the same structure, they don't have the same goals, they don't attract the same kind of leadership or employees, they don't have the same people pulling the strings, etc etc.

asaddhamani• 12 years ago

So apparently being a war criminal is a lot better than donating $1000 to Prop 8? The world would be a better place if instead of Eich, Rice resigned.

arrrg5• 12 years ago

Do you really think that makes the difference?

Some decide to stick with it, others don’t. That’s the only difference I can see. And I don’t think either decision is always the right one. I think it’s important to be consistent in how you apply your principles and to be willing to listen to people telling you your principles suck and to change your principles if their arguments are convincing. That, to me, is the bare minimum to be a decent organisation. Add to that actually having decent principles and you are getting there.

In that context the “bullying” framing makes zero sense to me. People were unhappy with the principles of an organisation, people voiced their opinion and acted on their belief (by stopping to use products of the organisation). So far so completely harmless. The organisations decided to react or not and that’s that.

The bottom line is that you can expect to lose customers if you do certain things. Oh, wow. What an insight. Still has nothing to do with bullying.

bzbarsky9• 12 years ago

So far so completely harmless.

For a start, you're ignoring the death threats a number of people received, no?

This wasn't just about people organizing boycotts; this was about a media-circus-fueled full on hate mail campaign.

Yoric6• 12 years ago

Mozillian here: Mozilla is not a company like Dropbox. Mozilla is first and foremost a community. We don't wait for our leaders or our PR team to decide whether we defend someone. We do it from the roots, and that's what many of us did (see the community blogs at http://planet.mozilla.org). Others in the same community decided to attack Brendan's position, which is just as acceptable.

Now, you are right, Mitchell Baker's statement is very apologetic. Remember that she is (or at least was) long-time friend with Brendan Eich and that she probably was hit very hard by the tsunami.

hackuser7• 12 years ago

We don't wait for our leaders or our PR team to decide whether we defend someone. We do it from the roots,

That sounds find in principal, but it wasn't effective enough. As a strong supporter (and very minor contributor), please take this the right way: Mozilla needs much better public communication; it's a continuing problem IMHO. In fact, arguably Mozilla depends on public goodwill more than the for-profit companies.

exabrial• 12 years ago

Bullying goes both ways. Hilarious how some people are trying to justify this.

jvehent2• 12 years ago

People who are going to comment on this blog post need to realize how disturbing this episode has been for Mozillians.

We are talking about a small group of people, a couple thousands at best, that work with limited resources to keep the web open for everybody.

When this tidal wave hit Mozillians, the base contributors and employees who spend most of their days in code and features, we lost focus of our work, and stepped into a world of politics that most of us dislike, and are uncomfortable to navigate.

I believe Chris Beard is a true Mozillian, as is Brendan Eich. And I am glad that we can refocus on our mission, and move forward. I just wish people can put their differences aside, accept each other's beliefs, and share code!

jvehent2• 12 years ago

And just to add to this :) http://people.mozilla.org/~smartell/cbeard/cbeard-illustrati...

bowlofpetunias2• 12 years ago

Please, please, stop calling this "politics" or suggesting this is about (in)tolerance by others.

It's completely dismissive of the very real objections people had concerning the appointment of Eich, especially those of us who understand the importance of Mozilla for the open web and weren't just out for good old lynching.

Yoric6• 12 years ago

The problem is not people who were able to argue against Brendan Eich. I am sure that there was space for a sane debate on the topic. The problem was the bullies who were screaming along.

(I'm not going to call this a lynching, because in my mind, that's basically a Godwin point).

ender72• 12 years ago

"Accepting each other's beliefs" seems like a simple solution, but it has a very problematic result. To LGBT Mozillians, this becomes "you must respect beliefs that say that you are a second-class citizen."

No one should feel like they must respect beliefs that devalue their person.

Mikeb858• 12 years ago

Why not? Religious people get ridiculed all the time, people drink and eat pork around Muslims, and yet somehow they fit in fine.

And being a member of a religion isn't always a choice, being that usually you're born into it and your name identifies you as such.

bzbarsky9• 12 years ago

You're correct that there is a tension here. This is why a few years ago (2012, iirc) Mozilla adopted an explicit policy that beliefs like that must stay outside of the project. See http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/parti... section (i).

This does not say that project participants cannot hold such beliefs; that is an untenable requirement for a project involving people from many countries and cultures. But such beliefs need to stay outside things like project mailing lists workplace conversations, and so forth.

kirkbackus• 12 years ago

You are confusing "accepting" with "respecting". These are not the same thing. For example: I can accept a view I don't respect. To avoid a straw man, you should state your phrases unequivocally.

jwarkentin• 12 years ago

So if I believe I have the right to drive really fast and I think the laws need to be changed; but you believe I shouldn't have the right to go fast, does that mean that you believe I'm a second class citizen for believing I shouldn't have a right that I believe I should? Seems a bit like a logical fallacy and a strawman. Regardless of where you or anyone stands, let's at least frame the debate right. No one thinks that LGBT people are second-class citizens. To frame the debate like that is an appeal to emotion (also a logical fallacy) and ultimately fruitless, as it avoids the real debate.

davidgerard2• 12 years ago

As a Mozillan, how did you think your users - people outside Mozilla - would feel when Mitchell stressed Eich would restrict application of his views to people outside Mozilla?

It was your users who were outraged.

Trufa• 12 years ago

I just wish people can put their differences aside, accept each other's beliefs.

This sounds very nice and I agree with the sentiment, but has a big flaw in the argumentation.

When you consider those beliefs directly contradict the freedom of other human beings, should you not act upon it?

Switch the LGBT issue for race and you'll know what I mean.

sbuk• 12 years ago

Switch the LGBT issue for race and you'll know what I mean.

Wow.

jackbauer• 12 years ago

can't understand why this story is ranked at 1

Xdes• 12 years ago

Time to see Chris Beard's track record for contributions.

twoodfin6• 12 years ago

Let's not. I think the folks who feel someone's political actions and views are a good reason to shun or punish them are wrong. I don't care what you're for or against: If you participate non-violently in a political debate and don't let your views interfere with your work, including how you treat your coworkers, I'm happy to work with you or for you. Or grab a beer with you and try to change your mind.

Mikeb858• 12 years ago

Why not? They already burned Eich at the stake, why not apply the same scrutiny to everyone?

protomyth• 12 years ago

I am hoping he has never made a donation or spoken about any issue. His whole life is going to go under a microscope looking for the "gotcha". Sadly, its just how this stuff works.

bkor4• 12 years ago

I really dislike that Brendan Eich was appointed because the board appointed him while knowing his position on prop 8. Yet no statement while there was a huge backlash at the time that news came out. For me CTO vs CEO matters a lot.

CTO vs reversing gay rights: don't like the person, wouldn't want to work directly or indirectly for that person

appointing someone who you already know reversed gay rights and causes an uproar: wtf

I'm not gay and also not part of any gay rights organization. In tech sites within Netherlands the views expressed are totally different than here on Hackers News. Meaning: most are amazed how he could have been considered a CEO.

hackuser7• 12 years ago

Mozilla's mission is vital and they have been very successful overall. Much of the credit must belong to Mitchell Baker, Brendan Eich, and others who led the organization until now but I'm starting to be concerned about the leadership's future, a future that is important to everyone -- I'd much rather lose almost any software company than lose Mozilla.

* Why do they appear to have difficulty finding a long-term CEO? Appointing the founder/CTO (edit: and after a long search and many short-term leaders) raises the possibility that either they couldn't find a willing external candidate or that there was conflict between the founders and the board. Which leads to ...

* Why do they appear to have difficulty finding board members? Even 5 seemed too few for such an important non-profit; to have 3 resign with only 1 replacement ready seems alarming.

* The PR of Eich's appointment, transition, and the political issue was poorly managed; Mozilla looked badly managed and the brand was damaged. The image of the organization is a responsibility for the CEO and, when hiring a new CEO, for the board. Even if the political issue never arose, losing a 3 of 5 board members when a new CEO is appointed looks bad no matter what public explanations are given. The appearance was that only 2 people supported the new CEO and one was his co-founder (again, appearances can be deceiving but managing them is essential).

These signs look worrying to me, but you'll notice that I wrote a lot about appearances -- I don't know the inside of Mozilla (I've participated at a low level for many years and have a sense of the culture and a few personalities, but that's all) nor do I know how to run a major non-profit or major open source project. Maybe someone here knows more.

bzbarsky9• 12 years ago

* Why do they appear to have difficulty finding a long-term CEO?

I can't speak for the board here, but lack of stock options and the like probably has something to do with it.

I expect that it's also difficult to find a CEO that is willing to operate in the sort of environment described in http://blog.finette.com/on-mozilla (see the quote from John Lilly in there). This extends to broader culture fit issues: finding a CEO who would be a good culture fit for Mozilla's stance on openness and the like may not be simple.

hackuser7• 12 years ago

I recently saw John Lilly's presentation to WordCamp ~2009. Truly amazing and inspiring how you guys operate.

I understand many people seek big financial returns and others might have difficulty with the culture, but for anyone in the non-profit world or with the mission-oriented motivation, it's hard to imagine a better opportunity to change the world. If I had the skills I would leap at it.

nsxwolf• 12 years ago

Most importantly, Chris Beard has correct views on today's political hot button issues.

grej• 12 years ago

To me, one of the saddest things about this whole episode was the fact that Brendan Eich was a true technical leader. His contributions literally helped create and define the modern internet. I believe he was well positioned to help move Mozilla beyond simply being a browser company/nonprofit org, and advance the Mozilla mission of bringing openness and innovation to the web.

Rust, ASM.js, and Firefox OS are some of the biggest projects at Mozilla and are critical areas that have to be executed well for Mozilla to gain traction in the mobile device world and beyond. I thought that Brendan Eich's background uniquely qualified him to guide Mozilla over the next few years in maturing these technologies into something that can help disrupt the trend of "walled-garden" web ecosystems. I was and still am really rooting for Mozilla to succeed in these efforts, because the web needs them to. Sadly Brendan Eich is now gone from Mozilla and along with him goes a wealth of knowledge, history, and experience that would undoubtedly have helped advance the cause of a free and open internet.

All that said, I don't know as much about Chris Beard's history as I did Brendan's, and I don't know if he can provide the same level of technical leadership in these areas that Brendan Eich could have. I suppose we will find out. I remain hopeful, but not yet optimistic.

gojomo• 12 years ago

"Moving Forward" is my least favorite management euphemism.

userbinator• 12 years ago

Agreed, although I've heard "going forward" a lot more.

drawkbox3• 12 years ago

This is a pretty massive change.

Eich was technology/standards focused. Someone from the product/marketing side is ok as long as they get Mozilla is really a technology product company (business and marketing is easier when technology/products are the base focus and you don't lose developers targeting the platform).

I am a little concerned that a switch was flipped at Mozilla when the former Chief Marketing Officer is now CEO over the CTO previously. Granted the new CEO has been around the company a while and oversaw Firefox is helpful, I just hope they keep the technology/standards as their base focus. I feel many of the things I love Mozilla for, asm.js most recently, may not be as focused as before. Also, I lost a ton of respect for Mozilla for throwing a founder under the bus.

fabrice_d• 12 years ago

The previous CEO (Gary Kovacs) was also a product guy, so no switch was flipped (the switch was to put a strong tech lead like Brendan as CEO). But Chris has also a technical background (he worked on porting linux to mips architectures) and he knows Mozilla in and out.

drawkbox3• 12 years ago

To developers, Eich was definitely a force internally and externally and CTO as CEO means something. Switching to that then back is a change. As a founder Eich had immense input on direction. Maybe there is a vacuum now on the technology side in terms of upper management. I guess time will tell how this has truly impacted Mozilla. I am glad to hear Chris Beard has some engineering along with product/marketing.

Also Kovacs was there for a while (2010-recent) but was technology product focused, previous was John Lilly (2008-2010) who very much was technology focused, and then Baker who was a lawyer at the founding and you could argue technology and standards was the Mozilla main focus for a long time since inception. Hopefully it stays that way.

pcwalton• 12 years ago

I feel many of the things I love Mozilla for, asm.js most recently, may not be as focused as before.

Chris Beard is the most technical person who's now marketing-focused I know. A little-known fact: he wrote the first prototype of the Firefox themes feature (formerly known as Personas).

drawkbox3• 12 years ago

Information is thin on him so this is great to hear. I am still hopeful for the webgl/asm.js revolution that they are doing and hope it continues in force.

xname• 12 years ago

Imagine: when they were looking for the next CEO, the first question was: does he/she support gay-marriage?

Mikeb858• 12 years ago

Well, Firefox is first of all quite inferior to Chrome. Worse JS performance, worse stability, worse interface and worse Cloud sync and features. The only reason to possibly use it was openness and their motto.

With them refusing to stand up for Brendan Eich and his right to his own personal opinions, which it's clear he never brought to work with him, I no longer think they have any moral high ground. I know I'm done with Firefox, and none of this is good PR, and they were losing tons of market share before...

ender72• 12 years ago

Can anyone proffer an opinion on Chris Beard as the new CEO? Is he a good choice, or should this remain an interim position? I don't know anything about him.

nnethercote3• 12 years ago

He's been a part of Mozilla for a long time. He was CMO among many other roles. He's a smart guy and good at handling difficult situations. I think it's a solid choice. It does sound like it's definitely planned to be an interim choice, though.

Fun story: my one personal interaction with Chris was a few years ago. I had learnt that the McAfee Site Advisor add-on was causing Firefox to leak the JavaScript contents of every single page you visited! This was bad.

I was incensed, and I wrote a blog post entitled "McAfee is killing us" (https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/02/16/mcafee-is-ki...). Chris was CMO and got rather upset with me for my undiplomatic choice of wording. And understandably so; he didn't want a loud-mouthed engineer triggering some kind of Mozilla vs. McAfee story in the tech press.

Fortunately nothing much came of it, publicity-wise. It's worth noting that I offered to take the post down, and he said not to, which is why you can still read it today.

Best of all, we did find a way to prevent that leak -- one which many add-ons triggered variations of -- and it shipped in Firefox 15 (https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/07/19/firefox-15-p...).

pvnick• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, the reality is that one of the first questions they probably asked Chris when vetting him for interim CEO is "Are you or have you ever been an opponent of same-sex marriage?"

SethMurphy• 12 years ago

I tweeted in praise of Mozilla's support of the web a few days after he resigned and was asked in a response if Mozilla helped support my preferred bigotry. While I don't disagree with the criticism of Brendan Eich, it has gone a little far when my praise of Mozilla's support of the open web got me labeled a bigot (IMHO I am not). Making a correlation like this is wrong and can only hurt even a good cause.

Yoric6• 12 years ago

Consider yourself lucky you were just called a bigot. Some of us (not me) received death threats.

finder833• 12 years ago

I'm still rather disappointed in Mozilla's handling of the issue. I've since gone back to using Chrome, and away from thunderbird as well. Free speech is important to me; more important even than using and supporting open source software, which is pretty important to me. Someone's personal life, and their professional life, should be able to be kept separate, and the fact that they dragged out his political support of Proposition 8 into his professional life is a clear violation of free speech. If the issue were so important, why did they choose him as CEO in the first place? Instead, they created an obvious and blatant attack against his character for his own beliefs which had absolutely nothing to do with his day to day work, particularly given that he was a great leader, technologist, and could have brought Mozilla to the next step technologically.

Would I support a member of the KKK, or any other known "hate" group? It is their right of speech, and they are still free to have it, so long as it is not in a manner of defamation (such as slander, or libel), which looks much more like how Mozilla responded.

wonderzombie9• 12 years ago

Whose free speech was violated? Free speech doesn't mean the freedom from consequences or criticism. It means the exact opposite! He's free to speak as he likes and donate as he likes, and everyone else is free to exercise their own rights to free speech. That's how it freaking works.

There's no right to be a CEO, either. I wouldn't dispute a racist's right to speak as they like, but free speech doesn't mean turning a blind eye to bigotry and prejudice. Views are not somehow exempt from criticism just because they are sincerely held.

izacus• 12 years ago

Erm no... if you have to be afraid for your job, your career prospects, your house or your family then your have NO free speech, no matter what some paper somewhere says.

Economic pressure was used to great success in (socialistic) countries like mine to curtail free speech (even though there was a "free speech" law). And it looked exactly like this - if you had an unpopular opinion, you'd just be marked as "unfit for leadership position", "unfit for advancement", "we cannot have someone going to church as our CEO", your children would get scholarship denied, etc.

You know... consequences. The definition of free speech is the ability to voice political opinion without fear. Haven't you learned anything from cold war?

finder833• 12 years ago

His free speech was clearly violated, by the public, slanderous nature in which it was handled. I completely agree if his views don't fit within the organization that he should not have been appointed CEO or possibly removed, but to slander someone for their views is completely unacceptable.

Criticism is one thing, aggressive oppression is another.

Yoric6• 12 years ago

So you are changing browser because of the declarations of ~4 Mozillians? Or am I missing something?

finder833• 12 years ago

I'm changing browsers because of the culture of a company that supports free software, yet oppressively reacts to the personal and unrelated opinions of a person by slandering his name.

moron4hire• 12 years ago

I stopped using Firefox because it's gotten really buggy in the last couple of months, not because Brendan Eich stupidly voiced his opinion in a debate he should have seen he was on the losing side of a long time ago.

nnethercote3• 12 years ago

What are the bugs?

One option is to try resetting Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi...

coldtea5• 12 years ago

I'm against what happened to Brendan Eich too -- for the reasons it happened. His personals opinions and political ideas, even if he was a card-carrying NRA member slash confederate flag bearering bigot, should be his own.

But (and I'm only half kidding) I'm actually in favor of sacking him for his incompetence, for so many years, to bring bloody ES6 to a final standard and into our browsers.

When HTML5 progressed so fast in so few years, and things like CSS Animations, Canvas, WebGL, etc also moved on, heck, even when IE picked up steam, the glacial pace of Javascript looks really unacepptable, and a throwback to the bad old days of W3C dragging its feet.

ruggeri• 12 years ago

I like how the board continues to take no responsibility for the situation they created. Right or wrong that Eich was fired, this was a foreseeable event; Eich's prior contribution was well-known.

This whole thing really doesn't make me feel good about Mitchell Baker or Reid Hoffman.

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

It makes solid sense for a company to choose a leader, the person who sets the tone and communicates to the public, partners, and stakeholders for it, who reflects the values of the organization and its stakeholders.

Mozilla stands, among other things, for freedom both online and off.

Eich certainly has technical chops, and has contributed, technically, to both Mozilla and the Web. There's no doubt about that.

His personal values, as reflected through his public political actions, were an extremely poor fit. In his prior role as CTO this wasn't as significant an issue (though it could likely have emerged eventually). As CEO there's simply no question that they were polarizing and distracting to the extreme. Especially in light of how he addressed the controversy once it emerged.

Quite bluntly: he wasn't up for the job.

I'm not saying this as a GLTBQ individual, or someone with an unblemished record myself on this (attitudes have changed tremendously over the several decades I've been aware that alternative sexual orientation is a thing) or other issues. It's a reflection of contemporary moral values -- and I absolutely believe that there's a large room for movement in such values.

If you want to reflect on that for a while, I'd recommend James Burke's The Day the Universe Changed, which addresses beliefs. The first and last programmes in the series address this particularly episodes 1 and 10, which reflect specifically on how beliefs have changed over time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Universe_Changed

If nothing else, this is a mark of just how far we've gone from beating up faggots for lols (not that this doesn't still happen) -- even under cover of law (Stonewall and similar events), if not without sanction or consequence for those so engaged.

For those who are suggesting that Eich was singled out where others more deserving haven't been: Mozilla proved itself to be more susceptible and responsive to moral suasion and pressure. There are plenty of companies (and other organizations) exhibiting poor moral character: Dropbox's appointment of someone widely regarded as a war criminal to its board, ongoing boycotts against Chick-fil-A, growing actions against the Koch brothers and the industrial and political network they control, campaigns I recall against Nestle, Carl's Jr., grape growers, and other causes.

The fact is that moral and market pressures can work, and in a world in which enterprises far too often disclaim all but the smallest shreds of moral responsibility, they're often one of the few effective tools available.

So while I do feel a slight bit of sympathy toward Eich (he was caught up in changing times), I applaud the action and result.

adrianlmm• 12 years ago

#uninstallfirefox

Mozilla Moving Forward

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