Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla Moving Forward

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 259 posts

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#151

Post by twoodfin »

bunderbunder wrote: post #132
twoodfin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious where you would draw your line. Would you support firing Mozilla's CEO if it's revealed he voted for Mitt Romney? What if he gave his campaign $1000?

Speaking for myself, I find the idea that a line should be drawn to be downright antithetical. What I support is individual liberties. Which means that it doesn't necessarily matter whether or not I support something. Individuals and organizations are generally free to do what they want, including being free to do things I don't like, and vice versa. Meaning: 1. Brendan Eich was perfectly free to make political contr…

That's very clear, and I appreciate your distillation of the issue as you see it.

But it still bothers me: How do you distinguish this approach from the blacklisting of alleged Communists in 1950's Hollywood? Or was that an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of the neutral or beneficial practice of people's political views being subject to the court of public (and institutional) opinion?

I would like to say: I respect your right to not hire someone you believe to be a Communist, but I don't believe you're acting in the best interests of society as a whole when you choose to allow someone's personal political activities to inform your hiring decisions.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#152

Post by bzbarsky »

hackuser wrote: post #148
bzbarsky wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Oh, sure. I'm not saying most people are the sort who send hate mail.

It only takes a few tens of thousands to make life pretty unearable for a single person who receives the mail, though. :(

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#153

Post by coldtea »

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.

>Are you going to defend people that oppose Women's Suffrage too? What about slavery supporters? These were just political opinions once too.

Still are. And a lover of democracy and freedom should defend (not to be conflated with "advocate for") all of these people.

They are entitles to their opinions, they are entitled to have their opinions battle other opinions in the court of public opinion, and they are entitled not to lose their jobs or be beaten etc over them.

Now, if they do something against the law inspired by those opinions, they should of course be punished. But merely having them it's totally their right.

Free speech is only free insofar as it comes with no other consequences besides counter-arguments.

For, those that believe otherwise, I'd say that their opinoon means that people who talked against slavery in 1840 and were fired, ostracized from their community or beaten up were also living in a "free speach" environment.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#154

Post by wonderzombie »

finder83 wrote: post #123

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 o…

Whose free speech was violated? Free speech doesn't mean the freedom from consequences or criticism. It means the exact opposite! He's free to speak as he likes and donate as he likes, and everyone else is free to exercise their own rights to free speech. That's how it freaking works.

There's no right to be a CEO, either. I wouldn't dispute a racist's right to speak as they like, but free speech doesn't mean turning a blind eye to bigotry and prejudice. Views are not somehow exempt from criticism just because they are sincerely held.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#155

Post by Yoric »

finder83 wrote: post #123

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 o…

So you are changing browser because of the declarations of ~4 Mozillians? Or am I missing something?

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#156

Post by kirkbackus »

ender7 wrote: post #62
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…

"Accepting each other's beliefs" seems like a simple solution, but it has a very problematic result. To LGBT Mozillians, this becomes "you must respect beliefs that say that you are a second-class citizen." No one should feel like they must respect beliefs that devalue their person.

You are confusing "accepting" with "respecting". These are not the same thing. For example: I can accept a view I don't respect. To avoid a straw man, you should state your phrases unequivocally.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#157

Post by Yoric »

SethMurphy wrote: post #114

I tweeted in praise of Mozilla's support of the web a few days after he resigned and was asked in a response if Mozilla helped support my preferred bigotry. While I don't disagree with the criticism of Brendan Eich, it has gone a little far when my praise of Mozilla's support of the open web got me labeled a bigot (IMHO I am not). Making a correlation like this is wrong and can only hurt even a good cause.

Consider yourself lucky you were just called a bigot. Some of us (not me) received death threats.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#158

Post by coldtea »

bunderbunder wrote: post #132
twoodfin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious where you would draw your line. Would you support firing Mozilla's CEO if it's revealed he voted for Mitt Romney? What if he gave his campaign $1000?

Speaking for myself, I find the idea that a line should be drawn to be downright antithetical. What I support is individual liberties. Which means that it doesn't necessarily matter whether or not I support something. Individuals and organizations are generally free to do what they want, including being free to do things I don't like, and vice versa. Meaning: 1. Brendan Eich was perfectly free to make political contr…

How's that different from lynching? Or McCarthyism?

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#159

Post by hackuser »

bzbarsky wrote: post #131
hackuser wrote: post #31

Mozilla's mission is vital and they have been very successful overall. Much of the credit must belong to Mitchell Baker, Brendan Eich, and others who led the organization until now but I'm starting to be concerned about the leadership's future, a future that is important to everyone -- I'd much rather lose almost any software company than lose Mozilla. * Why do they appear to have difficulty finding a long-term CEO?…

> * Why do they appear to have difficulty finding a long-term CEO? I can't speak for the board here, but lack of stock options and the like probably has something to do with it. I expect that it's also difficult to find a CEO that is willing to operate in the sort of environment described in http://blog.finette.com/on-mozilla (see the quote from John Lilly in there). This extends to broader culture fit issues: findin…

I recently saw John Lilly's presentation to WordCamp ~2009. Truly amazing and inspiring how you guys operate.

I understand many people seek big financial returns and others might have difficulty with the culture, but for anyone in the non-profit world or with the mission-oriented motivation, it's hard to imagine a better opportunity to change the world. If I had the skills I would leap at it.

Re: Mozilla Moving Forward

#160

Post by carlio »

msbarnett wrote: post #121
carlio wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well I guess we're stuck in semantics, because "doing something which negatively affects someone else" constitutes an attack IMO.

You seem to be of the opinion that exercising free speech cannot be an attack, which I call bullshit on. If free speech were not powerful, we wouldn't protect it so fiercely. The right to free speech comes with the responsibility for what you say, and what OK Cupid and Brenden Eich said when exercising their right had repercussions they have to take responsibility for. "I don't like X" has different repercussions depending on the person who says it; OK Cupid advocating boycotts of Firefox is them exercising free speech to a large userbase, free speech which had consequences for Mozilla which surely objectively were negative.

Either they are ignorant of the consequences or they chose their words to cause the consequences which they knew would be negative. The latter is an attack.

Post reply on HN