Right I'm not sure why this guy is blaming Brendan Eich for what sounds like both an ethics and business problem at Mozilla. If a single donor can bully your CTO out of the door over something unrelated to your mission you are a shitty organization.
I would do the same thing Eich did in that position. I don't agree with his opinion but I respect his right to hold it in an open society. Just another of Mozilla leadership's many bad calls over the years
Is Mozilla Foundation political activist organization?
When you donate to MF, you do that in order to further MF mission. Political activism should not be that[1]. When Eich donated to his cause, he did to organization that had the cause in it's mission; he did not set additional condition (e.g.: fire these people, because I don't like some aspect of their look and they refuse to change).
[1] Now, interesting thing would be to know, how many people didn't donate to MF since they turned into political activist organization.
Mozila is not a political organization but someone in a position of power took an action that hurt some big donors. Those donors are well withing their right to stop donating after that.
But since they believe in the foundation mission, despite the actions from the leadership, they looked for an compromise that Eich accepted (apologizing) and then refused to fulfill his end (the real big problem).
At this point there was no more compromise, either Eich is out or the donors are and Mozilla does not have the luxury of losing donors, most of their money may come from Google but for then every penny counts.
This was not political activism by Mozilla, it was choosing between a rock and a hard place, either losing a big chunk of money or loosing the CEO and making some irrelevant people unhappy, the best decision is very clear to me, CEO is easy to find a replacement, money not so much and 99% of the people complaining are not either.
This was political activism by the donors and they are totally within their right to do it with their money.
Sorry, frustrating that a lie goes around the world six times before the truth can put its boots on. Also that I've abided by Mozilla NDAs while others there (or who used to be there) have not.
I was not repeating someone else lies, i was discussing the topic posted with my understanding on what was posted here with the information i had at the time.
Your replies to him were posted much later then my comments and by the time you posted i could not edit or delete my post.
I did posted some other reply further down in this thread that while were posted after you replies i wrote then before i saw your replies, so also based solo on the information post by the OP.
If the information is incorrect then my apologies.
To anyone else looking at this please look at the OP posted here and at Eich replies and reach a conclusion by yourselves.
@dang if you see this fill free to delete my comments.
EDIT: just to add that i have sent an email requesting my comments to be deleted, although i do not know how long that might take.
Thanks for this, I misread your comment. Sorry about that.
It's still tricky to believe a claim made by one person on the Internet, but in this case, I think one should look at who said it, when they said it, whether it's credible (this "board secret plan" claim is not), and what people directly involved have and have not said. I've said my peace now.
Which donor? Only Google and Microsoft make up 90% of Mozilla income. So a 10% guy is that powerful? Epstein? Mozilla turned too political in the last 10 years. I dont bother with that ki d of company. Anyway, Brave is damn good compare to sluggish Mozilla especially their older gecko. Their newer quantum also terrible when compared to Brave, Arc, or even a niche Floorp or Thorium. VPN? I go with Proton or setup my own. As for app? Dolphin and Opera works way better. Mozilla is a relic. They turn themselves one.
It does not matter which donor.. MF does not have many new sources of money coming around so they need to keep every penny they get coming.
Even if Google and Microsoft were 99% of their income they can still do not have the luxury of losing that extra 1%, loosing the CEO is still a better option then loosing 1% of their income.
And unless you were donating anything closer then that 1% to MF then you and your opinion are irrelevant for their situation. You may belive they are political all you want, it will not change the fact that they could not afford to loose that donor.
As for the other browsers, they are a joke, Brave, Dolphin and Opera are all just chrome with a different skin, might as well be using chrome then. No thank you.
Any browser that use webkit is ultimately bound by google decision on what they want to do with their engine, just like when google make manifest v3 the only one available next june and break most, if not all, ad blockers. It will affect all those browsers eventually.
Now if any of those browsers want to keep manifest v2 to keep ad blockers working they will have to put the manpower to do it themselves and have to fight Google every step of the way because Google will surely start breaking things they need for the effort, the amount of work will only grow over time until they give up.
Maybe it should be political activist organization. As it comes to topics that are important for the mission it holds. Nothing wrong in being political activist in relation to these topics.
Now, it should be purely and absolutely neutral in any other area that is outside the mission.
Well sure I think that in broad moral strokes you have the right to not support someone who you disagree with. (BTW not sure if you saw the comment Eich posted here yesterday, dang has now deleted it for policy violations, but it looked like Eich was saying that the donors didn't try to force him out, and that doing so would have been illegal under California law. So make what you will of that...)
But at the end of the day I would rather live in a society where we have the ability to cooperate with other people in the pursuit of a good cause, even if we disagree with them about some other cause. Like if you follow the attitude of those donors to its logical extreme where do we end up? We end up with no one cooperating on anything, many projects that could have improved society never happen, many opportunities for people with differing viewpoints to learn about each other's perspectives never occur, and so on.
I think if you take what those donors did to the logical extreme you end up with some form of societal collapse, and history teaches us that what happens after that is a strongman shows up and enforces a far worse type of social order.
I think those donors pulling out of Mozilla hurt the cause of free software, hurt Mozilla, and was one instance in a multi-year process of American political polarization that led to the election of a demagogue like Donald Trump, and is still going on. All because one guy in the C-suite had a bad position an issue that was totally unrelated to Mozilla. This is a very dangerous road for our society to tread.
I actually read a blog post at one point by the donors about their decision - short version is Prop 8 would have prevented them from marrying and one of them was here on a visa which they would have lost. So I really feel for them and understand why they would be angry at Eich. Still think they should have selected a different outlet for it.
He agreed to apologize, and reneged on the agreement. Perhaps he could have stayed if he never agreed. Reneging on an agreement is a firing offence on its own many places.
I never agreed to apologize, so never reneged. Don't believe everything you read, especially this "secret plan" that would have violated CA Labor Law. The board was not going to do that.
>The plan was that Eich make an announcement, apologizing for his "mistake" and making some public-benefit commitment about inclusivity, importance of diversity, etc.
I disagree with Eich's vote but the idea that they were going to force him to make this kind of statement is shocking and reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. I would have told the Board to pound sand.
Sadly this also explains Mozilla's shift to progressive activism from a focus on software, and it explains why they don't matter anymore.
I still use Firefox, because the alternative is Chrome, but this is what happens when ideological uniformity irrelevant to the mission of an organization is enforced on it.
It's the opposite of diversity. You will create a culture of yes-men and drive yourselves into obscurity with short-sighted goals that do not further the mission of the organization, which is exactly what has happened to Mozilla.
There's never been any society ever where people in leadership positions couldn't lose those positions for doing dumb and/or controversial things. Comparing this to the Cultural Revolution (with its death toll of 1-2 million people) is completely wild.
Eich's position was exactly the same as Obama and Hillary Clinton on the issue, so calling it "dumb and/or controversial" isn't grounded in reality. The controversial opinion and actions belonged to the Board and certain employees.
Obama opposed Proposition 8 [1]. I'm not sure about Hilary, but Bill also opposed it [2]. So no, Eich's position was not the same. His position was that special legislation needed to be passed to take away rights from LGBTQ Californians.
Proposition 8 was very obviously a controversial issue at the time.
To make that an apt comparison you need to put that hypothetical pro-slavery CEO in some place where slavery is legal and a majority of the public there supports keeping it legal.
Exactly. Can you imagine swapping the name from Mozilla to Google, and donors to advertisers? People would call bloody murder on Google. Google is too big and is a corporation? What if this happened to Google back in 2001? Would people still trust Google as the webs search engine?
Edit: and the post is gone from the front page. No controversial topic folks.
Yep, you have pretty clearly outlined that Mozilla in the late 2010s when it’s underperforming and the CEO is blowing up a donor relationship is very different to upstart Google in 2001 blowing up relationships with advertisers.
Yeah, but he had an out which was just an apology and a commitment to do better. That's not an unreasonable ask when employees are worried about their boss being politically and actively opposed to their marriages.
Edit: The version of this where everyone stuck to their principles without compromise or "exerting pressure" was the investors pulling out entirely because the CEO was actively trying to make their marriage illegal.
So he wasn’t fired because he donated, he was fired because he refused to apologize and presumably lie and say it was a mistake?
That’s the same thing with more steps.
Right I'm not sure why this guy is blaming Brendan Eich for what sounds like both an ethics and business problem at Mozilla. If a single donor can bully your CTO out of the door over something unrelated to your mission you are a shitty organization.
I would do the same thing Eich did in that position. I don't agree with his opinion but I respect his right to hold it in an open society. Just another of Mozilla leadership's many bad calls over the years
So I see this type of argument come up a lot and I'm curious about the logic.
Why do you "respect his right" to donate to his cause (prop 8) you don't respect the other person's right to remove him as ceo?
Is Mozilla Foundation political activist organization?
When you donate to MF, you do that in order to further MF mission. Political activism should not be that[1]. When Eich donated to his cause, he did to organization that had the cause in it's mission; he did not set additional condition (e.g.: fire these people, because I don't like some aspect of their look and they refuse to change).
[1] Now, interesting thing would be to know, how many people didn't donate to MF since they turned into political activist organization.
Mozila is not a political organization but someone in a position of power took an action that hurt some big donors. Those donors are well withing their right to stop donating after that.
But since they believe in the foundation mission, despite the actions from the leadership, they looked for an compromise that Eich accepted (apologizing) and then refused to fulfill his end (the real big problem).
At this point there was no more compromise, either Eich is out or the donors are and Mozilla does not have the luxury of losing donors, most of their money may come from Google but for then every penny counts.
This was not political activism by Mozilla, it was choosing between a rock and a hard place, either losing a big chunk of money or loosing the CEO and making some irrelevant people unhappy, the best decision is very clear to me, CEO is easy to find a replacement, money not so much and 99% of the people complaining are not either.
This was political activism by the donors and they are totally within their right to do it with their money.
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Please make your substantive points without crossing into personal attack. Your comment would be fine without the second sentence.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sorry, frustrating that a lie goes around the world six times before the truth can put its boots on. Also that I've abided by Mozilla NDAs while others there (or who used to be there) have not.
I was not repeating someone else lies, i was discussing the topic posted with my understanding on what was posted here with the information i had at the time.
Your replies to him were posted much later then my comments and by the time you posted i could not edit or delete my post.
I did posted some other reply further down in this thread that while were posted after you replies i wrote then before i saw your replies, so also based solo on the information post by the OP.
If the information is incorrect then my apologies.
To anyone else looking at this please look at the OP posted here and at Eich replies and reach a conclusion by yourselves.
@dang if you see this fill free to delete my comments.
EDIT: just to add that i have sent an email requesting my comments to be deleted, although i do not know how long that might take.
Thanks for this, I misread your comment. Sorry about that.
It's still tricky to believe a claim made by one person on the Internet, but in this case, I think one should look at who said it, when they said it, whether it's credible (this "board secret plan" claim is not), and what people directly involved have and have not said. I've said my peace now.
Which donor? Only Google and Microsoft make up 90% of Mozilla income. So a 10% guy is that powerful? Epstein? Mozilla turned too political in the last 10 years. I dont bother with that ki d of company. Anyway, Brave is damn good compare to sluggish Mozilla especially their older gecko. Their newer quantum also terrible when compared to Brave, Arc, or even a niche Floorp or Thorium. VPN? I go with Proton or setup my own. As for app? Dolphin and Opera works way better. Mozilla is a relic. They turn themselves one.
It does not matter which donor.. MF does not have many new sources of money coming around so they need to keep every penny they get coming.
Even if Google and Microsoft were 99% of their income they can still do not have the luxury of losing that extra 1%, loosing the CEO is still a better option then loosing 1% of their income.
And unless you were donating anything closer then that 1% to MF then you and your opinion are irrelevant for their situation. You may belive they are political all you want, it will not change the fact that they could not afford to loose that donor.
As for the other browsers, they are a joke, Brave, Dolphin and Opera are all just chrome with a different skin, might as well be using chrome then. No thank you.
Any browser that use webkit is ultimately bound by google decision on what they want to do with their engine, just like when google make manifest v3 the only one available next june and break most, if not all, ad blockers. It will affect all those browsers eventually.
Now if any of those browsers want to keep manifest v2 to keep ad blockers working they will have to put the manpower to do it themselves and have to fight Google every step of the way because Google will surely start breaking things they need for the effort, the amount of work will only grow over time until they give up.
Google's not removing the internals for webRequest, as far as we can tell they have internal and "enterprise" needs.
Maybe it should be political activist organization. As it comes to topics that are important for the mission it holds. Nothing wrong in being political activist in relation to these topics.
Now, it should be purely and absolutely neutral in any other area that is outside the mission.
Well sure I think that in broad moral strokes you have the right to not support someone who you disagree with. (BTW not sure if you saw the comment Eich posted here yesterday, dang has now deleted it for policy violations, but it looked like Eich was saying that the donors didn't try to force him out, and that doing so would have been illegal under California law. So make what you will of that...)
But at the end of the day I would rather live in a society where we have the ability to cooperate with other people in the pursuit of a good cause, even if we disagree with them about some other cause. Like if you follow the attitude of those donors to its logical extreme where do we end up? We end up with no one cooperating on anything, many projects that could have improved society never happen, many opportunities for people with differing viewpoints to learn about each other's perspectives never occur, and so on.
I think if you take what those donors did to the logical extreme you end up with some form of societal collapse, and history teaches us that what happens after that is a strongman shows up and enforces a far worse type of social order.
I think those donors pulling out of Mozilla hurt the cause of free software, hurt Mozilla, and was one instance in a multi-year process of American political polarization that led to the election of a demagogue like Donald Trump, and is still going on. All because one guy in the C-suite had a bad position an issue that was totally unrelated to Mozilla. This is a very dangerous road for our society to tread.
I actually read a blog post at one point by the donors about their decision - short version is Prop 8 would have prevented them from marrying and one of them was here on a visa which they would have lost. So I really feel for them and understand why they would be angry at Eich. Still think they should have selected a different outlet for it.
He agreed to apologize, and reneged on the agreement. Perhaps he could have stayed if he never agreed. Reneging on an agreement is a firing offence on its own many places.
I never agreed to apologize, so never reneged. Don't believe everything you read, especially this "secret plan" that would have violated CA Labor Law. The board was not going to do that.
Some of my replies to posts in mhoye's thread:
https://mastodon.social/@BrendanEich/112290176700870060
https://mastodon.social/@BrendanEich/112290200661489901
https://mastodon.social/@BrendanEich/112290231024277416
https://mastodon.social/@BrendanEich/112290256068155685
https://mastodon.social/@BrendanEich/112290293068878358
Related:
Marc Andreessen: I regret not doing more to support and defend Brendan Eich
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40038020
The thing I’m most shocked about is how many ex Mozilla employees are on Mastodon.
LOL. I was quite familiar with Mozilla internally back then.
Mozilla engineering up until b2g was like herding cats.
These whiners crack me up.
The donors mentioned don’t come close to the google money spigot that paid for everything
Eich was kicked to the curb for not passing a woke test
Mozilla was doomed once they started throwing everything at FxOS
Laughable that they thought they could compete based on feelings and fairy dust
>The plan was that Eich make an announcement, apologizing for his "mistake" and making some public-benefit commitment about inclusivity, importance of diversity, etc.
I disagree with Eich's vote but the idea that they were going to force him to make this kind of statement is shocking and reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. I would have told the Board to pound sand.
Sadly this also explains Mozilla's shift to progressive activism from a focus on software, and it explains why they don't matter anymore.
I still use Firefox, because the alternative is Chrome, but this is what happens when ideological uniformity irrelevant to the mission of an organization is enforced on it.
It's the opposite of diversity. You will create a culture of yes-men and drive yourselves into obscurity with short-sighted goals that do not further the mission of the organization, which is exactly what has happened to Mozilla.
DEI types beware.
There's never been any society ever where people in leadership positions couldn't lose those positions for doing dumb and/or controversial things. Comparing this to the Cultural Revolution (with its death toll of 1-2 million people) is completely wild.
Eich's position was exactly the same as Obama and Hillary Clinton on the issue, so calling it "dumb and/or controversial" isn't grounded in reality. The controversial opinion and actions belonged to the Board and certain employees.
Obama opposed Proposition 8 [1]. I'm not sure about Hilary, but Bill also opposed it [2]. So no, Eich's position was not the same. His position was that special legislation needed to be passed to take away rights from LGBTQ Californians.
Proposition 8 was very obviously a controversial issue at the time.
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-opposes-proposed-b...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20081104193633/http:/www.noonpro...
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To make that an apt comparison you need to put that hypothetical pro-slavery CEO in some place where slavery is legal and a majority of the public there supports keeping it legal.
So, if any company in the antebellum South had taken a stand against slavery and fired its pro-slavery CEO, that would have been wrong?
So he didnt resign over this donation, it was an unnamed gay couple flexing their power due to their donations?
https://web.archive.org/web/20190526144926/https://www.bbc.c...
>He lost his job because he made a bet that he was more important than the possible end of Mozilla and he lost that bet.
I'm not sure how anything said in this thread counters what is rather well established publicly.
Ultimately as well, firefox is at about 2% market share right now. Has he lost that bet really?
Exactly. Can you imagine swapping the name from Mozilla to Google, and donors to advertisers? People would call bloody murder on Google. Google is too big and is a corporation? What if this happened to Google back in 2001? Would people still trust Google as the webs search engine?
Edit: and the post is gone from the front page. No controversial topic folks.
Yep, you have pretty clearly outlined that Mozilla in the late 2010s when it’s underperforming and the CEO is blowing up a donor relationship is very different to upstart Google in 2001 blowing up relationships with advertisers.
Except the "mid 2010s" (not "late") story is made up b.s.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40072908
I realise that you're probably not going to read this but that was a glorious response. Thank you for sharing your reply with me.
Yeah, but he had an out which was just an apology and a commitment to do better. That's not an unreasonable ask when employees are worried about their boss being politically and actively opposed to their marriages.
Edit: The version of this where everyone stuck to their principles without compromise or "exerting pressure" was the investors pulling out entirely because the CEO was actively trying to make their marriage illegal.