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Re: Drop Dropbox

#871

Post by Zigurd »

azakai wrote: post #815
Zigurd wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich was in a much wobblier position from the beginning, with board members resigning over his appointment, public denials about that, and eventual confirmation. That alone might have doomed him and the rest is noise.

There was no confirmation about board members resigning, https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... 2 stepped down because they had other stuff to do, the other 1 because of something that is not prop-8 related.

John Lilly publicly confirmed he resigned rather than appoint Eich, without elaboration. I did not say the board resignations had to do with Eich's material support for Prop 8. WSJ stated all three resigned because of Eich's appointment, and none contradicted that report.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#872

Post by scottydelta »

arjie wrote: post #672
JasonFruit wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

But wouldnt it make sense if you cancel your membership now to show your protest against this?

Re: Drop Dropbox

#873

Post by MichaelGG »

davidkellis wrote: post #231

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…

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.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#874

Post by hackuser »

nilved wrote: post #758
MarkPNeyer wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I hope this extends to opposing the Obama administration, which has continued and extended war, torture, and the patriot act. Of course it does. That's the logical conclusion. Why wouldn't it? There isn't any informed person in 2014 who is unable to realize Obama has been worse than Bush as far as torture and war go.

How has Obama been worse about torture than Bush? AFAIK he stopped the torture programs that Bush started.

He should do more, such as prosecuting the torturers. We will see if he releases the key information in the Senate report. But I wouldn't call him worse.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#875

Post by burntroots »

peteretep wrote: post #868
EliAndrewC wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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.

Don't fool yourself: they're both corporations and thus money making entities. Clearly, the difference is minor at best, since this behavior is spreading beyond the community based organizations.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#876

Post by bsder »

grellas wrote: post #538

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 v…

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.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#877

Post by newsreader »

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.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#878

Post by morgante »

pvnick wrote: post #253

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 goin…

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.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#879

Post by burntroots »

bguthrie wrote: post #699
grellas wrote: post #538

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 v…

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 misleadin…

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.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#880

Post by anigbrowl »

mindcrime wrote: post #829
vdaniuk wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, now you can build cool stuff and be an internet activist on HN. Waaait a minute.. Now I get it. These sly HN activists are forcing you to go into political threads, read them and participate in the discussion and you don't have time left for reading about cool stuff. Damn these poisonous activists!

To be fair, you have a point. But, IMO, there actually is something almost "poisonous" in a sort of insidious way, about having an influx of political articles. It seems to contribute to a slow - but perceptible - overall drift in the tone/spirit of the site and the community. It's almost like, people come here, see the front-page at a point in time, and use that to make a snap judgment about the character and tone o…

I felt the same way about the constant barrage of NSA threads last summer, and I can't help recalling that you've submitted a good number of such stories yourself. It's a bit hard to take your complaints about scope creep seriously under such circumstances; if those submissions were relevant, then surely so is this one on the basis of Rice's empowerment of the NSA during her tenure as National Security Adviser.
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