5 ms·

The day Mozilla fired Brendan Eich for political reasons, Firefox died. It just took a while for everyone to realise that. That was when they collectively decid

by miroljub 10mo ago

The day Mozilla fired Brendan Eich for political reasons, Firefox died. It just took a while for everyone to realise that. That was when they collectively decided that other things are more important to them than the quality and usability of Firefox. The new CEO is just the final nail in their coffin.

izzylan 10mo ago
Firing someone for being opposed to same-sex marriage is political in the same way firing someone for robbing a bank is.
- snovymgodym 10mo ago
  Really? Having an opinion endorsed by the mainstream doctrine of several world religions with billions of adherents is the same as robbing a bank? That being said, I disagree with Eich and it probably made sense for the org to let him go given how his views might impact public perception of Mozilla.
  - mplewis 10mo ago
    Does it feel good to be on the side of millions of like-minded bigots?
    - snovymgodym 10mo ago
      Not sure where I said I was on their side.
- diggyhole 10mo ago
  wat
- HanClinto 10mo ago
  This is dangerous, faulty thinking. Equivocating speech and crime as both being "violence" (of similar class, deserving similar response) is a fallacy that lets people justify murder in response to disagreement as long as it's deemed serious enough.
  - array_key_first 10mo ago
    Yes it's not violence, but it's not speech either. Donating money is performing material harm. That might be an unfortunate reality, but it's undeniable. It's a different thing from just saying something. Also, you can absolutely be fired for just saying something and that's been the case forever. As a CEO, you are essentially marketing your company. Marketing it poorly and losing customers can, and will, get you fired - in every company, ever.
pavel_lishin 10mo ago
I don't know, if the CEO of some software I used suddenly came out as anti-miscegenation, and started donating money to the cause, I'd stop using the software until the CEO was fired too.
- LexiMax 10mo ago
  Exactly. It's one thing to be an idiot on Twitter, it's another for you to donate money to a cause specifically designed to deny rights to people - a cause that was actually successful for a time. That's something that speaks to a fundamental lack of empathy that I'm not sure he's ever directly addressed. But in any case, I've heard this argument before, and the timeline doesn't make sense. At the time he resigned, Chrome was very firmly ahead of Firefox, and given his track record with Brave, the idea that Eich would have single-handedly saved Mozilla is also pretty dubious to me. It seems like a disingenuous and lazy talking point tailor made to blame the demise of Firefox on a culture war politics, when in reality it's the fact that Google was willing to throw much more time and resources at the browser market than a non-profit, unimpeded by the same sort of anti-trust and lack of development that brought Internet Explorer low.
- sltkr 10mo ago
  So you agree: for you, it's more important that the Mozilla CEO shares your political views, than that Mozilla makes a quality product. That's exactly what the parent post is talking about. When Mozilla started prioritizing political correctness over software quality, software quality predictably declined. That's why they are struggling now: they reduced their user base to the tiny group of political extremists that will put up with an inferior product for the sake of political signaling. By the way, Eich didn't “come out” as anything. His private donation (a mere $1000) was exposed by people who wanted to cancel him for his political views. It wasn't Eich who forced the issue, it was his political opponents, who do not tolerate any viewpoint diversity. Eich's views weren't even fringe or extreme at the time: Proposition 8 passed with support from the majority of Californian voters.
  - arjie 10mo ago
    I think the correct formulation is: "There are political views that the CEO of Mozilla could hold which would be sufficient for me to abandon the use of products that Mozilla makes". And I think that would be non-controversial for most people.
duped 10mo ago
Civil rights are more important than the quality and usability of _any software_.
dweinus 10mo ago
A) Firing a CEO because there is an immediate, massive public shaming of them is entirely rational from a business perspective B) This is the hill you want to die on? That being a bigot should be a protected status for CEOs?
- bigstrat2003 10mo ago
  > This is the hill you want to die on? That being a bigot should be a protected status for CEOs? That is a wildly uncharitable take. I'm not OP, but I believe that nobody, CEOs or otherwise, should be fired for their activities outside of work. That can be political beliefs, but doesn't have to be either. And yes, that means that sometimes someone whose beliefs you find repugnant is going to have a good job. That is the price of a free society, and I think it's worth it.
  - pavel_lishin 10mo ago
    > That is the price of a free society, and I think it's worth it. A society free enough to fund hatred, but not one free enough for employers to make decisions based on that?
  - array_key_first 10mo ago
    It's a business decision. Imagine, instead, the opinion he expressed outside of work is that Firefox sucks and nobody should use it. Should he be fired then? As a CEO, your opinion and perspective is MARKETING. You determine if customers stay or leave. And causing customers to leave is obviously a fireable offense.
  - dweinus 10mo ago
    So Subway should bring back Jared and Jello should bring back Cosby? Freedom is not a one-way street that guarantees the right to be awful without social consequences.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
i80and 10mo ago
Yeah no, (1) Mozilla was going to be in for a tough go no matter what; I don't think Eich would have fared any better. But (2) you can't donate to stop your own employees and users from having civil rights without repercussions. People with an axe to grind always hide what Brendan Eich did behind "politics" which is a dishonest slight of hand.
- sltkr 10mo ago
  > Yeah no, (1) Mozilla was going to be in for a tough go no matter what; I don't think Eich would have fared any better. Nobody knows this for sure. We do know that Eich was fired for political reasons, and not because of his technological direction. This betrays a decision making process that prioritizes political correctness above leadership qualities and technical contributions. > you can't donate to stop your own employees and users from having civil rights without repercussions. Why not? Why can't the CEO of Mozilla have his own private political views just like anyone else, and donate his own private money to whatever democratic causes he likes? This really isn't obvious to anyone except the people, like you, who view Mozilla as a political project first, and as a software project a distant second. Firing your CEO for not being sufficiently aligned with the American Democratic Party only makes sense if you assume the purpose of Mozilla is to push American Democratic politics, rather than make good software that anyone in the world may use (spoiler alert: many users of open-source software are not American Democrats!)
  - Tadpole9181 10mo ago
    > Firing your CEO for not being sufficiently aligned with the American Democratic Party This is not what happened. He gave money to a cause with the explicit goal of using that money to prevent his coworkers and users from having equal civil rights based on an inalienable trait they were born with. That's not an "American Democratic Party" alignment issue, and if you genuinely believe it is, your dog whistle may be broken. It's sounding an awful lot like a normal whistle. He has a right to do that without fear of government retaliation. But Mozilla has a right to fire him for being a bad person because of it.
    - 10mo ago
PaulHoule 10mo ago
I'd say it's complicated. If you are running a company in San Francisco I think you want to be sensitive to the culture there. That cause of gay marriage that he opposed was not one of these radicalism for the sake of radicalism queer positions you see on Twitter-dervied platforms but something mainstream at the root. I think of how on The Bulwark podcasts you hear gay people with a conservative but never-Trump viewpoint describing their cozy family life and it just sounds so sweet... and mainstream making the opposition to it not seem so mainstream. On the other hand I think San Francisco is part of the Mozilla problem because it is less than an hour on the 101 to go see people at Facebook and Google yet they are distant from the 99% of of web developers and web users that live somewhere else whose use Firefox because they don't like what Chrome stands for. I wish Mozilla was in Boulder or Minneapolis or Cleveland or Dublin or some other second-tier but vibrant city where they might have the capacity to listen to us rather than be in the same monoculture that brings us Chrome and Instagram.
- mghackerlady 10mo ago
  I wish there was anyone in Minneapolis or MN anymore. IBM left, crays been gone forever, and what's left is basically just medtech
  - PaulHoule 10mo ago
    Yeah, I can't say I feel comfortable in the medtech culture around Boston. I worked remote at a clinical notes startup based in research triangle park -- our mission was "CRUSH EPIC!" and do that through user-centric thinking and I think medtech culture would be a buzzkill for that.
mplewis 10mo ago
"political reasons" like espousing the level of hatred that makes your queer, Bay Area employees distrust you? OK.
nateglims 10mo ago
Firefox improved in quality significantly between 2014 and the recent decline. And it's not like Brave has shown incredibly good judgement in these areas.
Tadpole9181 10mo ago
The guy who runs an affiliate link farming crypto browser built on Chromium now and put money toward denying equal rights to the queer community?

izzylan 10mo ago

Firing someone for being opposed to same-sex marriage is political in the same way firing someone for robbing a bank is.

snovymgodym 10mo ago
Really? Having an opinion endorsed by the mainstream doctrine of several world religions with billions of adherents is the same as robbing a bank? That being said, I disagree with Eich and it probably made sense for the org to let him go given how his views might impact public perception of Mozilla.
- mplewis 10mo ago
  Does it feel good to be on the side of millions of like-minded bigots?
  - snovymgodym 10mo ago
    Not sure where I said I was on their side.
diggyhole 10mo ago
wat
HanClinto 10mo ago
This is dangerous, faulty thinking. Equivocating speech and crime as both being "violence" (of similar class, deserving similar response) is a fallacy that lets people justify murder in response to disagreement as long as it's deemed serious enough.
- array_key_first 10mo ago
  Yes it's not violence, but it's not speech either. Donating money is performing material harm. That might be an unfortunate reality, but it's undeniable. It's a different thing from just saying something. Also, you can absolutely be fired for just saying something and that's been the case forever. As a CEO, you are essentially marketing your company. Marketing it poorly and losing customers can, and will, get you fired - in every company, ever.

pavel_lishin 10mo ago

I don't know, if the CEO of some software I used suddenly came out as anti-miscegenation, and started donating money to the cause, I'd stop using the software until the CEO was fired too.

LexiMax 10mo ago
Exactly. It's one thing to be an idiot on Twitter, it's another for you to donate money to a cause specifically designed to deny rights to people - a cause that was actually successful for a time. That's something that speaks to a fundamental lack of empathy that I'm not sure he's ever directly addressed. But in any case, I've heard this argument before, and the timeline doesn't make sense. At the time he resigned, Chrome was very firmly ahead of Firefox, and given his track record with Brave, the idea that Eich would have single-handedly saved Mozilla is also pretty dubious to me. It seems like a disingenuous and lazy talking point tailor made to blame the demise of Firefox on a culture war politics, when in reality it's the fact that Google was willing to throw much more time and resources at the browser market than a non-profit, unimpeded by the same sort of anti-trust and lack of development that brought Internet Explorer low.
sltkr 10mo ago
So you agree: for you, it's more important that the Mozilla CEO shares your political views, than that Mozilla makes a quality product. That's exactly what the parent post is talking about. When Mozilla started prioritizing political correctness over software quality, software quality predictably declined. That's why they are struggling now: they reduced their user base to the tiny group of political extremists that will put up with an inferior product for the sake of political signaling. By the way, Eich didn't “come out” as anything. His private donation (a mere $1000) was exposed by people who wanted to cancel him for his political views. It wasn't Eich who forced the issue, it was his political opponents, who do not tolerate any viewpoint diversity. Eich's views weren't even fringe or extreme at the time: Proposition 8 passed with support from the majority of Californian voters.
- arjie 10mo ago
  I think the correct formulation is: "There are political views that the CEO of Mozilla could hold which would be sufficient for me to abandon the use of products that Mozilla makes". And I think that would be non-controversial for most people.

duped 10mo ago

Civil rights are more important than the quality and usability of _any software_.

dweinus 10mo ago

A) Firing a CEO because there is an immediate, massive public shaming of them is entirely rational from a business perspective B) This is the hill you want to die on? That being a bigot should be a protected status for CEOs?

bigstrat2003 10mo ago
> This is the hill you want to die on? That being a bigot should be a protected status for CEOs? That is a wildly uncharitable take. I'm not OP, but I believe that nobody, CEOs or otherwise, should be fired for their activities outside of work. That can be political beliefs, but doesn't have to be either. And yes, that means that sometimes someone whose beliefs you find repugnant is going to have a good job. That is the price of a free society, and I think it's worth it.
- pavel_lishin 10mo ago
  > That is the price of a free society, and I think it's worth it. A society free enough to fund hatred, but not one free enough for employers to make decisions based on that?
- array_key_first 10mo ago
  It's a business decision. Imagine, instead, the opinion he expressed outside of work is that Firefox sucks and nobody should use it. Should he be fired then? As a CEO, your opinion and perspective is MARKETING. You determine if customers stay or leave. And causing customers to leave is obviously a fireable offense.
- dweinus 10mo ago
  So Subway should bring back Jared and Jello should bring back Cosby? Freedom is not a one-way street that guarantees the right to be awful without social consequences.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]

i80and 10mo ago

Yeah no, (1) Mozilla was going to be in for a tough go no matter what; I don't think Eich would have fared any better. But (2) you can't donate to stop your own employees and users from having civil rights without repercussions. People with an axe to grind always hide what Brendan Eich did behind "politics" which is a dishonest slight of hand.

sltkr 10mo ago
> Yeah no, (1) Mozilla was going to be in for a tough go no matter what; I don't think Eich would have fared any better. Nobody knows this for sure. We do know that Eich was fired for political reasons, and not because of his technological direction. This betrays a decision making process that prioritizes political correctness above leadership qualities and technical contributions. > you can't donate to stop your own employees and users from having civil rights without repercussions. Why not? Why can't the CEO of Mozilla have his own private political views just like anyone else, and donate his own private money to whatever democratic causes he likes? This really isn't obvious to anyone except the people, like you, who view Mozilla as a political project first, and as a software project a distant second. Firing your CEO for not being sufficiently aligned with the American Democratic Party only makes sense if you assume the purpose of Mozilla is to push American Democratic politics, rather than make good software that anyone in the world may use (spoiler alert: many users of open-source software are not American Democrats!)
- Tadpole9181 10mo ago
  > Firing your CEO for not being sufficiently aligned with the American Democratic Party This is not what happened. He gave money to a cause with the explicit goal of using that money to prevent his coworkers and users from having equal civil rights based on an inalienable trait they were born with. That's not an "American Democratic Party" alignment issue, and if you genuinely believe it is, your dog whistle may be broken. It's sounding an awful lot like a normal whistle. He has a right to do that without fear of government retaliation. But Mozilla has a right to fire him for being a bad person because of it.
  - 10mo ago

PaulHoule 10mo ago

I'd say it's complicated. If you are running a company in San Francisco I think you want to be sensitive to the culture there. That cause of gay marriage that he opposed was not one of these radicalism for the sake of radicalism queer positions you see on Twitter-dervied platforms but something mainstream at the root. I think of how on The Bulwark podcasts you hear gay people with a conservative but never-Trump viewpoint describing their cozy family life and it just sounds so sweet... and mainstream making the opposition to it not seem so mainstream. On the other hand I think San Francisco is part of the Mozilla problem because it is less than an hour on the 101 to go see people at Facebook and Google yet they are distant from the 99% of of web developers and web users that live somewhere else whose use Firefox because they don't like what Chrome stands for. I wish Mozilla was in Boulder or Minneapolis or Cleveland or Dublin or some other second-tier but vibrant city where they might have the capacity to listen to us rather than be in the same monoculture that brings us Chrome and Instagram.

mghackerlady 10mo ago
I wish there was anyone in Minneapolis or MN anymore. IBM left, crays been gone forever, and what's left is basically just medtech
- PaulHoule 10mo ago
  Yeah, I can't say I feel comfortable in the medtech culture around Boston. I worked remote at a clinical notes startup based in research triangle park -- our mission was "CRUSH EPIC!" and do that through user-centric thinking and I think medtech culture would be a buzzkill for that.

mplewis 10mo ago

"political reasons" like espousing the level of hatred that makes your queer, Bay Area employees distrust you? OK.

nateglims 10mo ago

Firefox improved in quality significantly between 2014 and the recent decline. And it's not like Brave has shown incredibly good judgement in these areas.

Tadpole9181 10mo ago

The guy who runs an affiliate link farming crypto browser built on Chromium now and put money toward denying equal rights to the queer community?