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Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

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Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#271

Post by Demon_Warrior »

Yoric wrote: post #223
Animats wrote: post #74

I am writing to you about a very disturbing aspect of Firefox 38.0.5. Specifically, that the update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Mozilla wants them to have. When we first saw the Firefox upgrade experience that strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existin…

I'm a Firefox dev (but speaking only for myself). I believe that most people inside Mozilla agree that a number of choices made recently by Mozilla were pretty bad. And these "most people" includes the team who is now in charge of product development at Mozilla, and wasn't in that position at the time of, say, Hello or Pocket. We are making changes. I hope that the community will see the changes soon. Now, as usual,…

How about adding features back to customize the browing experience? Mozilla was always about built inside customizations.

Stop copying Chrome! Because of your actions i am using now Vivaldi! But... If you ever decide to support power users again with something which does NOT require add-on installation and includes more advanced UI customization, i MAY be perhaps reconsidering my decision.

But not one single minute earlier!

Btw. I even know some professionals who are running PC shops who have abandoned Firefox and are refusing to install it on client's computers! Because of Australis, because of Pocket, Chat, Social Media, DRM, handling of the Brendan Eich case!

Please.... bring at least back the option to combine address bar and tabs! or an optional add-on bar.

But most important, stop copying Chrome and stop only serving the simple users. Because in the end it has been the advertising and support of Power users which did push you to the heights during Firefox versions 20-24! This group earns to get back a certain respect from you, and right now you are constantly asskicking that user group for no real sense making reason!

Time to abandon your recent minimalist and design centered way of thinking and time to go back to your roots... to a more customizable and unique experience which you served the user base in the past.

Mozilla right now is on a very terrible road. If you do not want it to become even more terrible, you really have to go back a big part of the way!

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#272

Post by BrendanEich »

oso2k wrote: post #269
BrendanEich wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr -- "Dart is good". A fine view, I agree on parts. Your words do nothing to address the very real technical problems that kept DartVM out of Chrome. Stop personalizing everything and study the link I cited.

It's hard not to personalize things like what Oliver Hunt said in [0], "The issue here isn't "can we make multiple vms live in webkit" it's "can we expose multiple languages to the web", to the former i say obviously as we already do, to the latter I say that we don't want to." The general tone Oliver had was akin to saying only little-endian machines should be supported on the Web. Not because of some technically pr…

Oliver is not me, nor has he ever worked for Mozilla. But you are not the OP, so this is all just more mistargeted drive-by and taking-it-too-personally complaining.

There are not multiple GC'ed VMs in Safari sharing the DOM, so I bet Oliver was talking about things like JSC as another way to script Apple stuff than Obj-C (now Swift). But that's not material to the DartVM/OilPan vs. Chrome issue.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#273

Post by coldpie »

BrendanEich wrote: post #267
coldpie wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't try to pretend the Prop 8 campaign was some reasonable, thoughtful discussion of the impacts of gay marriage on society. Prop 8 was a campaign of hate directed against a historically maligned minority, designed to prevent that group from gaining acceptance. The ads implied crazy off-the-wall shit like recruitment of children (read between the lines: homosexuals are pedophiles) and that somehow children being to…

No one implied any such thing, but you will read that into any ad defending parental rights to educate small children. There's no point in arguing if your premise is anyone who does not agree with you is a hateful bigot. Hence the comic, hope you enjoyed it!

So, I was right to begin with: Eich unapologetically contributed material support to a campaign of hate against many of his own employees, and it's entirely justified for such a person to be ousted from a leadership position in a company that doesn't wish to lose many of its gay and gay-friendly employees.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#274

Post by BrendanEich »

coldpie wrote: post #273
BrendanEich wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one implied any such thing, but you will read that into any ad defending parental rights to educate small children. There's no point in arguing if your premise is anyone who does not agree with you is a hateful bigot. Hence the comic, hope you enjoyed it!

So, I was right to begin with: Eich unapologetically contributed material support to a campaign of hate against many of his own employees, and it's entirely justified for such a person to be ousted from a leadership position in a company that doesn't wish to lose many of its gay and gay-friendly employees.

Your circular argument did not move my LGBT supporters at Mozilla, or negate my record of good conduct and relations over the years with all non-Jacobins.

And of course Mozilla did not fire me because of anything like your bigoted imputation of "hate". Such noise amounted to a non-issue.

Being in an echo chamber is not good for one's hearing. Step outside and listen.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#275

Post by coldpie »

BrendanEich wrote: post #274
coldpie wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I was right to begin with: Eich unapologetically contributed material support to a campaign of hate against many of his own employees, and it's entirely justified for such a person to be ousted from a leadership position in a company that doesn't wish to lose many of its gay and gay-friendly employees.

Your circular argument did not move my LGBT supporters at Mozilla, or negate my record of good conduct and relations over the years with all non-Jacobins. And of course Mozilla did not fire me because of anything like your bigoted imputation of "hate". Such noise amounted to a non-issue. Being in an echo chamber is not good for one's hearing. Step outside and listen.

(If you are Eich, I apologize for the awkward third-person conversation. I don't have any proof of your identity and I don't want to attribute anything said here to him without it.)

A non-issue? Literally every article I can find about the resignation is backed by a discussion about Eich's anti-gay stance. The position at CEO lasted roughly a week before the resignation. OKCupid put up a big anti-Mozilla notice as a result of the appointment; I have a hard time describing that as "good relations." Unless you're willing to put forward some new insider information, it's really hard to believe that such noise was not a factor, if not THE factor, in the resignation.

Why did Eich resign after a week if not for the outrage at his anti-gay stance?

> your bigoted imputation of "hate"

Lol

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#276

Post by BrendanEich »

coldpie wrote: post #275
BrendanEich wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your circular argument did not move my LGBT supporters at Mozilla, or negate my record of good conduct and relations over the years with all non-Jacobins. And of course Mozilla did not fire me because of anything like your bigoted imputation of "hate". Such noise amounted to a non-issue. Being in an echo chamber is not good for one's hearing. Step outside and listen.

(If you are Eich, I apologize for the awkward third-person conversation. I don't have any proof of your identity and I don't want to attribute anything said here to him without it.) A non-issue? Literally every article I can find about the resignation is backed by a discussion about Eich's anti-gay stance. The position at CEO lasted roughly a week before the resignation. OKCupid put up a big anti-Mozilla notice as a…

Read my HN comments to authenticate my id.

You're doing it again: equating pro-traditional-marriage with anti-gay with hate. The last bogus inference is the one that I called a non-issue.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#277

Post by BrendanEich »

Lazare wrote: post #162
pcwalton wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't quote Jonas' or roc's responses to that specific claim.

I didn't feel the need; it just brings the discussion back to my earlier comment upthread. If you don't want to just use Sqlite (understandable), and you don't want to write something that is as good as Sqlite (also understandable), then you're going to have a crap database implementation. There's just not a lot of other options there. Jonas' comment just reiterates the lack of choices. But given the three bad choice…

Clearly it was dumb for people at Mozilla to take a bullet for Microsoft. But no matter -- I'm curious why you can't see past that and (also) hold Microsoft to account for rejecting WebSQL.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#278

Post by michaelwww »

BrendanEich wrote: post #259
michaelwww wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dart team is not a large team and not an arrogant team. Led by Lars Bak, they thought to try and make something that ran faster than JavaScript by doing away with 'monkey patching.' Lars and Kasper Lund took all their experience working with V8 to make something that avoided the bottlenecks. Gilad Bracha designed a good working language and it works without many "gotchas" along the way. It's a pleasure to use. Th…

tl;dr -- "Dart is good". A fine view, I agree on parts. Your words do nothing to address the very real technical problems that kept DartVM out of Chrome. Stop personalizing everything and study the link I cited.

Why does the Java VM run in a browser but the Dart VM is too hard?

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#279

Post by BrendanEich »

michaelwww wrote: post #278
BrendanEich wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr -- "Dart is good". A fine view, I agree on parts. Your words do nothing to address the very real technical problems that kept DartVM out of Chrome. Stop personalizing everything and study the link I cited.

Why does the Java VM run in a browser but the Dart VM is too hard?

Please read anything I've written on the topic over the years.

Java runs as a plugin, like Flash. It has no deep DOM integration.

Both Java and Flash have become security problems, so they're in various penalty boxes, beyond the plugin prison.

Back in 1995, when I did JS in the shadow of Java, as a sidekick Robin-the-boy-hostage language, I did the primordial DOM too. Java was in only applets then -- pretty much the same as a plugin. We did connect JS and Java via LiveConnect, which led to the JRI (Warren Harris at Netscape), which led to the JNI. To solve the GC problem, the JRI user had to manage handles for global and local roots.

This did not solve the inter-heap cycle problem, however. Netscape never implemented a cycle collector, but we did at Mozilla, based on [Bacon & Rajan, 2001]. It was required for C++ and JS cycle collection. Around that time, IE would still leak memory if you made a C++/JS cycle by capturing certain global object property references in closures. Their C++ side used COM reference counting, so once the cycle closed through JScript, there was no way to drop the cycle-internal refcount.

Mozilla's C++/JS cycle collector was originally meant to handle C-Python too (and possibly other languages with full XPCOM/DOM access), since we had an optional integration of that engine, courtesy Mark Hammond of Active State. But both the C-Python integration and the polyglot support in the CC got ripped out. Browsers cannot afford overhead, even mostly-dead (but still hazardous in the 0day sense) code.

(Updated to note that LiveConnect is long-gone too. Java is just a plugin.)

I suspect you still have not read Filip Pizlo's post at that lists.webkit.org link I left, or the paper it references. Please take more time to study problems before casting aspersions!

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#280

Post by coldpie »

BrendanEich wrote: post #276
coldpie wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(If you are Eich, I apologize for the awkward third-person conversation. I don't have any proof of your identity and I don't want to attribute anything said here to him without it.) A non-issue? Literally every article I can find about the resignation is backed by a discussion about Eich's anti-gay stance. The position at CEO lasted roughly a week before the resignation. OKCupid put up a big anti-Mozilla notice as a…

Read my HN comments to authenticate my id. You're doing it again: equating pro-traditional-marriage with anti-gay with hate. The last bogus inference is the one that I called a non-issue.

You're right, I am equating those, because they are all equal. Whatever label you put on it, opposition to same-sex marriage makes the statement that you believe that love between same-sex couples is inferior to that between opposite-sex couples; that you need to ensure your children grow up to have that same belief; that homosexuals are something to disapprove of, something to fear; that you have a deep fear of your child turning out to be homosexual. Whether or not you come out and say those statements (and many of your "traditionalist" colleagues are not afraid to say them outright), all of those statements are clearly implied and wildly hurtful to homosexual individuals, and their friends and family.

This is why you saw such a violent reaction to your being placed as CEO. The fact that you didn't last a week means that you and the Mozilla board are so blind to the harm that your positions inflict on your own employees and their friends and family that the appointment itself was taken as an insult, and this is ignoring your continued refusal to see the harm that you are doing. And I say this as a huge Mozilla fan (see my comments elsewhere in this thread).

You made it clear that you will use a position of power, in this case money, to put down and insult those who work under you. Why should anyone have to put up with that? Mozilla employees are lucky to live in a time and industry when they could express their disapproval and have it acted upon in a positive way. I feel for others who are in less fortunate positions.

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