Mozilla Moving Forward • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#141

Post by Crito » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:14 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #92

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.

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…

Eich's right to say what he wants remains intact. Nobody has attacked it, and it has not been eroded in any way. What he does not have is 'a right to not have people respond to his speech with speech of their own'. In fact, any speech in response to Eich's speech is just as protected as his speech.

If this were not the case, then conversation/debate would not be possible.

In other countries with hate speech legislation, Eich's right to speak out against civil liberties might be restricted. However this is not the case in America, he is free to say whatever he pleases (although his actions are restricted, and if he commits an illegal action his (otherwise legal) speech may be used to make the case that his action was a hate crime).

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#142

Post by twoodfin » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:15 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #88

twoodfin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fuzzy, gray line that cost a smart hacker a job he was otherwise incredibly well-suited for? If it's really that indistinct, it's scary: I might want to work for a company some day that cares about where that line is, and I'd like to stay on the right side of it.

"Working for" and "being the leader and representative of" are two different things. Eich's views were known to Mozilla for a while before this blew up. If you want an honest answer, I think if you want to play the political game, you need to keep your cards close to your chest. You may not like that answer, and you folks can furiously click on the downvote arrow all you like, but I think that's the reality of it: fo…

You may not like that answer, and you folks can furiously click on the downvote arrow all you like, but I think that's the reality of it: for an extreme example, look at how closely every single aspect of US presidential candidates' lives are picked over, both present and past.

Well, obviously I couldn't downvote your comment, and I hope others won't either, since you're essentially right. I'm just disappointed that the Mozilla CEO position is something that requires playing a "political game" in the manner you're describing. "Politics" in the general sense, of course, exists everywhere there's human interaction, but our civic society is damaged when bright, motivated people are discouraged from participating in it lest their actions be held against them in other spheres of their lives.

I'm most disturbed at the number of people who seem to think that it would be a great idea if we could, for example, keep track of the political donations of everyone we do business with so as not to "reward" those on the other side of whatever issues we care deeply about. After all, it's just an application of our "free speech"! That would, I think, be utterly poisonous to our way of life. If this kind of economic activism stays confined to CEO's of open source companies with dependence on their communities' views, I guess that isn't so terrible.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#143

Post by pjbrunet » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:16 PM UTC

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…

"we're not going to accept this kind of bullying anymore."

What are you proposing? Can you force OKCupid to treat all browsers the same?

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#144

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:18 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #124

mmanfrin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I could argue that anyone who supports any special legal recognition of "marriage" is directly pushing for the codification of discrimination.

There is a sense in which that is true -- every legal status is, by definition, discrimination in the law.

But then, there is nothing wrong with discrimination, per se, what is wrong is discrimination on bases which do not serve a legitimate public purpose. Which, of course, takes a lot more work to identify than mere discrimination, but then, meaningful distinctions are often harder than meaningless ones. And, so, we end up establishing a series of explicitly suspect bases for discrimination such that we require a higher standard of proof that there is legitimate need being served and no better way to serve it for certain forms of discrimination, because of our experience of them being deployed inappropriately to keep groups powerless rather than to advance some legitimate common interest.

> But why can't two roommates in a plutonic friendship receive the same benefits?

(1) the word you are looking for is probably "platonic", unless this is some kind of friendhip oriented around money, cartoon dogs, deities of the underworld, or dwarf planets.

(2) Generally, law doesn't require a romantic relationship for marriage, it just requires appropriate age (sometimes with exceptions or variations with parental consent), specific gender combinations (except where same-sex marriage is allowed), not already being in a marriage with a different partner, and not being within a certain degree of consanguinity. So, platonic roomates can get married.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#145

Post by Yoric » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:18 PM UTC

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #58

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…

Please, please, stop calling this "politics" or suggesting this is about (in)tolerance by others. It's completely dismissive of the very real objections people had concerning the appointment of Eich, especially those of us who understand the importance of Mozilla for the open web and weren't just out for good old lynching.

The problem is not people who were able to argue against Brendan Eich. I am sure that there was space for a sane debate on the topic. The problem was the bullies who were screaming along.

(I'm not going to call this a lynching, because in my mind, that's basically a Godwin point).

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#146

Post by adl » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:19 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #124

mmanfrin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It doesn't solve this 'academic' double standard you speak of, but it does improve the lives of millions of people right now.

Baby steps, iterative process, etc, etc.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#147

Post by jdp23 » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:20 PM UTC

king_jester wrote: post #101

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 feel like there's a bingo card that has all of your half-assed excuses on it. > 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... I'm fine with pursuing your politics until I feel you…

> I feel like there's a bingo card that has all of your half-assed excuses on it.

You mean something along these lines? https://twitter.com/eassumption/status/451921312609361922

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#148

Post by hackuser » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:21 PM UTC

bzbarsky wrote: post #122

arrrg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

bz,

It sucks to face the feeding frenzy. This one may have looked bad from the inside, when you see every response, but from the outside it was a ripple in the news for a day or two. Most people I talk to, including those who follow the news and get animated over 'political correctness', don't even know about it. I explained it to a few at dinner last night. As I posted elsewhere, if you divide the responses you got by 500,000,000, you get a small number.

Thanks for your hard work. Don't let the haters create a bunker mentality.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#149

Post by Yoric » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:22 PM UTC

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…

Mozillian here: Mozilla is not a company like Dropbox. Mozilla is first and foremost a community. We don't wait for our leaders or our PR team to decide whether we defend someone. We do it from the roots, and that's what many of us did (see the community blogs at http://planet.mozilla.org). Others in the same community decided to attack Brendan's position, which is just as acceptable.

Now, you are right, Mitchell Baker's statement is very apologetic. Remember that she is (or at least was) long-time friend with Brendan Eich and that she probably was hit very hard by the tsunami.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#150

Post by pcwalton » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:22 PM UTC

drawkbox wrote: post #49

This is a pretty massive change. Eich was technology/standards focused. Someone from the product/marketing side is ok as long as they get Mozilla is really a technology product company (business and marketing is easier when technology/products are the base focus and you don't lose developers targeting the platform). I am a little concerned that a switch was flipped at Mozilla when the former Chief Marketing Officer i…

> I feel many of the things I love Mozilla for, asm.js most recently, may not be as focused as before.

Chris Beard is the most technical person who's now marketing-focused I know. A little-known fact: he wrote the first prototype of the Firefox themes feature (formerly known as Personas).