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Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

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Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#81
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having…

As a conservative-ish person in tech, I'm glad I made the decision to hide my politics beginning a few years ago. You people are vicious. I'd love to have an open debate or conversation, but that doesn't seem to be your game. Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory. It's going to be a messy process and some people are going to disagree. That…

    > Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented 
    > changes to a core social institution that goes back
    > into prehistory. 
Homosexuality was not a big deal during Ancient History. Then came Christianity and its obscurantism, shaming everything that was not in the good book for the sake of control. Our culture is going back to its roots paganism and greek heritage it's a long way since the Renaissance.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#82
post #47

Hmm, something's amiss. Archive.org's record of Mozilla's website says that Mozilla Corp only ever had 5 board members. The WSJ seems to imply they had 6. Assuming Moz's own website is accurate, Katharina Borchert only joined around the time Eich was appointed. Either way, the numbers don't quite add up. If there were only 5 board members, and only 2 of them wanted Eich, how did he get chosen? And even if Katherina w…

I don't know anything about Mozilla's structure, but in some corporations it's possible for a single board seat to have more than one vote (e.g., for board seats appointed by a holder of "Class F" (founder) or "original shares" versus other classes of stock).

Edit: clarity.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#83
post #49
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net Applications is. It’s right there in the Wikipedia article you are linking to. Net Applications measure unique visits and do country level weighing of data. The article is also quoting Net Application’s desktop numbers. That might explain the difference, at least partly. Overall I would argue that the statement in the article, while accurate, can be misleading. It should probably include mobile usage numbers (tho…

Thanks, I didn't see that on the Wikipedia page. Still, while I know it's not good to say "data" and "gut feel" in the same sentence, I just have a very hard time believing that IE usage is trending upward while Chrome is trending down. It just doesn't add up.

If we're only talking desktop numbers, I could believe those trends. One could make an argument that at this point in their market maturity, those users who navigate away from IE are a more-or-less static population in terms of proportion of desktop users, so Firefox and Chrome fight for similar users. The growing market share of Windows 8, sluggish or not, could explain an upward trend for IE.

Total suppositions with no data. Not an argument, just thinking aloud.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#84
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having…

As a conservative-ish person in tech, I'm glad I made the decision to hide my politics beginning a few years ago. You people are vicious. I'd love to have an open debate or conversation, but that doesn't seem to be your game. Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory. It's going to be a messy process and some people are going to disagree. That…

> You people are vicious.

We're not the ones treating other people as lesser human beings who should be treated as second-class citizens in our society.

> Lastly, equality isn't an unmitigated good.

"Equality" in the sense of civil rights and social liberties doesn't mean "give every person exactly the same set of everything under any and all circumstances imaginable" — that's a very programmer (dare I say, robot-like) way of looking at the term. Equality, in this context, is about ensuring that certain groups are not discriminated against in systems, in cultures, and in society at large. Ensuring equal rights often does, in fact, demand unequal laws to counteract an unequal status quo, etc. I'll spare you the crash course of legislation 101.

> For example, you probably don't believe that children should be able to marry, or more than two people.

Yes I do, but I also believe that marriage should not be a government institution in the first place, because too many people think of it as having a religious aspect (for understandable and legitimate reasons), but as such it does not belong in government. Separation of Church and State and all that. So I'm in favor of civil unions for all legal adults, and that includes poly unions. Children can then marry all they want, but they are not legal adults yet, so doing so has no impact whatsoever on their legal status in any way.

> Personally, I raise an eyebrow when a six year old boy raised by adoptive lesbians decides he is transexual, and I feel like society may be failing that boy.

I feel you're failing society by having that viewpoint. Who the fuck are you to judge like that, seriously?! Society is doing great if a young girl who was assigned male sex organs feels comfortable and safe enough to state this wish to her parents — and here you go thinking it would be better if she would feel trapped and unhappy in her body the entire rest of her life?! That's not just judgmental, but severely lacking in empathy.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#85
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having…

As a conservative-ish person in tech, I'm glad I made the decision to hide my politics beginning a few years ago. You people are vicious. I'd love to have an open debate or conversation, but that doesn't seem to be your game. Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory. It's going to be a messy process and some people are going to disagree. That…

> Personally, I raise an eyebrow when a six year old boy raised by adoptive lesbians decides he is transexual, and I feel like society may be failing that boy.

This is a near perfect instance of xkcd's girls suck at math[1]. Shitty parents are tragically common, and we are failing children who are victims. But when a heterosexual couple destroys a child's life, we don't start talking about taking kids away from heterosexuals.

Also, I don't think polyamorous marriage is a good argument point against gay marriage. In time, as a society we'll see those opposed to the former as bigoted as well.

Anything that violates live and let live between consenting adults is on thin ice.

[1] https://xkcd.com/385/

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#86
post #9

The choice of Eich as a CEO also made me wonder - they took a year to find a CEO, and ended up with their own CTO. Is it fair to assume that they searched long and hard but couldn't find anyone? If so, that's a real shame. I want Mozilla to succeed.

To be fair, Eich lives and breathes Mozilla and the mission, and is basically the perfect choice for CEO ... except for his political actions being so toxic to the brand that other nonprofits issue a press release to say they're boycotting Firefox over it: http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/victoria/vac-gmhc-to-boyco...

It takes barely any toxicity to get someone, somewhere to issue a mostly meaningless "I hate this guy" press release.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Eich lives and breathes Mozilla and the mission, and is basically the perfect choice for CEO ... except for his political actions being so toxic to the brand that other nonprofits issue a press release to say they're boycotting Firefox over it: http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/victoria/vac-gmhc-to-boyco...

Does a (relatively small) monetary donation really deserve to be called a "toxic political action"...?

I'm guessing you're not one of the people being discriminated against by Proposition 8. Am I right?

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#88
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having…

As a conservative-ish person in tech, I'm glad I made the decision to hide my politics beginning a few years ago. You people are vicious. I'd love to have an open debate or conversation, but that doesn't seem to be your game. Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory. It's going to be a messy process and some people are going to disagree. That…

Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory.

Did you trade some goats for your wife? If not, then gee, I guess we've already made unprecedented changes to a core social institution.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#89

I see that Eich put up a small amount of money to support a bill against gay marriage. This says nothing about the way he treats people, or how he might serve as CEO. Is there something more, or is it really all about his political ideals?

Somehow, I doubt a CEO who is against same-sex marriage will be terribly friendly to LGBT employees.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#90
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having…

As a conservative-ish person in tech, I'm glad I made the decision to hide my politics beginning a few years ago. You people are vicious. I'd love to have an open debate or conversation, but that doesn't seem to be your game. Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory. It's going to be a messy process and some people are going to disagree. That…

Bringing in "children can't marry" is quite the misdirection on your part, since they're universally seen as not having enough maturity for a host of things, not just marriage.

Edit responding to your new last paragragh: Regarding the parents of the child identifying as transsexual, why specify that they're adoptive lesbians? You're already stacking the deck. Lesbians can have natural children, and straight people can (and do) encourage transexualism in their child. And I don't mean 'can' in terms of finding an outlier and pointing to it as representative.

I am the natural child of a lesbian (born in wedlock to a man), I have helped adult transexuals come out at their own pace, and only two months ago I was arguing against a friend who was glorifying a straight couple in the news who were encouraging transexualism in their six-year-old daughter. I am straight myself, as was my friend I was arguing against, just like the parents we were arguing about.

So it drives me nuts when folks make an argument like you have: oh, it's not enough to decry the action on its own merits, I also have to demonise the people around the action in a way that reinforces inaccurate negative stereotypes. "The people who are fucking our kids up are these 'really weird' couples". Bullshit.

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