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A tragic example of the principal-agent problem in action. These people took over a nonprofit, gave themselves millions, and have just killed the team that was

A tragic example of the principal-agent problem in action. These people took over a nonprofit, gave themselves millions, and have just killed the team that was doing the best job furthering the organization’s mission (preventing a browser monoculture). Just brutal. It’s an old story - an organization does good work, allowing it to raise money, attracting administrators, who hire more administrators and take all the money. The same happens in universities and public companies. I don’t know how, but we have to find a way to keep people from latching on and sucking the blood out of our institutions like this.

frank2 6y ago
>These people took over a nonprofit, gave themselves millions It's more complicated than that: the current CEO of Mozilla has been involved at a high level from the start: >In November 1994, Baker was hired as one of the first employees of the legal department of Netscape Communications Corporation. . . . She was involved with the Mozilla project from the outset, writing both the Netscape Public License and the Mozilla Public License. In February 1999, Baker became the Chief Lizard Wrangler (general manager) of mozilla.org, the division of Netscape that coordinated the Mozilla open source project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Netscape_Communications_Corporation_and_mozilla.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Netscape_Commun... Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending this CEO's recent performance.
chrisco255 6y ago
It's very common when a company or organization loses its original founders. The admins and middle managers just don't have the same driving forces or motivations.
roca 6y ago
"the team that was doing the best job furthering the organization’s mission" is the Gecko team. That team is still largely there. Servo is/was cool, and some cool stuff that originated in Servo made it into Gecko, but make no mistake that Gecko and Gecko developers contribute far more to the open Web than Servo ever did.

frank2 6y ago

>These people took over a nonprofit, gave themselves millions It's more complicated than that: the current CEO of Mozilla has been involved at a high level from the start: >In November 1994, Baker was hired as one of the first employees of the legal department of Netscape Communications Corporation. . . . She was involved with the Mozilla project from the outset, writing both the Netscape Public License and the Mozilla Public License. In February 1999, Baker became the Chief Lizard Wrangler (general manager) of mozilla.org, the division of Netscape that coordinated the Mozilla open source project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Netscape_Communications_Corporation_and_mozilla.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Netscape_Commun... Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending this CEO's recent performance.

chrisco255 6y ago

It's very common when a company or organization loses its original founders. The admins and middle managers just don't have the same driving forces or motivations.

roca 6y ago

"the team that was doing the best job furthering the organization’s mission" is the Gecko team. That team is still largely there. Servo is/was cool, and some cool stuff that originated in Servo made it into Gecko, but make no mistake that Gecko and Gecko developers contribute far more to the open Web than Servo ever did.