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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#781

Post by intarga »

senderista wrote: post #621
phonon wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She also wrote this incredibly rude and grotesque obituary for Gervase Markham after he died of cancer (working for Mozilla until the end). You are welcome to disagree, but Gerv contributed just as much to Mozilla as Mitchell did. https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva...

I have definitely gotten the impression (as a very peripheral observer of the Rust community) that ideological diversity is not at all the sort of diversity Mozilla is interested in.

Given the context, I take ideological diversity to mean inclusion of people who are sexist, homophobic, and transphobic.

The identity characteristic here revolves around the exclusion of others, how in any sense does that make it reasonable to include them in the name of diversity? You're asking people to tolerate intolerance in the name of tolerance. I can't see such a request as anything less than insincere.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#782

Post by merb »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #770
Aperocky wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who jumped from chrome since quantum came out, I can't appreciate Mozilla enough, sadly things are not made to last... I'm guilty too having used such great tool but haven't directly contributed anything. But from what I hear, it seem the layoffs are directed not by technical reasons, and amazing people were let go. In this case, I fear for the future of firefox, which are not well protected or funded like…

Mozilla gets $$$$ from Google, they seem pretty well funded?

actually I'm pretty sure that the money goes to the mozilla innovation fund and not directly to mozilla? not sure how easily they can withdraw money from there.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#783

Post by tehbeard »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #770
Aperocky wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who jumped from chrome since quantum came out, I can't appreciate Mozilla enough, sadly things are not made to last... I'm guilty too having used such great tool but haven't directly contributed anything. But from what I hear, it seem the layoffs are directed not by technical reasons, and amazing people were let go. In this case, I fear for the future of firefox, which are not well protected or funded like…

Mozilla gets $$$$ from Google, they seem pretty well funded?

Getting funding from your biggest rival isn't exactly the most stable strat long term...

Mismanagement of funds/personnel not withstanding.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#784

Post by ralfinat »

thu2111 wrote: post #771
the_duke wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox did become horribly slow compared to Chrome and lost a lot of market share in the tech savvy community because of it. I also don't understand how they could fall so far behind with their primary product. (they finally caught up again now, I switched back to Firefox about 2 years ago) But: Google pushed Chrome on desktop very aggressively via Google Search and bundling Chrome with every software download imagi…

I think you're assuming Chrome's very existence was inevitable, but it wasn't. Chrome was created partly because Page just wanted to do a browser, but that wasn't enough by itself. Schmidt blocked a browser project for years on the grounds that it was a low priority and there wasn't much reason because Firefox was doing fine. What changed things was Google trying to work with Mozilla to contribute resources, push the…

> When they got a few key hires who showed they could do a new browser with a much better architecture, and move way faster than cooperating with Mozilla, events were set in motion.

They also bought up a significant fraction of the Firefox core devs -- there's a lot of "crushing the competition" you can do when your money pit is basically bottomless.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#785

Post by pbhjpbhj »

swfsql wrote: post #610
krn wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, which bits are incredibly rude and grotesque? I wouldn't say this is how I would like somebody to be remembered after his early death: > Gerv’s faith did not have ambiguity at least none that I ever saw. Gerv was crisp. He had very precise views about marriage, sex, gender and related topics. He was adamant that his interpretation was correct, and that his interpretation should be encoded into law. These vie…

I personally have some reactions to her statement, but I never met any of them, so all I can do is to imagine. To me, this seems like a demonstration of honesty and sincerity. > ..that his interpretation should be encoded into law. Law is dangerous, as it ultimately falls back into the (justification of the) usage of lethal force upon those who defy it. So I imagine that directicy and strictness was related to him, a…

> imagine that it is respectful to respond in a direct and strict way //

Yes, to the person, in the same arena (maybe, consider that carefully).

LPT - don't scathingly attack an employee in an obituary after their recent early death. You can say you found then difficult to live with, etc., you don't have to try and crucify their mortal remains.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#786

Post by pbhjpbhj »

eschaton wrote: post #679
tenpies wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will sound outrageous to US technology workers in 2020, but some people are able to separate their professional lives from the religious and political beliefs of their co-workers. About 15 years ago it was perfectly normal for this exchange to take place: Your view of marriage is a faith-based promise to your deity based on millennia of tradition and completely different from my view of it as a legalistic civil…

And then the person who views it as faith-based starts talking about how his views need to be encoded into law, and those who are affected are sinners who will suffer for it. You can’t “agree to disagree” about bigotry. It fundamentally denies others’ humanity which is the very definition of making a hostile environment. How in the hell is this something people even consider should still be litigated? What’s next, op…

Is the white supremacist living according to the law? Do they abide by work regulations and treat everyone equally/equitably (as the org requires)?

I may hate their view point, and want them not to exist, but they feel the same about me I expect.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#787

Post by jlarcombe »

phonon wrote: post #282
shawndrost wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person we're talking about is Mitchell Baker, who has spent over 20 years contributing to Mozilla, including years as a volunteer. She has been on Time's 100 most influential people list. She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet. She is the founding CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, which pays her paycheck from its ~$500M in revenue. Mozilla Corp is the highly-profit…

She also wrote this incredibly rude and grotesque obituary for Gervase Markham after he died of cancer (working for Mozilla until the end). You are welcome to disagree, but Gerv contributed just as much to Mozilla as Mitchell did. https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva...

I went to lectures with Gervase at university 20 years ago and while I never really 'knew' him (and don't share his faith) his energy and enthusiasm were evident. This "obit" seems in bad taste; surely if he was causing so much "trauma" and "damage" at work, they would have done something about it during the last 18 years? It just seems unnecessarily mean-spirited.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#788

Post by pbhjpbhj »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #666
cookiecaper wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to be specific: by "common decency", I mean that the CEO should refrain from a publishing an infantilizing and derogatory post about a deceased employee. They should especially refrain from doing so days after the employee's death. Employees dedicate roughly half of their waking hours to the employer, entailing much sacrifice from not only the employee themselves, but also their family. Regardless of the employ…

Bottom line: making an unprovoked publication indicating that the deceased's efforts caused damage to the organization as a whole is not a decent thing to do. And what if the deceased's actions DID cause damage (e.g. Brendan Eich and Gervase Markham)? Wouldn't that count as provocation? Just because you happen to agree with their views on morality doesn't mean that their contempt for their fellow coworkers should be…

>their contempt for their fellow coworkers should be whitewashed. //

If they violated work regulations then they should have been disciplined, did they, were they?

Do you mean contempt for the people or was it for their views; how was it different to your contempt for them?

Refraining from heavily and repeatedly deriding someone in an obituary doesn't mean you're whitewashing anything.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#789

Post by voldacar »

athms wrote: post #433
shawndrost wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person we're talking about is Mitchell Baker, who has spent over 20 years contributing to Mozilla, including years as a volunteer. She has been on Time's 100 most influential people list. She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet. She is the founding CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, which pays her paycheck from its ~$500M in revenue. Mozilla Corp is the highly-profit…

>She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet. This statement is a fabrication. She was trained and worked as a lawyer. She went to Berkeley, not to study computer science or electrical engineering, but to study law. She graduated and went to a San Francisco law firm that specialized in intellectual property and had many clients in Silicon Valley. She eventually left and w…

Is it correct that this person has literally never written a line of code? wow

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#790

Post by throwaway-9320 »

Klonoar wrote: post #548
saagarjha wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there's anything they need to axe, it's the Gecko team. Just replace it with V8. The whole layout engine too--replace it with Blink. It is inevitable, so might as well get over with it now and save the wasted human effort and $$$. And further contribute to the browser monoculture? > I tried to use Firefox recently. It leaked 28 GiB of RAM on x86_64 GNU/Linux with no extensions except uBlock Origin. Happened a fe…

>And you've reported this, I assume? This is a total non-response. They're not actually under an obligation to report a bug and use their time - Mozilla, however, is obliged to make their browser work properly, and to ensure the team that's working on it is properly staffed/resourced/competent. Your response is downplaying someone's actual concern by acting like it's wrong that they don't spend their spare time parti…

> WebKit and Blink are both open source

Doesn't mean much since Google controls what features are planned, implemented and included in Chromium.

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