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I haven't been thrilled with Mozilla's direction for a while now. Bloating Firefox by embedding Pocket and Hello into it, speeding up Firefox's release frequenc

I haven't been thrilled with Mozilla's direction for a while now. Bloating Firefox by embedding Pocket and Hello into it, speeding up Firefox's release frequency just because Chrome does it that way, wasting resources on Firefox-OS, and firing an employee just for donating to a political cause. If they are not careful, they are going to run Mozilla into the ground.

darklajid 11y ago
I don't quite understand 'bloating' in this context, especially with the example of 'Hello'. My understanding is that this is really merely a link. A bookmark, if you will. To a website/service that will use WebRTC, tech that was meant to be implemented by browsers. What do you consider bloat here? The 'Hello' button/promotion? Or the full WebRTC stack? And how can you decide that efforts spent to build FxOS are 'wasted'?
toyg 11y ago
They didn't "fire" Brendan Eich, they just acknowledged that his personal values were at odd with Mozilla's mission and overall sentiment across the organization, basically demoting him from the CEO role. Eich then resigned.
- wahsd 11y ago
  The liberal mob will have its way. But it's of course not anything like any other tyrannies and controlling mobs. It's different of course. I don't necessarily agree with his donation either, but what he does with his own money should be up to him within the realm of the legal framework. You don't just smother dissenting opinions. You are no different than that which you feel yourself superior to.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    > what he does with his own money should be up to him within the realm of the legal framework But what a private foundation and/or company promotes or demotes isn't up to its members? Sounds like a double standard to me.
    - syoc 11y ago
      It is. He is not saying that they should not be able to fire him. The fact that they can fire him does not mean that they should.
      - icebraining 11y ago
        So it's a position against California's at-will employment rules? I can sympathize, but it seems like a weird case to use to make that point, considering that both the board and Eich himself deny he was fired.
  - olavk 11y ago
    He worked to destroy some peoples marriages. Then some people worked to get him fired. What is the difference? Which is worse? I'm not asking a rhetorical question here, I'm genuinely interested in why you think the one thing is OK and the other not?
  - lukifer 11y ago
    What would you consider the line to be? What if he had donated to a organization against interracial marriage? What if he had donated to a Neo-Nazi group? There are many consider causes against same-sex marriage to be equally morally repugnant (to the first one, anyway).
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      Perhaps the line is somewhere beyond donating money, regardless of cause. Maybe the line is throwing bricks through windows or chasing people with a bat.
      - toyg 11y ago
        I really didn't want to get involved but your argument is specious. If I don't get my hands dirty, but I financially support organisations that do (and lots of right-wing groups are not exactly squeaky clean in that regard), it's all well and good?
    - wahsd 11y ago
      The fact that my rather legitimate and rational and fundamentally American point is being down-voted kind of makes my point. To be honest, I really don't think that no matter how repugnant that I may think one or the other organization or movement may be that it be smothered, banned, or hidden, let alone controlled. Unfortunately, and this is something that many in the liberal mob don't quite comprehend about themselves, is that they are quite a bit more like the very things and people they wish to shame than not. Just because you have the power and dominance to control the issue, doesn't mean you should abuse that power to stifle other people's beliefs and freedom of speech and expression. What is the difference between lynch-mobbing someone because they don't support {fill in your individual preferences or proclivities} and lynch-mobbing someone because they do support {fill in your individual preferences or proclivities}. There is absolutely nothing different than the perspective. Everyone should have the right to express their opinions, even if you don't like them and they are not your favorite thing (to invoke Louis CK) and then a conversation may lead to a debate and that is how better ideas come about. The process that society is going through right now is really nothing but a hardening of positions, a "liberal" form of tyranny if you will; the overbearing imposition of a particular perspective upon others. Ironically, that is the very thing the "liberal" side claims is done by the "right/conservatives". What the current state of civilization in the west shares is an apparent inherent stupidity and irrationality that is quite stunning. Up is right, left is forward, down is blue, billion dollar valuations for what is essentially marketing middle-ware, people maintain their own personal state surveillance dossiers on themselves. It's like the world has gone god damn ape shit mad.
- takeda 11y ago
  Look, I don't agree with him, I also voted against Prop 8, but it still feels that this was an infraction on his freedom of speech (as Citizens United ruling said that money = speech :). It's not as he was CEO of LGBT organization or he was running for a public office. Mozilla is not a political organization, his opinions in this matter should make no difference whatsoever. This move was basically infringing on rights to have his personal beliefs. How would it looks like if it was the reverse? Someone pro LGBT made a contribution against prop 8 and then was told 6 years later that his personal values did not match the company's even though the company has nothing to do with LGBT and his opinion has no impact. This move was is simply discrimination. It should matter whether he is republican or democrat, christian/muslim/atheist or fire worshiper, whether he's pro guns or against. Mozilla is a technology company, neither of that should matter in what they do. As someone who cares about politics, I would be furious if my employer told me that my personal beliefs are wrong. That infringes on my rights as a citizen and voter.
  - samstokes 11y ago
    This move was basically infringing on rights to have his personal beliefs. Everyone has a right to believe whatever they want. Nobody has a right to be CEO of Mozilla. Mozilla does, however, have the right to choose their CEO.
  - joshkpeterson 11y ago
    You're an idiot.
    - dang 11y ago
      We banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com.
  - darklajid 11y ago
    I repeatedly fail to understand this 'Freedom of Speech' notion - and certainly do here. Mozilla is a company. They certainly can pick roles based on the statements of an individual. If you apply for a job there and can't stop cursing like a madman, or if you happen to add juicy details about your personal homophobic beliefs to the interview, you might not get the job. Free speech? Doesn't matter. Now, I do admit that I didn't like the whole 'we dug up this stuff in his past' part of the story. Nor the pitchfork wielding crowds on the net. I, personally, would've considered him misguided and stuck in the past in this regard, but I wasn't calling for (or expecting) consequences. Mozilla decided (or was pressured) to distance itself from the person and his statements. That might be correct or might be unfair, depending on your stance. But it's not about free speech.
- BrendanEich 11y ago
  I'm a founder of Mozilla and defined its mission with other founders. That mission never included anything about marriage. You're full of beans. Your "basically demoting" story is a new one. What's your source on that?
  - toyg 11y ago
    Hey Brendan, it's a honour (am serious). I'm just going by media reports and the answers the Mozilla leadership gave at the time. It was clear the pressure was on and without you stepping out voluntarily (which was the right gesture, from all points of view), something would have happened which would have damaged the project more -- in that sense, it would have been at odd with the project's aims. I expect you share the same view, or you wouldn't have stepped down in the first place. I was just pointing out that you weren't fired and you likely would have not been fired in any case; at worst, you would have been moved to a different role; hence "demoted", since most people see the CEO as the pinnacle of a pyramid. Would you agree that this is a fairer representation of the historical truth, from your point of view, than "Eich was fired"?
    - BrendanEich 11y ago
      No, I would not agree. Guess I'll have to write the book in a year and a half. /be
      - Nadya 11y ago
        Other people are too polite to phrase their questions bluntly, I suppose. You and Mozilla both claim you were not fired and that you chose to step down. Had there not been political pressure from a certain group, would you still have stepped down? When people hear about your story - it sounds more like being smoked out of your own house. A group wants you ousted due to a donation they disagree with and will be disruptive, give bad PR, or straight up quit developing for Mozilla until and unless you leave. At that point it is within Mozilla's and your best interests for you to step down. So if you stepped down for entirely unrelated reasons than the rabble rabble going on by a certain group of people - why then? I don't think I've ever seen that answered. And if you did step down because of the rabble rabble going on - that is what so many people have a problem with. Even if you necessarily don't.
Karunamon 11y ago
Small quibble, Eich's departure was characterized both by Mozilla, and by him, as a voluntary stepping down, not a firing.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    So.. where's that evidence? Both the company involved and the guy involved say it's "X", and you say it's "Y". I'd say you have the burden of proof. Saying "X" usually means "Y" is not proof that it means such in this case.
pmoriarty 11y ago
I'm much more concerned with the next version of Firefox permanently breaking a lot of important extensions like Pentadactyl and Tree Style Tabs.[1][2][3] [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097630 [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9840647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9840647 [3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10120773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10120773
dang 11y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10513701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10513701 and marked it off-topic.
- hackuser 11y ago
  dang: (I don't need answers directly, but perhaps a FAQ would help. ...) 1) It's good to see threads managed more agressively; thanks. I can think of another benefit from higher quality discussions: I see a few Mozillians here and of course they aren't the only vendors to participate; perhaps more would come and be more engaged if there was less nonsense. And that would attract more people who are interested in valuable, informative interaction, which would attract more vendors, which would ... etc. 2) "marked it off-topic": What does this mean in practice? 3) While the issue with Eich is off-topic, so is the issue with Pocket and many other threads and subthreads. I don't understand the distinction, unless that the former is more inflamatory, more outdated, and more tired. Yawn.
  - dang 11y ago
    Re #2: "marking off-topic" penalizes the subthread so it falls lower on the page. That's the purpose of detaching it as well. Re #3: we marked that subthread off-topic because a user emailed to complain about it. Didn't see the other ones. General note: we started doing this as an experiment and it's clear by now that it has improved thread quality, so we're probably going to write code to support it, and let the community mostly manage it, probably by generalizing the flagging mechanism.
bad_user 11y ago
Well I for one love the rapid release cycle, am glad about Firefox Hello because it is advancing the state of WebRTC and don't mind the Pocket integration because the client-side code is developed by Mozilla and doesn't consume resources unless you actually use it. And I've been a Chrome user and switched back to Firefox because I think they are doing good work lately.

darklajid 11y ago

I don't quite understand 'bloating' in this context, especially with the example of 'Hello'. My understanding is that this is really merely a link. A bookmark, if you will. To a website/service that will use WebRTC, tech that was meant to be implemented by browsers. What do you consider bloat here? The 'Hello' button/promotion? Or the full WebRTC stack? And how can you decide that efforts spent to build FxOS are 'wasted'?

toyg 11y ago

They didn't "fire" Brendan Eich, they just acknowledged that his personal values were at odd with Mozilla's mission and overall sentiment across the organization, basically demoting him from the CEO role. Eich then resigned.

wahsd 11y ago
The liberal mob will have its way. But it's of course not anything like any other tyrannies and controlling mobs. It's different of course. I don't necessarily agree with his donation either, but what he does with his own money should be up to him within the realm of the legal framework. You don't just smother dissenting opinions. You are no different than that which you feel yourself superior to.
- icebraining 11y ago
  > what he does with his own money should be up to him within the realm of the legal framework But what a private foundation and/or company promotes or demotes isn't up to its members? Sounds like a double standard to me.
  - syoc 11y ago
    It is. He is not saying that they should not be able to fire him. The fact that they can fire him does not mean that they should.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      So it's a position against California's at-will employment rules? I can sympathize, but it seems like a weird case to use to make that point, considering that both the board and Eich himself deny he was fired.
- olavk 11y ago
  He worked to destroy some peoples marriages. Then some people worked to get him fired. What is the difference? Which is worse? I'm not asking a rhetorical question here, I'm genuinely interested in why you think the one thing is OK and the other not?
- lukifer 11y ago
  What would you consider the line to be? What if he had donated to a organization against interracial marriage? What if he had donated to a Neo-Nazi group? There are many consider causes against same-sex marriage to be equally morally repugnant (to the first one, anyway).
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    Perhaps the line is somewhere beyond donating money, regardless of cause. Maybe the line is throwing bricks through windows or chasing people with a bat.
    - toyg 11y ago
      I really didn't want to get involved but your argument is specious. If I don't get my hands dirty, but I financially support organisations that do (and lots of right-wing groups are not exactly squeaky clean in that regard), it's all well and good?
  - wahsd 11y ago
    The fact that my rather legitimate and rational and fundamentally American point is being down-voted kind of makes my point. To be honest, I really don't think that no matter how repugnant that I may think one or the other organization or movement may be that it be smothered, banned, or hidden, let alone controlled. Unfortunately, and this is something that many in the liberal mob don't quite comprehend about themselves, is that they are quite a bit more like the very things and people they wish to shame than not. Just because you have the power and dominance to control the issue, doesn't mean you should abuse that power to stifle other people's beliefs and freedom of speech and expression. What is the difference between lynch-mobbing someone because they don't support {fill in your individual preferences or proclivities} and lynch-mobbing someone because they do support {fill in your individual preferences or proclivities}. There is absolutely nothing different than the perspective. Everyone should have the right to express their opinions, even if you don't like them and they are not your favorite thing (to invoke Louis CK) and then a conversation may lead to a debate and that is how better ideas come about. The process that society is going through right now is really nothing but a hardening of positions, a "liberal" form of tyranny if you will; the overbearing imposition of a particular perspective upon others. Ironically, that is the very thing the "liberal" side claims is done by the "right/conservatives". What the current state of civilization in the west shares is an apparent inherent stupidity and irrationality that is quite stunning. Up is right, left is forward, down is blue, billion dollar valuations for what is essentially marketing middle-ware, people maintain their own personal state surveillance dossiers on themselves. It's like the world has gone god damn ape shit mad.
takeda 11y ago
Look, I don't agree with him, I also voted against Prop 8, but it still feels that this was an infraction on his freedom of speech (as Citizens United ruling said that money = speech :). It's not as he was CEO of LGBT organization or he was running for a public office. Mozilla is not a political organization, his opinions in this matter should make no difference whatsoever. This move was basically infringing on rights to have his personal beliefs. How would it looks like if it was the reverse? Someone pro LGBT made a contribution against prop 8 and then was told 6 years later that his personal values did not match the company's even though the company has nothing to do with LGBT and his opinion has no impact. This move was is simply discrimination. It should matter whether he is republican or democrat, christian/muslim/atheist or fire worshiper, whether he's pro guns or against. Mozilla is a technology company, neither of that should matter in what they do. As someone who cares about politics, I would be furious if my employer told me that my personal beliefs are wrong. That infringes on my rights as a citizen and voter.
- samstokes 11y ago
  This move was basically infringing on rights to have his personal beliefs. Everyone has a right to believe whatever they want. Nobody has a right to be CEO of Mozilla. Mozilla does, however, have the right to choose their CEO.
- joshkpeterson 11y ago
  You're an idiot.
  - dang 11y ago
    We banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com.
- darklajid 11y ago
  I repeatedly fail to understand this 'Freedom of Speech' notion - and certainly do here. Mozilla is a company. They certainly can pick roles based on the statements of an individual. If you apply for a job there and can't stop cursing like a madman, or if you happen to add juicy details about your personal homophobic beliefs to the interview, you might not get the job. Free speech? Doesn't matter. Now, I do admit that I didn't like the whole 'we dug up this stuff in his past' part of the story. Nor the pitchfork wielding crowds on the net. I, personally, would've considered him misguided and stuck in the past in this regard, but I wasn't calling for (or expecting) consequences. Mozilla decided (or was pressured) to distance itself from the person and his statements. That might be correct or might be unfair, depending on your stance. But it's not about free speech.
BrendanEich 11y ago
I'm a founder of Mozilla and defined its mission with other founders. That mission never included anything about marriage. You're full of beans. Your "basically demoting" story is a new one. What's your source on that?
- toyg 11y ago
  Hey Brendan, it's a honour (am serious). I'm just going by media reports and the answers the Mozilla leadership gave at the time. It was clear the pressure was on and without you stepping out voluntarily (which was the right gesture, from all points of view), something would have happened which would have damaged the project more -- in that sense, it would have been at odd with the project's aims. I expect you share the same view, or you wouldn't have stepped down in the first place. I was just pointing out that you weren't fired and you likely would have not been fired in any case; at worst, you would have been moved to a different role; hence "demoted", since most people see the CEO as the pinnacle of a pyramid. Would you agree that this is a fairer representation of the historical truth, from your point of view, than "Eich was fired"?
  - BrendanEich 11y ago
    No, I would not agree. Guess I'll have to write the book in a year and a half. /be
    - Nadya 11y ago
      Other people are too polite to phrase their questions bluntly, I suppose. You and Mozilla both claim you were not fired and that you chose to step down. Had there not been political pressure from a certain group, would you still have stepped down? When people hear about your story - it sounds more like being smoked out of your own house. A group wants you ousted due to a donation they disagree with and will be disruptive, give bad PR, or straight up quit developing for Mozilla until and unless you leave. At that point it is within Mozilla's and your best interests for you to step down. So if you stepped down for entirely unrelated reasons than the rabble rabble going on by a certain group of people - why then? I don't think I've ever seen that answered. And if you did step down because of the rabble rabble going on - that is what so many people have a problem with. Even if you necessarily don't.

Karunamon 11y ago

Small quibble, Eich's departure was characterized both by Mozilla, and by him, as a voluntary stepping down, not a firing.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- Karunamon 11y ago
  So.. where's that evidence? Both the company involved and the guy involved say it's "X", and you say it's "Y". I'd say you have the burden of proof. Saying "X" usually means "Y" is not proof that it means such in this case.

pmoriarty 11y ago

I'm much more concerned with the next version of Firefox permanently breaking a lot of important extensions like Pentadactyl and Tree Style Tabs.[1][2][3] [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097630 [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9840647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9840647 [3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10120773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10120773

dang 11y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10513701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10513701 and marked it off-topic.

hackuser 11y ago
dang: (I don't need answers directly, but perhaps a FAQ would help. ...) 1) It's good to see threads managed more agressively; thanks. I can think of another benefit from higher quality discussions: I see a few Mozillians here and of course they aren't the only vendors to participate; perhaps more would come and be more engaged if there was less nonsense. And that would attract more people who are interested in valuable, informative interaction, which would attract more vendors, which would ... etc. 2) "marked it off-topic": What does this mean in practice? 3) While the issue with Eich is off-topic, so is the issue with Pocket and many other threads and subthreads. I don't understand the distinction, unless that the former is more inflamatory, more outdated, and more tired. Yawn.
- dang 11y ago
  Re #2: "marking off-topic" penalizes the subthread so it falls lower on the page. That's the purpose of detaching it as well. Re #3: we marked that subthread off-topic because a user emailed to complain about it. Didn't see the other ones. General note: we started doing this as an experiment and it's clear by now that it has improved thread quality, so we're probably going to write code to support it, and let the community mostly manage it, probably by generalizing the flagging mechanism.

bad_user 11y ago

Well I for one love the rapid release cycle, am glad about Firefox Hello because it is advancing the state of WebRTC and don't mind the Pocket integration because the client-side code is developed by Mozilla and doesn't consume resources unless you actually use it. And I've been a Chrome user and switched back to Firefox because I think they are doing good work lately.