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Everyone that advocated for ousting technical Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich bears responsibility. Here's many of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7525198

Everyone that advocated for ousting technical Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich bears responsibility. Here's many of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7525198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7525198 We are where we are today because of people on this very forum. Especially ironic when it's the more lefty types that have helped kill the non-profit open source browser and many are themselves solely using the for-profit Chrome ran by a capitalistic advertising panopticon. Great job, much appreciated /s

wkat4242 3y ago
Uhhh no, sorry. Getting Eich to leave was one thing. Getting a completely incompetent replacement hired is not on those people. Unless Eich was the one and only possible savior of Mozilla (as Steve Jobs arguably was to 1999's Apple - it does happen), these are two very different things. You don't fold your principles just because you risk rocking the boat. And Mozilla is a pretty progressive organisation. You can't have a figurehead that isn't aligned with that.
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  This is the timeline we're on. Ousting Eich directly led to our current Mozilla situation. He's not the only who could've ran it successfully. But we are where we are because people wanted him ousted and instead were ok with Mitchell Baker types. From a realist perspective that cares about actual outcomes, we are in the worse timeline with an incompetent Mozilla vs. whatever small negative affects Eich would affect in the grand scheme of Prop 8 related issues.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    With the benefit of hindsight, yes. If I were working at Mozilla it wouldn't affect how I'd act in the future though. Yes this turned out very poorly. But you can't predict these things. And principles are worthwhile to speak out for. And we don't even know if he'd have done a better job (though this is admittedly not hard) Eich wouldn't have made a change to prop 8, no. But the culture at and image of Mozilla would have changed.
    - reducesuffering 3y ago
      Ok so we have the benefit of hindsight, but I say, let's predict these things better. Principles are worthwhile to speak out for, but if we have better predictions on getting better outcomes, we should lean towards those better outcomes and not certainly dig our own grave by latching onto what may be a misguided principled stance. I'm quite sure that most of the people, that care about an independent successful Firefox and celebrated Eich's ouster, now regret that. We need to change our mindset when what happens is viciously descending on someone, years after the fact, for donating to what was a majority opinion in a liberal state. And yet ignoring or giving a pass to the years of continued actual malfeasance running Firefox thereafter. If it means actually accomplishing good things in the world, an independent web, I'm willing to give people leeway, nowhere close to what they're giving current Mozilla. The problem is people never gave a single thought to what possible futures ousting the technical CEO of Mozilla means, and unfortunately we now have to live it.
- BrendanEich 3y ago
  I'm a co-founder of mozilla.org (unlike Mitchell Baker). You projecting your own or others' politics onto it raises an acute historical question: if I'm a co-founder but not "progressive", yet I was not driven out at founding or for 16+ years, then what changed, when? No "society" cop-out answers. Mozilla was a global project from early days and we made it a point not to litmus-test politics or religion as conditions for taking on any role, while we were growing. I have my own answers, but I'm interested in yours.
mardifoufs 3y ago
Regardless of what happened with him, there's literally no reason to believe that he wouldn't have had the same massive salary if he was still the CEO. Him being technical has nothing to do with taking a massive salary or not, the issue is cultural. Especially when you see the exact same thought process all over this thread, of thinking "But they are a CEO in tech! They deserve it!" instead of keeping in mind the completely different dynamics that apply to non profits. I don't think it has much to do with the CEO themselves
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  The CEO's "massive salary" isn't the issue. It's the "revenue declining" part. No one would care much about a salary like this for Baker or Eich is Mozilla was actually flourishing. But it certainly is not. While Firefox market share and revenue is declining, Eich was able to a 200 person browser company from the ground up (based on Chromium). Huge difference between CEO caliber here. I think we'd all be better off if those efforts would've been combined to making a strong 3rd browser contender, instead of Chrome, Safari, and the peanuts sprinkled across Firefox and Brave separately.
  - BrendanEich 3y ago
    Here's proof salary isn't the issue: not only did I not stay and say whatever it took to give Google antitrust cover while hiking my salary (Mitchell would have been chair, would have had to approve, might have done so provided hers went up too; she always earned a bit more than I did while we were partners from early days), I didn't go to a Big Tech company that pays seven figure salaries to people at my level. I founded a startup and still make a modest (16x smaller than Mitchell's, to be precise) salary. If I'd stayed at Mozilla, turned around Firefox, spawned other revenue lines, then of course the salary would be high -- it would have to be very high, without any equity upside. This remains a problem for comp at Mozilla from when I was there: we can't compete with Big Tech on RSUs, or even on cash, so we overpay a bit and have a "mission-based" ethos that, over time, tolerated politicking and goldbricking.

wkat4242 3y ago

Uhhh no, sorry. Getting Eich to leave was one thing. Getting a completely incompetent replacement hired is not on those people. Unless Eich was the one and only possible savior of Mozilla (as Steve Jobs arguably was to 1999's Apple - it does happen), these are two very different things. You don't fold your principles just because you risk rocking the boat. And Mozilla is a pretty progressive organisation. You can't have a figurehead that isn't aligned with that.

reducesuffering 3y ago
This is the timeline we're on. Ousting Eich directly led to our current Mozilla situation. He's not the only who could've ran it successfully. But we are where we are because people wanted him ousted and instead were ok with Mitchell Baker types. From a realist perspective that cares about actual outcomes, we are in the worse timeline with an incompetent Mozilla vs. whatever small negative affects Eich would affect in the grand scheme of Prop 8 related issues.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  With the benefit of hindsight, yes. If I were working at Mozilla it wouldn't affect how I'd act in the future though. Yes this turned out very poorly. But you can't predict these things. And principles are worthwhile to speak out for. And we don't even know if he'd have done a better job (though this is admittedly not hard) Eich wouldn't have made a change to prop 8, no. But the culture at and image of Mozilla would have changed.
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    Ok so we have the benefit of hindsight, but I say, let's predict these things better. Principles are worthwhile to speak out for, but if we have better predictions on getting better outcomes, we should lean towards those better outcomes and not certainly dig our own grave by latching onto what may be a misguided principled stance. I'm quite sure that most of the people, that care about an independent successful Firefox and celebrated Eich's ouster, now regret that. We need to change our mindset when what happens is viciously descending on someone, years after the fact, for donating to what was a majority opinion in a liberal state. And yet ignoring or giving a pass to the years of continued actual malfeasance running Firefox thereafter. If it means actually accomplishing good things in the world, an independent web, I'm willing to give people leeway, nowhere close to what they're giving current Mozilla. The problem is people never gave a single thought to what possible futures ousting the technical CEO of Mozilla means, and unfortunately we now have to live it.
BrendanEich 3y ago
I'm a co-founder of mozilla.org (unlike Mitchell Baker). You projecting your own or others' politics onto it raises an acute historical question: if I'm a co-founder but not "progressive", yet I was not driven out at founding or for 16+ years, then what changed, when? No "society" cop-out answers. Mozilla was a global project from early days and we made it a point not to litmus-test politics or religion as conditions for taking on any role, while we were growing. I have my own answers, but I'm interested in yours.

mardifoufs 3y ago

Regardless of what happened with him, there's literally no reason to believe that he wouldn't have had the same massive salary if he was still the CEO. Him being technical has nothing to do with taking a massive salary or not, the issue is cultural. Especially when you see the exact same thought process all over this thread, of thinking "But they are a CEO in tech! They deserve it!" instead of keeping in mind the completely different dynamics that apply to non profits. I don't think it has much to do with the CEO themselves

reducesuffering 3y ago
The CEO's "massive salary" isn't the issue. It's the "revenue declining" part. No one would care much about a salary like this for Baker or Eich is Mozilla was actually flourishing. But it certainly is not. While Firefox market share and revenue is declining, Eich was able to a 200 person browser company from the ground up (based on Chromium). Huge difference between CEO caliber here. I think we'd all be better off if those efforts would've been combined to making a strong 3rd browser contender, instead of Chrome, Safari, and the peanuts sprinkled across Firefox and Brave separately.
- BrendanEich 3y ago
  Here's proof salary isn't the issue: not only did I not stay and say whatever it took to give Google antitrust cover while hiking my salary (Mitchell would have been chair, would have had to approve, might have done so provided hers went up too; she always earned a bit more than I did while we were partners from early days), I didn't go to a Big Tech company that pays seven figure salaries to people at my level. I founded a startup and still make a modest (16x smaller than Mitchell's, to be precise) salary. If I'd stayed at Mozilla, turned around Firefox, spawned other revenue lines, then of course the salary would be high -- it would have to be very high, without any equity upside. This remains a problem for comp at Mozilla from when I was there: we can't compete with Big Tech on RSUs, or even on cash, so we overpay a bit and have a "mission-based" ethos that, over time, tolerated politicking and goldbricking.