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Mozilla Moving Forward

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Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#121

Post by msbarnett »

carlio wrote: post #104
msbarnett wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I presented a fact with no opinion attached, I have no desire to join the debate. I'm not sure why you've chosen my post to reply to, there are plenty of others who post actual opinions you can discuss.

You asserted that an exercise of free speech on OkCupid's part was "an attack". That's not a fact -- it's a subjective opinion about a fact ("OkCupid asked visitors to its site to use a different browser" being the relevant fact).

I don't know that I particularly agree with your opinion, or at least, I know I don't agree that it was less of an attack than Brandon Eich's actions. So I was attempting to understand your response.

It's rather odd to complain that posting your opinion in public provoked a response. If you're not interested in having a conversation, I'd suggest that the wisest course of action is not to post.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#122

Post by bzbarsky »

arrrg wrote: post #46
rebelidealist wrote: post #6

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…

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 bar…

> 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.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#123

Post by finder83 »

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.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#124

Post by baddox »

mmanfrin wrote: post #91
Mikeb85 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I could argue that anyone who supports any special legal recognition of "marriage" is directly pushing for the codification of discrimination. Many people make the argument that if a man and woman who are romantically involved can get a government marriage license and reap certain benefits, then gays should be able to as well. That obviously makes sense. But why can't two roommates in a plu(a)tonic friendship receive the same benefits?

The prohibition of gay marriage is clearly a double standard. But simply allowing gays to marry doesn't completely resolve the double standard. Either the legal benefits of marriage should be extended to literally all people, or there should be no such legal benefits for any people.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#125

Post by Yoric »

bkor wrote: post #7
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…

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

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.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#126

Post by baddox »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #116
baddox wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Nah, it's really not. Check out RV/LV polling numbers from 2008. I'm sure they showed a difference.

I doubt they polled everyone. And I doubt that anyone can prove that there wasn't some sort of bias in the poll.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#127

Post by hackuser »

smtddr wrote: post #47
binarycrusader wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"opinion of the masses" is a subjective interpretation of events; not a fact. As to "passed by a majority", I would say, that depends on how you define a majority. A majority in the context of voting laws, perhaps. But I sincerely doubt it was actually representative of the entire population of California as a whole. I also find it a bit ironic that someone would resort to name-calling in a thread attempting to defen…

Furthermore, Prop8 was passed based on propaganda. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_s... Under normal circumstances prop8 would __never__ have passed in California, of all places. People keep screaming about "Tolerance goes both ways", but society needs to move pass discrimination based on race/gender/orientation. Donating money to help pass a law taking away someone else's rights is ridicul…

> Prop8 was passed based on propaganda.

Let's use that reasoning carefully so that we do not disqualify our entire legal code.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#128

Post by moron4hire »

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.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#129

Post by Crito »

king_jester wrote: post #83
patrickg_zill wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> 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.

Particularly any LGBTQ Mozilla employees that lived in the state of California between 2008 and 2013, which I assume is many of them.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#130

Post by Mikeb85 »

quasque wrote: post #105
Mikeb85 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By implication, are you saying that being homophobic is not a choice?

I'm saying that if you're named Mohammed people will make certain assumptions about your beliefs your whole life, and will treat you differently.
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