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Mozilla Moving Forward

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Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#91

Post by mmanfrin »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #60
nostromo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Eich wasn't ousted for a belief, he was ousted for directly pushing for the codification of discrimination. There is a far-cry difference between believing something is (a)moral and directly funding an initiative to make your religious-based discrimination part of secular, civil law.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#92

Post by jessriedel »

nostromo wrote: post #44
natural219 wrote: post #3

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 tha…

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.

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/

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#93

Post by lotsofmangos »

natural219 wrote: post #3

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 tha…

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.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#94

Post by msbarnett »

carlio wrote: post #78
msbarnett wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the argument here, exactly? When Brandon Eich exercises his freedom of speech to donate money to a cause that was harmful to many mozillans, that's somehow NOT an attack on non-heteronormative Californians, BUT when OkCupid exercises their freedom of speech to encourage use a different webbrowser, that IS an attack on Brandon Eich? Maybe you could draw the class a map of what kinds of speech are OK and what…

bkor said "Nobody attacked Mozilla." - I was merely providing a counter example.

So would you then agree that Brandon Eich attacked LGBT mozillans, and Californians in general?

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#95

Post by baddox »

binarycrusader wrote: post #30
kourt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proposition 8 was an opinion of the masses: it received 7,001,084 (52.24%) of the votes.

An opinion of the masses willing to vote is not necessarily an opinion of the masses. Regardless, even if it was a "majority" of people capable of voting , there's a reason the phrase "tyranny of the majority" exists. There are a number of unnamed social ills and other problems that could still exist today in some countries or that would have likely lasted longer if we had waited for "popular opinion" to change. I do…

> An opinion of the masses willing to vote is not necessarily an opinion of the masses.

So you're setting up an unfalsifiable claim, unless you have a way to gather the opinions of literally every single person that's guaranteed to yield accurate representations of their opinions.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#96

Post by Tloewald »

natural219 wrote: post #3

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 tha…

> 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.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#97

Post by davidgerard »

jvehent wrote: post #10

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 ste…

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.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#98

Post by pvnick »

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?"

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#99

Post by outside1234 »

nostromo wrote: post #44
natural219 wrote: post #3

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 tha…

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.

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.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#100

Post by bkor »

carlio wrote: post #27
bkor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the moment you attack one of the best organizations" Nobody attacked Mozilla. You're totally off base.

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

That's not attacking Mozilla. This is like joining a strike. If you're on strike you're not attacking the company. Though IMO unions in US are a little bit weird (too much power play).
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