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> a small group of vocal employees managed to oust former CEO Brendan Eich over a tiny donation to a conservative political cause Eich was kinda a moron and I

> a small group of vocal employees managed to oust former CEO Brendan Eich over a tiny donation to a conservative political cause Eich was kinda a moron and I don't think they realized that after he was onboard. IIRC, he saw no reason to move forward with the Firefox Quantum support and generally had some other bad software decisions. I suspect the anti-gay stuff was more to justify a way to get rid of him and score some points in the process.

roca 7y ago
As a former Mozilla distinguished engineer --- your comment is insulting, totally wrong and betrays your ignorance. Not even Brendan's worst enemies have ever accused him of being a moron. Brendan was a leading figure at Mozilla since the very beginning of the project. Everyone very well knew who he was. I didn't agree with all of Brendan's decisions. For example I think we should have prioritized process separation higher than we did, and Brendan was partly responsible for deprioritizing that, which I viewed as a serious mistake. But Brendan made a lot more good decisions than bad ones and from that point of view, everyone I know was confident in him as CEO. Engineers certainly weren't looking for an "excuse to get rid of him". I assume executives and the board weren't either, or they wouldn't have made him CEO just before the controversy exploded.
BrendanEich 7y ago
Firefox Quantum was started in fall 2016, more than two years after I left: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum. Quantum (or part of it; much good work done in C++ code too) is based on Rust and Servo, projects for which I was sole executive sponsor from 2010 onward: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12224047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12224047. It's fair to say Rust and Servo would not exist as such if I hadn't been at Mozilla. I'm among the actual founders of mozilla.org, we started working on it in fall 1997. Earliest wayback snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/19981202152141/http://www.mozilla.org:80/about.html https://web.archive.org/web/19981202152141/http://www.mozill...
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Well now I feel like an ass. I apologize. That's what I get for just believing what I read in another HN comment somewhere without doing the research. The wayback link does take me back.
  - BrendanEich 7y ago
    What other HN comment?

roca 7y ago

As a former Mozilla distinguished engineer --- your comment is insulting, totally wrong and betrays your ignorance. Not even Brendan's worst enemies have ever accused him of being a moron. Brendan was a leading figure at Mozilla since the very beginning of the project. Everyone very well knew who he was. I didn't agree with all of Brendan's decisions. For example I think we should have prioritized process separation higher than we did, and Brendan was partly responsible for deprioritizing that, which I viewed as a serious mistake. But Brendan made a lot more good decisions than bad ones and from that point of view, everyone I know was confident in him as CEO. Engineers certainly weren't looking for an "excuse to get rid of him". I assume executives and the board weren't either, or they wouldn't have made him CEO just before the controversy exploded.

BrendanEich 7y ago

Firefox Quantum was started in fall 2016, more than two years after I left: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum. Quantum (or part of it; much good work done in C++ code too) is based on Rust and Servo, projects for which I was sole executive sponsor from 2010 onward: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12224047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12224047. It's fair to say Rust and Servo would not exist as such if I hadn't been at Mozilla. I'm among the actual founders of mozilla.org, we started working on it in fall 1997. Earliest wayback snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/19981202152141/http://www.mozilla.org:80/about.html https://web.archive.org/web/19981202152141/http://www.mozill...

djsumdog 7y ago
Well now I feel like an ass. I apologize. That's what I get for just believing what I read in another HN comment somewhere without doing the research. The wayback link does take me back.
- BrendanEich 7y ago
  What other HN comment?