3 ms·

If I were an LGBT employee at Mozilla, I would be pretty pissed and demoralized that my "leader" was actively trying to remove my rights. Because that's what P

If I were an LGBT employee at Mozilla, I would be pretty pissed and demoralized that my "leader" was actively trying to remove my rights. Because that's what Proposition 8 was, an attempt to constitutionally remove marriage rights from gay people after the California courts ruled that it was allowed. I think I'd be pretty uncomfortable making money for a person who would turn around and it to take away my / my family's rights.

will4274 5y ago
And the result is that Mozilla is a zombie company, filled with LGBT employees who would rather work for a company that is useless than one that has a leader who opposes gay marriage. That's fine for the U25s, but as people get older, they usually want to work for a company that is accomplishing something. I understand the folks who wanted that and why they wanted that. But it still turned Mozilla and Firefox into walking corpses.
- Infinitesimus 5y ago
  You're making a lot of assumptions about Mozilla's employee base here...
  - will4274 5y ago
    As TFA says, it's about Mozilla's employees. "Thinking you know best" is an attitude that leads you to fire people for out-of-work disagreements, and also remove features that "no one uses", and also divert money from useful products (Firefox) to products that they are "just sure" will be a huge hit (Firefox OS) but then turn out to be total flops. Mozilla's problem is that its organization (the collective outcome of its employees) is extremely arrogant. Arrogant about technical choices, arrogant about product design choices, arrogant about the way they do PR (including shaming a developer after he died), and arrogant about political/ethical choices as well. That's not to say they aren't ever right, but an organization that approached political topics where Americans are evenly divided with a bit of humility might have an easier time hiring just as an organization that approached product design topic where it's users are evenly divided with a bit of humility might have an easier time finding a good design. Humility helps, and Mozilla has none of it.
    - soundnote 5y ago
      Not sure that's especially true. Eich has admitted he had trouble hiring for Brave when he started the company, in large part because of the culture war nonsense. There's actively woke techies (of which there are quite a few), but then there are also techies who just have a huge distaste for cultural conservatism, and of those there are many.
- dralley 5y ago
  You're making a stupendously massive, unjustified assumption that Brendan Eich would somehow have prevented Mozilla from being in this position. They're competing against Apple, Google, and Microsoft simultaneously. It is entirely possible that could have been the best CEO in the world and Firefox could still be in the same exact position right now, or one that is only marginally better.
  - will4274 5y ago
    You've misread me. Eich wouldn't have saved Mozilla. Having many fewer ideological employees who insisted on conformity would have saved Mozilla. Conformity is not just a problem for politics. Read TFA - these are all conformity problems - Mozilla gets angry at people who disagree with their point of view - whether it is that tabs belong on top or that Eich is an evil abusive person or that Proton is surely better than XUL. A company that better tolerated diversity in their employees would be better set up to tolerate diversity in their users.
    - dralley 5y ago
      > Proton is surely better than XUL Proton has literally nothing to do with XUL, so if this is something you believe they think, then they'd be right to be annoyed about people with no clue what they're talking about spreading FUD. That is like complaining that KDE is better than QML files or that GNOME is better than .glade files. Or that Chrome is better than HTML and JavaScript. Utterly nonsensical.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    I probably couldn't have saved Mozilla given all their constraints and baggage. But on market share, I am confident I did something right since Mozilla. Brave is heading toward 38M MAU this month while Firefox has lost 50M users since 2018. Brave was small in 2018, and we've shown consistent monthly, steady low-exponential growth since, so much of our growth may have come from Firefox (but we aim to pull from Chrome). I hope you can get over your anger at me and comment on market share. Excusing Mozilla's woes with "no CEO could have done better" hypotheticals is weak. Such CEO performance should in any event not be rewarded with >$3M/year.
- shartacct 5y ago
  Eich wasn't a good leader even if you ignore his political views. Brave isn't exactly successful, it's a sham to inject their own ads into pages and to sell a worthless scamcoin.
mbg721 5y ago
What did "marriage rights" actually change? I know taxes changed, and I assume there were some property implications beyond just sticking it to bigoted Christians, but that last part seemed to be the major feature.
- dralley 5y ago
  >What did "marriage rights" actually change? I know taxes changed, and I assume there were some property implications beyond just sticking it to bigoted Christians, but that last part seemed to be the major feature. If your "partner" is dying in the hospital, you don't have a legal right to be allowed to see them. If your "spouse" is dying in the hospital, you do. That's one example.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    Okay, that's a good concrete example.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      It's also false. California had Domestic Partnership law that, as amended by 2008, afforded domestic partnerships the same rights and responsibilities as marriages under state law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_Califo... I'm assuming dralley didn't know (is not lying), so my advice is to check incendiary claims and avoid parroting sources you have not checked. HTH!
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        So if they were pretty much the same thing already, why deny them the term "marriage"? Comes off as nothing more than jealous spite. Certainly not what one would call a very Christian attitude.
- kergonath 5y ago
  This is weird. Why would one class of people need to justify having the same rights as another class of people? You’ve got it wrong: there needs to be a reason for them not to have that right.
soundnote 5y ago
And what does "be conservative, if anyone finds out you don't have a job anymore" amount to? That seems to be pretty much okay nowadays. The fundamental thing with politics is that there will be disagreement, and things will be voted on, and positions on those will be campaigned on. As far as I know Eich didn't publicize those stances, someone dug them up. That is, there was a job, and there was personal politics, as is professional.

will4274 5y ago

And the result is that Mozilla is a zombie company, filled with LGBT employees who would rather work for a company that is useless than one that has a leader who opposes gay marriage. That's fine for the U25s, but as people get older, they usually want to work for a company that is accomplishing something. I understand the folks who wanted that and why they wanted that. But it still turned Mozilla and Firefox into walking corpses.

Infinitesimus 5y ago
You're making a lot of assumptions about Mozilla's employee base here...
- will4274 5y ago
  As TFA says, it's about Mozilla's employees. "Thinking you know best" is an attitude that leads you to fire people for out-of-work disagreements, and also remove features that "no one uses", and also divert money from useful products (Firefox) to products that they are "just sure" will be a huge hit (Firefox OS) but then turn out to be total flops. Mozilla's problem is that its organization (the collective outcome of its employees) is extremely arrogant. Arrogant about technical choices, arrogant about product design choices, arrogant about the way they do PR (including shaming a developer after he died), and arrogant about political/ethical choices as well. That's not to say they aren't ever right, but an organization that approached political topics where Americans are evenly divided with a bit of humility might have an easier time hiring just as an organization that approached product design topic where it's users are evenly divided with a bit of humility might have an easier time finding a good design. Humility helps, and Mozilla has none of it.
  - soundnote 5y ago
    Not sure that's especially true. Eich has admitted he had trouble hiring for Brave when he started the company, in large part because of the culture war nonsense. There's actively woke techies (of which there are quite a few), but then there are also techies who just have a huge distaste for cultural conservatism, and of those there are many.
dralley 5y ago
You're making a stupendously massive, unjustified assumption that Brendan Eich would somehow have prevented Mozilla from being in this position. They're competing against Apple, Google, and Microsoft simultaneously. It is entirely possible that could have been the best CEO in the world and Firefox could still be in the same exact position right now, or one that is only marginally better.
- will4274 5y ago
  You've misread me. Eich wouldn't have saved Mozilla. Having many fewer ideological employees who insisted on conformity would have saved Mozilla. Conformity is not just a problem for politics. Read TFA - these are all conformity problems - Mozilla gets angry at people who disagree with their point of view - whether it is that tabs belong on top or that Eich is an evil abusive person or that Proton is surely better than XUL. A company that better tolerated diversity in their employees would be better set up to tolerate diversity in their users.
  - dralley 5y ago
    > Proton is surely better than XUL Proton has literally nothing to do with XUL, so if this is something you believe they think, then they'd be right to be annoyed about people with no clue what they're talking about spreading FUD. That is like complaining that KDE is better than QML files or that GNOME is better than .glade files. Or that Chrome is better than HTML and JavaScript. Utterly nonsensical.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  I probably couldn't have saved Mozilla given all their constraints and baggage. But on market share, I am confident I did something right since Mozilla. Brave is heading toward 38M MAU this month while Firefox has lost 50M users since 2018. Brave was small in 2018, and we've shown consistent monthly, steady low-exponential growth since, so much of our growth may have come from Firefox (but we aim to pull from Chrome). I hope you can get over your anger at me and comment on market share. Excusing Mozilla's woes with "no CEO could have done better" hypotheticals is weak. Such CEO performance should in any event not be rewarded with >$3M/year.
shartacct 5y ago
Eich wasn't a good leader even if you ignore his political views. Brave isn't exactly successful, it's a sham to inject their own ads into pages and to sell a worthless scamcoin.

mbg721 5y ago

What did "marriage rights" actually change? I know taxes changed, and I assume there were some property implications beyond just sticking it to bigoted Christians, but that last part seemed to be the major feature.

dralley 5y ago
>What did "marriage rights" actually change? I know taxes changed, and I assume there were some property implications beyond just sticking it to bigoted Christians, but that last part seemed to be the major feature. If your "partner" is dying in the hospital, you don't have a legal right to be allowed to see them. If your "spouse" is dying in the hospital, you do. That's one example.
- mbg721 5y ago
  Okay, that's a good concrete example.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    It's also false. California had Domestic Partnership law that, as amended by 2008, afforded domestic partnerships the same rights and responsibilities as marriages under state law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_Califo... I'm assuming dralley didn't know (is not lying), so my advice is to check incendiary claims and avoid parroting sources you have not checked. HTH!
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      So if they were pretty much the same thing already, why deny them the term "marriage"? Comes off as nothing more than jealous spite. Certainly not what one would call a very Christian attitude.
kergonath 5y ago
This is weird. Why would one class of people need to justify having the same rights as another class of people? You’ve got it wrong: there needs to be a reason for them not to have that right.

soundnote 5y ago

And what does "be conservative, if anyone finds out you don't have a job anymore" amount to? That seems to be pretty much okay nowadays. The fundamental thing with politics is that there will be disagreement, and things will be voted on, and positions on those will be campaigned on. As far as I know Eich didn't publicize those stances, someone dug them up. That is, there was a job, and there was personal politics, as is professional.