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It wasn't long ago that comments were shouting that this was the absolute most qualified person to lead Mozilla when others were questioning having a lawyer lea

by fiblye 6y ago

It wasn't long ago that comments were shouting that this was the absolute most qualified person to lead Mozilla when others were questioning having a lawyer lead a tech company. Someone with at least a little hands-on experience in building a product really should be something companies look for in leadership. I mean, sure, Baker's done plenty for Mozilla, but Mozilla has been absolutely lost as to what they're trying to be this past year. It's not a clear cut software company anymore and that's a problem.

jacquesm 6y ago
> t wasn't long ago that comments were shouting that this was the absolute most qualified person to lead Mozilla when others were questioning having a lawyer lead a tech company. I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. But he resigned (he wasn't forced out, though it might have come to that, contrary to various strong assertions in this comment thread, both Eich and the board are on the record about that). I can't imagine there isn't anybody to be found who is more qualified than Baker but the window of opportunity for turning this around is closing rapidly. FF usage is the only thing that keeps the whole circus alive, when that goes Mozilla will have officially failed in their mission, no matter what the balance on Baker's personal savings account.
- ppf 6y ago
  >should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity And there was me thinking he was just leading browser development.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    That is one of the core problems Mozilla has to solve. Are they a browser manufacturer or some 'force for good' (or just there to fatten Bakers' piggy bank on the way down).
    - ppf 6y ago
      It's quite clear they have decided they are a 'force for good'. It just so happens to also be very benefical to the bank balances of upper management. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
  - fetbaffe 6y ago
    Ought to be a flagship of technology. Not only has Mozilla an overpaid management that doesn't do what it is supposed to do but the it seems that the staff fits into that same category.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  > I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. I have a problem with characterizing Brendan Eich as a bigot for donating to a non-fringe political group. IIRC, the proposition campaign he donated to had close to a 50/50 split in support for/against. Eich's ouster crystalized in my mind that Mozilla wa no longer focused on its core mission (the signs were already there - dropped Thunderbird, had an oversized IoT dept). I am speaking as a person who was a vocal Firefox evangelist since the 2.x days
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    I'm still a FF evangelist though it is getting harder by the day. Eich should have realized that his actions as CEO of a highly visible entity would be viewed in a different light than if he were merely just another nobody. Missing that was his crucial mistake, he could have made the donation anonymously, but decided to do it in his own name making it a given that this would be associated with Mozilla. That was stupid. But as it was he could have simply apologized and hunkered down, I suspect (based on board members' and Eichs' own statements) that it was the pressure from the employees that made him decide to resign. Whether a proposition has a 50/50 split or not does not matter, if half your country is made up of bigots that doesn't mean that it isn't bigotry, it just means that you have a very large problem.
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      > Missing that was his crucial mistake, he could have made the donation anonymously, but decided to do it in his own name making it a given that this would be associated with Mozilla. That was stupid. So I guess this means no Mozilla leader should be making any private political donations at all, because if they do, Mozilla is at risk of losing half of its (US) leaders in red or blue states. I sure hope the employees still have jobs, and if not, they have vetted their new board & CEOs past donations. > Whether a proposition has a 50/50 split or not does not matter, if half your country is made up of bigots that doesn't mean that it isn't bigotry, it just means that you have a very large problem. Do those employees/volunteers feel equally strongly about their "bigoted" user base? Or are they more morally flexible since that directly impacts their incomes?
- stef25 6y ago
  > should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other Is it ridiculous to suggest we should just ignore what people think and do in their private lives? I both fully support gay marriage and couldn't give a rat's ass about what the maker of my browser thinks about it (Eich donated 1000$ to Prop 8, 12 years ago). The real problem is that you can pay to have laws changed! These "acts of protest" like OkCupid's banner need to stop. Most likely they care as much as I do (= not), they're just preemptively trying to get on the right side of the argument, trying to win the social justice olympics, to avoid the same fate as Eich.
  - Xylakant 6y ago
    > Is it ridiculous to suggest we should just ignore what people think and do in their private lives? The problem is that Eich was supposed be leading a team that prides itself for being supportive of the causes that Eich donated against. Bridging that gap became impossible once he was on public record for that. Having any leadership position requires at least a fundamental trust of the people you’re supposed to be leading.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    It's not about you and me. It is about Eich's ability to effectively lead Mozilla while being on the record about this stance regarding gay marriage. How many of Mozilla's employees are gay and/or in favor of gay marriage? If you alienate roughly 55% (possibly much more) or so of a group you are supposed to lead you have just made your life quite impossible. Eich probably did the right thing to resign, he would have had to either come around on the subject (which he did not) or he'd have to walk. OkCupid is not a part of FireFox, they were simply trying to virtue signal at Eich/FFs expense, and the empire behind OkCupid (not the original founders) has done a lot worse than anything that Eich ever did. That would have been easy enough to ignore. But the Mozilla employees were another matter. Money in politics is a problem in and of itself, that doesn't mean that CEOs living in glass houses should not be aware that if they start throwing stones there will be consequences.
    - mongol 6y ago
- redavni 6y ago
  It was this event that actually led me to stop caring about Firefox and allow myself to default to Chrome, and I downloaded Phoenix from Blake's blog the day he posted it. The root of Firefox's problems start with San Francisco. It's inflated salaries and political sideshow have caused an existential threat to Mozilla.
  - smt88 6y ago
    If your opposition to gay marriage was enough to get you to throw away the benefits of Firefox, I think you're not necessarily the target market that Firefox evangelists are. None of the code of the browser changed when Eich resigned. It still had the same pros/cons, didn't it?
- coldtea 6y ago
  >I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other Who asked Mozilla to be a "flagship of diversity"? What we wanted off them, and what their mission statement was, is a FOSS browser that supported the open web. Plus, one can be/believe whatever on their personal life, as long as they don't bring it to the office. Not to mention that penalizing people because they supported one side in a public vote is anti-democratic.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Nobody asked, but Mozilla took (and still takes) that role. Witness plenty of comments on HN from Mozilla employees reinforcing that. I'm all for the FOSS browser company, the 'support for the open web' is already a step in the direction of losing focus. Just keeping up and having a viable alternative browser out there keeping Chrome at bay is a major job (and one they are currently miserably failing at). > Not to mention that penalizing people because they supported one side in a public vote is anti-democratic. Actually, it isn't. Actions have consequences, if Eich wanted to be a contributor to that cause he could have done so silently. By doing it in a publicly visible way as the CEO of a large company he made it a political statement and action begets reaction. Eich very explicitly brought his views into the office in a way that a substantial fraction of Mozilla's employees did not want to be associated with. Besides that, money in politics is anti-democratic.
    - lkdsajflkfdsjg 6y ago
      > Nobody asked, but Mozilla took (and still takes) that role. Witness plenty of comments on HN from Mozilla employees reinforcing that. Then those employees are part of the problem!
    - koolba 6y ago
      > Actually, it isn't. Actions have consequences, if Eich wanted to be a contributor to that cause he could have done so silently. By doing it in a publicly visible way as the CEO of a large company he made it a political statement and action begets reaction. Eich very explicitly brought his views into the office in a way that a substantial fraction of Mozilla's employees did not want to be associated with. He didn't bring his views into the office. He had them outside and the alphabet mob lit them as a Molotov cocktail and threw them into the building. Those employees could have quit and worked somewhere else too. In a lot of ways that would have been great as they could have cut down on a couple of the pointless projects. By your standard it's impossible for anyone to both have public views that disagree with your own and be the head of any large organization. > Besides that, money in politics is anti-democratic. Money in politics is the great equalizer. It's as democratic as it gets. Otherwise you end up with a handful of media and tech oligarchs controlling all messaging.
- angriermozusr 6y ago
  >leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other Look at the glorified domain name squatter speaking high-mindedly about principles.
- nec4b 6y ago
  If you don't think the state should allow incestual, polygamic or polyamorous marriages you are as bigoted as Eich for being against gay marriage.

by fiblye 6y ago

jacquesm 6y ago

> t wasn't long ago that comments were shouting that this was the absolute most qualified person to lead Mozilla when others were questioning having a lawyer lead a tech company. I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. But he resigned (he wasn't forced out, though it might have come to that, contrary to various strong assertions in this comment thread, both Eich and the board are on the record about that). I can't imagine there isn't anybody to be found who is more qualified than Baker but the window of opportunity for turning this around is closing rapidly. FF usage is the only thing that keeps the whole circus alive, when that goes Mozilla will have officially failed in their mission, no matter what the balance on Baker's personal savings account.

ppf 6y ago
>should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity And there was me thinking he was just leading browser development.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  That is one of the core problems Mozilla has to solve. Are they a browser manufacturer or some 'force for good' (or just there to fatten Bakers' piggy bank on the way down).
  - ppf 6y ago
    It's quite clear they have decided they are a 'force for good'. It just so happens to also be very benefical to the bank balances of upper management. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
- fetbaffe 6y ago
  Ought to be a flagship of technology. Not only has Mozilla an overpaid management that doesn't do what it is supposed to do but the it seems that the staff fits into that same category.
sangnoir 6y ago
> I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. I have a problem with characterizing Brendan Eich as a bigot for donating to a non-fringe political group. IIRC, the proposition campaign he donated to had close to a 50/50 split in support for/against. Eich's ouster crystalized in my mind that Mozilla wa no longer focused on its core mission (the signs were already there - dropped Thunderbird, had an oversized IoT dept). I am speaking as a person who was a vocal Firefox evangelist since the 2.x days
- jacquesm 6y ago
  I'm still a FF evangelist though it is getting harder by the day. Eich should have realized that his actions as CEO of a highly visible entity would be viewed in a different light than if he were merely just another nobody. Missing that was his crucial mistake, he could have made the donation anonymously, but decided to do it in his own name making it a given that this would be associated with Mozilla. That was stupid. But as it was he could have simply apologized and hunkered down, I suspect (based on board members' and Eichs' own statements) that it was the pressure from the employees that made him decide to resign. Whether a proposition has a 50/50 split or not does not matter, if half your country is made up of bigots that doesn't mean that it isn't bigotry, it just means that you have a very large problem.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    > Missing that was his crucial mistake, he could have made the donation anonymously, but decided to do it in his own name making it a given that this would be associated with Mozilla. That was stupid. So I guess this means no Mozilla leader should be making any private political donations at all, because if they do, Mozilla is at risk of losing half of its (US) leaders in red or blue states. I sure hope the employees still have jobs, and if not, they have vetted their new board & CEOs past donations. > Whether a proposition has a 50/50 split or not does not matter, if half your country is made up of bigots that doesn't mean that it isn't bigotry, it just means that you have a very large problem. Do those employees/volunteers feel equally strongly about their "bigoted" user base? Or are they more morally flexible since that directly impacts their incomes?
stef25 6y ago
> should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other Is it ridiculous to suggest we should just ignore what people think and do in their private lives? I both fully support gay marriage and couldn't give a rat's ass about what the maker of my browser thinks about it (Eich donated 1000$ to Prop 8, 12 years ago). The real problem is that you can pay to have laws changed! These "acts of protest" like OkCupid's banner need to stop. Most likely they care as much as I do (= not), they're just preemptively trying to get on the right side of the argument, trying to win the social justice olympics, to avoid the same fate as Eich.
- Xylakant 6y ago
  > Is it ridiculous to suggest we should just ignore what people think and do in their private lives? The problem is that Eich was supposed be leading a team that prides itself for being supportive of the causes that Eich donated against. Bridging that gap became impossible once he was on public record for that. Having any leadership position requires at least a fundamental trust of the people you’re supposed to be leading.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  It's not about you and me. It is about Eich's ability to effectively lead Mozilla while being on the record about this stance regarding gay marriage. How many of Mozilla's employees are gay and/or in favor of gay marriage? If you alienate roughly 55% (possibly much more) or so of a group you are supposed to lead you have just made your life quite impossible. Eich probably did the right thing to resign, he would have had to either come around on the subject (which he did not) or he'd have to walk. OkCupid is not a part of FireFox, they were simply trying to virtue signal at Eich/FFs expense, and the empire behind OkCupid (not the original founders) has done a lot worse than anything that Eich ever did. That would have been easy enough to ignore. But the Mozilla employees were another matter. Money in politics is a problem in and of itself, that doesn't mean that CEOs living in glass houses should not be aware that if they start throwing stones there will be consequences.
  - mongol 6y ago
redavni 6y ago
It was this event that actually led me to stop caring about Firefox and allow myself to default to Chrome, and I downloaded Phoenix from Blake's blog the day he posted it. The root of Firefox's problems start with San Francisco. It's inflated salaries and political sideshow have caused an existential threat to Mozilla.
- smt88 6y ago
  If your opposition to gay marriage was enough to get you to throw away the benefits of Firefox, I think you're not necessarily the target market that Firefox evangelists are. None of the code of the browser changed when Eich resigned. It still had the same pros/cons, didn't it?
coldtea 6y ago
>I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other Who asked Mozilla to be a "flagship of diversity"? What we wanted off them, and what their mission statement was, is a FOSS browser that supported the open web. Plus, one can be/believe whatever on their personal life, as long as they don't bring it to the office. Not to mention that penalizing people because they supported one side in a public vote is anti-democratic.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Nobody asked, but Mozilla took (and still takes) that role. Witness plenty of comments on HN from Mozilla employees reinforcing that. I'm all for the FOSS browser company, the 'support for the open web' is already a step in the direction of losing focus. Just keeping up and having a viable alternative browser out there keeping Chrome at bay is a major job (and one they are currently miserably failing at). > Not to mention that penalizing people because they supported one side in a public vote is anti-democratic. Actually, it isn't. Actions have consequences, if Eich wanted to be a contributor to that cause he could have done so silently. By doing it in a publicly visible way as the CEO of a large company he made it a political statement and action begets reaction. Eich very explicitly brought his views into the office in a way that a substantial fraction of Mozilla's employees did not want to be associated with. Besides that, money in politics is anti-democratic.
  - lkdsajflkfdsjg 6y ago
    > Nobody asked, but Mozilla took (and still takes) that role. Witness plenty of comments on HN from Mozilla employees reinforcing that. Then those employees are part of the problem!
  - koolba 6y ago
    > Actually, it isn't. Actions have consequences, if Eich wanted to be a contributor to that cause he could have done so silently. By doing it in a publicly visible way as the CEO of a large company he made it a political statement and action begets reaction. Eich very explicitly brought his views into the office in a way that a substantial fraction of Mozilla's employees did not want to be associated with. He didn't bring his views into the office. He had them outside and the alphabet mob lit them as a Molotov cocktail and threw them into the building. Those employees could have quit and worked somewhere else too. In a lot of ways that would have been great as they could have cut down on a couple of the pointless projects. By your standard it's impossible for anyone to both have public views that disagree with your own and be the head of any large organization. > Besides that, money in politics is anti-democratic. Money in politics is the great equalizer. It's as democratic as it gets. Otherwise you end up with a handful of media and tech oligarchs controlling all messaging.
angriermozusr 6y ago
>leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other Look at the glorified domain name squatter speaking high-mindedly about principles.
nec4b 6y ago
If you don't think the state should allow incestual, polygamic or polyamorous marriages you are as bigoted as Eich for being against gay marriage.