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Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

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Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#121

Post by rogerbinns »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #69
davidgerard wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Eich lives and breathes Mozilla and the mission, and is basically the perfect choice for CEO ... except for his political actions being so toxic to the brand that other nonprofits issue a press release to say they're boycotting Firefox over it: http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/victoria/vac-gmhc-to-boyco...

Does a (relatively small) monetary donation really deserve to be called a "toxic political action"...?

"According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are 1,138 statutory provisions in which marital status is a factor in determining benefits, rights, and privileges."[1] He donated money to a cause to prevent those 1,138 benefits, rights and privileges being available to gay couples. He hasn't changed his mind, explained himself etc. He has issued a statement saying Mozilla employees will get benefits, rights and privileges within the company equally. But those same employees (not to mention Mozilla's customer base) also have lives outside of the company. It is very easy to see how that can be considered "toxic political action" as well as calling into doubt his suitably going forward.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#122

Post by pekk »

magicalist wrote: post #12
jholly wrote: post #4

Locked out of iOS. Under heavly competition on Android. Put the metro port on the back burner. Increasingly fighting to stay on feature parity with Chrome on the desktop. FirefoxOS still to make an impact. I love Firefox. I'm just worried for it. With the world going mobile, I wonder if there's space for Firefox. It would be such a shame not to see it around 5 years from now. I wonder if it makes sense for a small or…

> Is it such a horrible idea to fork and contribute to blink? Just thinking out loud A fairly bad one, yes. There would be virtually no benefit to doing this, and a serious detriment to web browser diversity (which would likely be a detriment to the health of the web as a developing ecosystem). > It would be such a shame not to see it around 5 years from now They still have plenty of revenue, and the amount still kee…

What is unhealthy about shared components? Should we insist that browsers also be built with different languages or compilers or it is unhealthy? We are not talking about a proprietary component here.

There may be reasons to prefer Firefox not to use blink, but "detriment to the health of the web" is a really vague and pointless argument. What do you really mean by that, if not just that Chromium/Chrome are somehow bad for the web?

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#123

Post by gus_massa »

crassus wrote: post #54
KuraFire wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having…

As a conservative-ish person in tech, I'm glad I made the decision to hide my politics beginning a few years ago. You people are vicious. I'd love to have an open debate or conversation, but that doesn't seem to be your game. Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory. It's going to be a messy process and some people are going to disagree. That…

> Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory.

The history of human’s relations is much more complicated, and it changed a lot even in the historic time. There is nothing new under the sun.

Monogamy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogamy

Poligyny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny

Polyandry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry

...

Homosexuality in Greece: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece

Homosexuality in Rome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome

...

There are much more articles, but I don’t want to link to the whole Wikipedia.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#124

Post by rayiner »

crassus wrote: post #54
KuraFire wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having…

As a conservative-ish person in tech, I'm glad I made the decision to hide my politics beginning a few years ago. You people are vicious. I'd love to have an open debate or conversation, but that doesn't seem to be your game. Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory. It's going to be a messy process and some people are going to disagree. That…

As a conservativeish person on HN, I have to say that pushing to deny a legal arrangement to gay couples is different than being skeptical about their impact on society.

Rant: Also, I'm irritated that this is the "conservative" position. Our culture is doing away with the institution of marriage, and its to the detriment of our children and our families. In the face of that, conservatives should not be in the business of discouraging people who want to build families.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#125

Post by jswinghammer »

KuraFire wrote: post #105
mjn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being a libertarian is a very different thing from donating $1000 to an anti-equal rights campaign. If you mean that people should be able to think whatever thoughts they want without me conducting paparazzi-style investigations to find out what they think, sure: I'm not advocating a campaign to find everyone who owns a copy of F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom and ostracize them (in fact, I own one!). But how about don…

Like I said in my original comment: there is a crucial difference between thinking harmful things, and acting on them. Actions matter. Thoughts that you keep to yourself? I don't care. Go nuts with that. (also I'm not a fan of the libertarianism in tech/SV, but that's a whole different discussion)

I think the piece you are missing is that someone could reasonably apply the same logic you are to your politics. If I feel that taxation is theft or that bombing Pakistan with drones is grossly immoral I could ostracize anyone who holds those beliefs under this logic. Maybe even target supporters of those arranging such activities like say anyone who gave money to Obama. You can either deal with opinions you don't like or you can freak out try to target those who hold them. It's your life.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#126

Post by PhasmaFelis »

crassus wrote: post #54
KuraFire wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having…

As a conservative-ish person in tech, I'm glad I made the decision to hide my politics beginning a few years ago. You people are vicious. I'd love to have an open debate or conversation, but that doesn't seem to be your game. Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory. It's going to be a messy process and some people are going to disagree. That…

> You people are vicious.

We respond to systematic oppression with angry words, and we're the vicious ones?

Look, I'm sorry you feel hard done by. The folks down in Birmingham felt hard done by, too, when they were told they had to put up with black people dirtying up their lunch counters. These next few decades are going to stress you out just as much as the last few did them. I truly, honestly hope that you'll eventually be able to find another way of looking at things.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#127

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

jswinghammer wrote: post #116
llamataboot wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a relatively small donation to the KKK or a neo-Nazi party? The issue isn't the size of the donation but taking a public stance in support of bigotry.

Given that such a donation would change the matter entirely your point isn't relevant. There is a massive number of people in this country that support his position (note: I'm not one of them). Calling them all bigots is a cheap way out of having actual conversations.

A bigot is a person with a bigoted opinion.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#128

Post by PhasmaFelis »

desireco42 wrote: post #62
desireco42 wrote: post #37

This is stupid, he might not be the most charismatic leaders but he is genuine leader for organization like Mozilla, and other causes what he supports in his free time, I personally don't care, as it is not relevant.

And you who downvote should go out of the closet, it is not everything about gay rights, there is life beyond that

I'm out of the closet already, thanks.

Also, FYI, trying to insult gay-rights fans with "you're gay" doesn't really work.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#129

Post by MrZongle2 »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #75

Headline makes it seem like this is a resignation over a disapproval. The witch hunt is coming and they are getting out of the way. With this resignation they hope to avoid being targets. Similar things happened in Soviet bloc countries with the NKVD. Hell, similar things happened during all that McCarthyism crap... 'So we've heard you've donated to the Communist party several years back... you'd like to keep your jo…

"The witch hunt is coming"?

You must not have been paying attention over the last couple of days. The bonfire has been stoked, the rope is ready, the judges have made their decision, and the ducks are ready to be weighed.

Eich has been found guilty, guilty, guilty in the court of public opinion: his offense is having the same opinion as 52.2% of Californian voters in 2008 and donating to that cause.

No apology is apparently sufficient, so he must be destroyed.

At least, that's sure what it looks like online.

Re: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO

#130

Post by vacri »

davidgerard wrote: post #101
vacri wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes barely any toxicity to get someone, somewhere to issue a mostly meaningless "I hate this guy" press release.

This isn't that.

I think it is just that. I live in Melbourne myself, and while I'm not involved in the gay scene, I'm also not that far removed from it. What you've got here is a bland statement saying "we're boycotting this product" without actually stating any changes made. Does the council even use Mozilla's stuff? If they do, what changes are they making?

How effective have previous campaigns of theirs been? (Like I say, I'm admittedly not involved in the scene, but I haven't actually heard the name of the aids council for literally years). How much political reach do they have to make people actually change the web browser they're using? Few people use thunderbird or firefox OS or Mozilla's other subsidiary products.

And what is the basis of their claim? A single sizeable donation from six years ago. What more recent evidence do we have that he's still acting this way? People can and do change over the course of years.

This announcement is merely jumping on a political bandwagon, and the suggested boycott has no teeth in it. It's a robotic response, and smacks of the usual way these things are written: responding to the hot gossip with no further investigation. Fine, boycott away if they want to, I'm just saying that press releases like this - giving little insight, having no real teeth, no course of action, and which can be written in 10 minutes - don't require much to trigger them. It doesn't even mention that Mozilla's primary product is Firefox and you can start off by using something else!

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