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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#611

Post by homebrewer »

glenstein wrote: post #557
rchaud wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with all the comments about "I'd pay X dollars to not be the product", it's been shown over and over again that paying money is not going to void corporate desire to simply double dip by raising prices while also showing ads.

Or for a similar point, it's been shown over and over that attempting to crowdsource the revenue is a staggeringly unrealistic response with no real world precedent in the history either of browsers or online crowdsourced funding. You would think that would matter to people who point to that as a possible panacea. Actual attempts to get users to pay for the browser itself, like what Opera did, simply didn't work and…

You might want to look up Thunderbird crowd funding over the past couple of years. Spoiler: it's been very successful.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#612

Post by pmontra »

mghackerlady wrote: post #513
t23414321 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web was usable without JavaScript once. (JS has few good uses, but is too excessive. Less code is always better - and an art.)

Is there an extension that limits JS to things that actually improve websites (like the bare minimum needed to render a page usable under most metrics)

uMatrix, from the same author of uBO. It's been officially unsupported for years but it still works and it's UI is better then the UI of NoScript and of course much better than the incomprehensible subsystem of uBO that should have replaced uMatrix.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#615

Post by array_key_first »

saithir wrote: post #346
swiftcoder wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On Mac at least, I'm not aware of any viable non-Chromium alternatives Surely Mac is the only place there is a viable non-Chromium alternative (Safari)?

I think people like to imagine it's not viable because the most commonly known adblocker refuses to release the version for it. Negative news somehow stick better. Fortunately it's not the only one and for example Adguard works perfectly fine.

Safari is even further behind chrome in feature set than Firefox.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#616

Post by array_key_first »

graeme wrote: post #599
pavel_lishin wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, if the CEO of some software I used suddenly came out as anti-miscegenation, and started donating money to the cause, I'd stop using the software until the CEO was fired too.

Where this analogy breaks is that at the time (2008), Eich's position had majority support in the US. The proposition he wad funding passed with majority support. Mixed marriages by contrast had overwhelming support in 2008. Eich didn't suddenly come out against anything in 2014. People dug up his prior funding. Demanding permanent ostracization for supporting a majority position is fairly anti-democratic. You can be…

Appealing to the majority is lame.

There's three options on every stance: support, oppose, and neutral. When in doubt, you should be neutral - not opposed.

Just because everyone else is opposing gay marriage, or integration, or emancipation, doesn't mean you should.

Maybe you don't have the time or energy to try to find out what path you should take. Okay, fair. You can always do nothing. You can literally say "I don't know enough about this to have an opinion".

But following the majority IS NOT that. You ARE taking a hard stance if you do that! You're making a choice, and that means you better understand that choice. You are responsible for it, accountable to it!

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#617

Post by pseudalopex »

sltkr wrote: post #594
pseudalopex wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eich was fired Eich resigned. > private political views Donations are public material support. Not private views.

We both know that CEOs are never fired, but there is a difference between resigning on their own accord and “resigning” because they had no organizational support. What happened to Eich was the CEO-equivalent of getting fired. > Donations are public material support. Not private views. Not really? Nobody would know what causes Eich donates to if they didn't make an effort to look it up and broadcast that information.…

> We both know that CEOs are never fired, but there is a difference between resigning on their own accord and “resigning” because they had no organizational support.

CEOs are never fired is false objectively. CEOs must earn support. And there was no reason to state false information if you believed everyone would understand the context of the facts.

> Not really?

Really. Public records are public.

> Nobody would know what causes Eich donates to if they didn't make an effort to look it up and broadcast that information.

No one would know most news stories if someone didn't research and publish them. No one would know what Mozilla's CEO was paid if no one looked it up and published it.

> Even if you take that view, are you saying that nobody who works for Mozilla is allowed to make any political donations ever?

People are allowed to make donations. People are allowed to choose who they follow or support or not.

And jobs have different standards. Eich remained CTO years after his donation was published with little controversy.

> Otherwise, how do you explain Mozilla caring so much about which political campaigns its employees donate to?

Who are Mozilla to you? The board appointed Eich CEO years after his donation was published

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#618

Post by array_key_first »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #536
dweinus wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Firing a CEO because there is an immediate, massive public shaming of them is entirely rational from a business perspective B) This is the hill you want to die on? That being a bigot should be a protected status for CEOs?

> This is the hill you want to die on? That being a bigot should be a protected status for CEOs? That is a wildly uncharitable take. I'm not OP, but I believe that nobody , CEOs or otherwise, should be fired for their activities outside of work. That can be political beliefs, but doesn't have to be either. And yes, that means that sometimes someone whose beliefs you find repugnant is going to have a good job. That is…

It's a business decision.

Imagine, instead, the opinion he expressed outside of work is that Firefox sucks and nobody should use it. Should he be fired then?

As a CEO, your opinion and perspective is MARKETING. You determine if customers stay or leave. And causing customers to leave is obviously a fireable offense.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#619

Post by sltkr »

arjie wrote: post #540
sltkr wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you agree: for you, it's more important that the Mozilla CEO shares your political views, than that Mozilla makes a quality product. That's exactly what the parent post is talking about. When Mozilla started prioritizing political correctness over software quality, software quality predictably declined. That's why they are struggling now: they reduced their user base to the tiny group of political extremists that…

I think the correct formulation is: "There are political views that the CEO of Mozilla could hold which would be sufficient for me to abandon the use of products that Mozilla makes". And I think that would be non-controversial for most people.

The problem with that formulation is that it denies the importance of the quantative aspect of the difference of opinion.

Of course there are views so extreme almost nobody would put up with them. But at the same time, being tolerant of differences of opinion is an important aspect of a free society and a functioning democracy. There is a word for people who cannot tolerate even the smallest difference of opinion: bigots.

But differences of opinion aren't binary; they lie on a spectrum. Similarly, bigotry lies on a spectrum. The person who doesn't brook the smallest disagreement is a greater bigot that only considers the most odious points of view beyond the pale.

For an extreme example, consider these cases: 1) A CEO is fired for arguing that the US government should round up all Jews and put them in extermination camps Nazi Germany style. 2) A CEO is fired for arguing that the local sales tax should be raised by 0.25 percentage points.

Are these cases exactly the same? You could argue in both cases the CEO gets fired for expressing sufficiently unorthodox political views, but that doesn't cut at the heart of the matter. Clearly it's necessary to quantify how extreme those views are. The extent to which the board that fires their CEO is bigoted depends on how unreasonable the CEO's views are; they are inversely proportional.

So now back to Eich. What was his sin? He donated $1000 to support Proposition 8, which restricted the legal definition of marriage to couples consisting of a man and a woman. This view was shared at the time by Barack Obama and a majority of California voters. It didn't strip gay couples of any formal rights: all the same rights could be obtained through a domestic partnership or an out-of-state marriage. It was just a nominal dispute about what the word “marriage” means.

Clearly this is a relatively unimportant issue; closer to a tax dispute than a genocide. You can disagree with Eich and the Californian public on this one, but being unable to tolerate their point of view doesn't make them monsters; it makes you a bigot.

The fact that Mozilla didn't allow their CEO to deviate from the majority point of view on this issue (again, a minority viewpoint in California at the time!) revealed Mozilla to be a heavily politicized, extremely bigoted corporation, that puts ideological conformity first.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#620

Post by array_key_first »

HanClinto wrote: post #551
izzylan wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing someone for being opposed to same-sex marriage is political in the same way firing someone for robbing a bank is.

This is dangerous, faulty thinking. Equivocating speech and crime as both being "violence" (of similar class, deserving similar response) is a fallacy that lets people justify murder in response to disagreement as long as it's deemed serious enough.

Yes it's not violence, but it's not speech either. Donating money is performing material harm. That might be an unfortunate reality, but it's undeniable. It's a different thing from just saying something.

Also, you can absolutely be fired for just saying something and that's been the case forever. As a CEO, you are essentially marketing your company. Marketing it poorly and losing customers can, and will, get you fired - in every company, ever.

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