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This article links to an earlier WSJ piece that gives more information about Eich's background (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/03/24/mozilla-picks-insider-eic

This article links to an earlier WSJ piece that gives more information about Eich's background (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/03/24/mozilla-picks-insider-eich-as-new-ceo/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/03/24/mozilla-picks-insider...). He invented Javascript in 1995, co-founded Mozilla, and helped start Firefox. It seems to me he's very well qualified from a historical as well as technical perspective. Questions about his mobile expertise seem misplaced, considering that his technical contributions helped pave the way for mobile web apps. The article suggests that the unhappiness about Eich's appointment stems from his support in 2008 for California's Proposition 8, which was an anti-gay marriage law that passed but ultimately was overturned by the Supreme Court. I don't wish to incite a flame war over this or start a debate over gay/same sex marriage; I merely question why his views on this particular issue make the man unfit for the job. Would it be better if he had contributed money to fight Prop 8? I find this kind of litmus test highly disturbing.

camus2 13y ago
> Questions about his mobile expertise seem misplaced, > considering that his technical contributions helped > pave the way for mobile web apps. How ? Apple in my opinion was the most influential actor regarding the development of mobile apps.The first HTML touch specific api came from apple... Apple defined what modern mobile apps means.
- untog 13y ago
  He did say mobile web apps, not mobile apps. And given that almost all webapps run on JavaScript...
  - camus2 13y ago
    >The first HTML touch api came from apple... I did imply mobile web apps and javascript is not a plateform,it's a language. What you imply is as stupid as implying "X who created Assembly helped pave the way for mobile web apps."...sure... So Eich paved the way for Photoshop or Fireworks because they both run javascript? yeah right.
    - untog 13y ago
      Apple defined those APIs because they were first, sure. But from that point on mobile apps have been defined in spite of Apple, dealing with the roadblocks they put up to push everyone into native.
KuraFire 13y ago
It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having a CEO who has a history of donating to an anti-equality campaign, an act that very strongly suggests having an unequal view of certain groups of people (LGBTQ folks in this case), does not mesh with an organization that prides itself on equality (among other things). They are pretty mutually exclusive. It was already a conflict with Eich as CTO, but at least in that position he had no say over the company culture or its policies when it comes to people, just technology. As CEO, all that changed. Additionally, by making a donation to (what is essentially) a campaign of hatred (and FUD), he took it WAY beyond a personal belief or view. Expressing your views in public or making a donation that way is an act, not merely "holding an opinion", and actions matter. His action in the form of the donation harmed the lives of thousands of people, with no justifiable cause for it. Now, there's tons of people who hold such bigoted views and even express them in the form of acts through public statements or donations, but most of the time we don't award those people with the CEO position of a major corporation. (to clarify how this is not a litmus test: while it sure can be applied that way, plenty of organizations have bigots as CEOs — see e.g. Chick-fil-A — but what’s mainly happening here is that it is simply a matter of bad judgement and people objecting to the appointment because he's unfit to lead an org like Mozilla)
- davidgerard 13y ago
  >The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. To emphasise this point - the importance of the choice in relating to the outside world - this is just in: http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/victoria/vac-gmhc-to-boycott-mozilla-13422.html http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/victoria/vac-gmhc-to-boyco... The Victorian AIDS Council and Gay Men's Health Centre, one of the most important gay charities in the state of Victoria in Australia, is boycotting Mozilla and removing Firefox from their machines. More than that, they issued a PRESS RELEASE to this effect. So the Firefox brand is becoming toxic well outside the world of disgruntled techies.
sp332 13y ago
The article could have been clearer, but this is the important bit: The three board members who resigned sought a CEO from outside Mozilla with experience in the mobile industry who could help expand the organization’s Firefox OS mobile-operating system and balance the skills of co-founders Eich and Baker. So it's not about the Prop 8 thing at all.
- KuraFire 13y ago
  …that the article and board members in question are willing to reveal. It's still entirely possible (and more likely if you ask me) that the Prop 8 angle and subsequent objections raised by many Mozillans and Firefox developers have changed their minds about this, but these are big-time board member CEOs we're taking so of course they're not going to say the political position on Prop 8 of the newly appointed CEO is what's making them resign. That's still a bad career move in today's world, but saying "we wanted someone from outside the organization with experience in XYZ" is not.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  There are some people within Mozilla who are demanding he recant his Pro 8 support. Google "eich" and you'll get one or two such bloggers, within the first 5 hits or so.
  - sp332 13y ago
    That's true now, but it doesn't seem have been a big deal at all last week when these 3 board members decided to leave.
andrewflnr 13y ago
Lots of people, including AFAICT a large chunk if not a majority if the tech community, consider same-sex marriage to be a human rights issue. To them, yes, it would be better if he had fought Prop 8, assuming they didn't just take it for granted.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  Suppose he didn't oppose same-sex marriage per se, but opposed the way it was being implemented in California. Would he still be anti "human rights"? These issues are complex and people's beliefs and opinions can't always be distilled down to some simple, binary good/bad bit. I'm opposed to mandatory integration of public schools and mandatory racial-based quota systems. Does that make me a racist? Some would say so, others would say not. I would vigorously argue not; I totally oppose racial discrimination and I believe that a blind meritocracy in the long run brings about real, permanent integration. So should I be locked out of a non-profit tech organization because of my views? From what I've observed over the last couple of decades, the tech community hosts plenty of diverse political opinions, but generally with a serious streak of anti-authoritarianism. Do we want to now define the tech community as being on one side of any particular political or social issue? Is that a fair or healthy approach?
  - arrrg 13y ago
    Then I guess we are lucky to know exactly what Prop 8 stood for and we also know he donated a substantial amount of money to it. Prop 8 was about specifically banning gay marriage. A blanket ban. It wasn’t about changing the implementation or any such nonsense. Your argument makes no sense in light of that.
    - blisterpeanuts 13y ago
      Actually, the purpose of Prop 8 was to insert the following into the state constitution: "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" It doesn't ban gay marriage. It does explicitly assert that only traditional marriage is legally recognized.
rogerbinns 13y ago
The root cause is: "According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are 1,138 statutory provisions in which marital status is a factor in determining benefits, rights, and privileges." You can be against gay marriage because you don't like and don't want others to do it. But at the government level that also means denying gay couples those 1,138 benefits, rights and privileges. It means making them less equal. People are upset about someone who believes that and donated money to continue it. Another comment from me with link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7490855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7490855
- vixen99 13y ago
  There are plenty of gays who don't want and don't approve of gay marriage on theological grounds. One example: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10729717/Brian-Sewell-Why-I-will-never-be-converted-to-gay-marriage.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10729717/Brian-Sewe... You can be an atheist and still appreciate this argument as I do. As for the resignations, fine! Let them do what they want to do. Is it a big deal?
  - rogerbinns 13y ago
    From what I can tell from the article, Britain has civil partnerships which have the same rights, benefits and privileges as marriage. That is a completely different debate from the US where there is are various similar things (eg civil unions) but only marriage has the full rights, benefits and privileges. The correct fix in the US would be decoupling all those rights, benefits and privileges from marriage (only). However the chances of that happening at the moment are very low. So today the issue is all about marriage.

camus2 13y ago

> Questions about his mobile expertise seem misplaced, > considering that his technical contributions helped > pave the way for mobile web apps. How ? Apple in my opinion was the most influential actor regarding the development of mobile apps.The first HTML touch specific api came from apple... Apple defined what modern mobile apps means.

untog 13y ago
He did say mobile web apps, not mobile apps. And given that almost all webapps run on JavaScript...
- camus2 13y ago
  >The first HTML touch api came from apple... I did imply mobile web apps and javascript is not a plateform,it's a language. What you imply is as stupid as implying "X who created Assembly helped pave the way for mobile web apps."...sure... So Eich paved the way for Photoshop or Fireworks because they both run javascript? yeah right.
  - untog 13y ago
    Apple defined those APIs because they were first, sure. But from that point on mobile apps have been defined in spite of Apple, dealing with the roadblocks they put up to push everyone into native.

KuraFire 13y ago

It's not really a litmus test. Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking. The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. Having a CEO who has a history of donating to an anti-equality campaign, an act that very strongly suggests having an unequal view of certain groups of people (LGBTQ folks in this case), does not mesh with an organization that prides itself on equality (among other things). They are pretty mutually exclusive. It was already a conflict with Eich as CTO, but at least in that position he had no say over the company culture or its policies when it comes to people, just technology. As CEO, all that changed. Additionally, by making a donation to (what is essentially) a campaign of hatred (and FUD), he took it WAY beyond a personal belief or view. Expressing your views in public or making a donation that way is an act, not merely "holding an opinion", and actions matter. His action in the form of the donation harmed the lives of thousands of people, with no justifiable cause for it. Now, there's tons of people who hold such bigoted views and even express them in the form of acts through public statements or donations, but most of the time we don't award those people with the CEO position of a major corporation. (to clarify how this is not a litmus test: while it sure can be applied that way, plenty of organizations have bigots as CEOs — see e.g. Chick-fil-A — but what’s mainly happening here is that it is simply a matter of bad judgement and people objecting to the appointment because he's unfit to lead an org like Mozilla)

davidgerard 13y ago
>The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth. To emphasise this point - the importance of the choice in relating to the outside world - this is just in: http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/victoria/vac-gmhc-to-boycott-mozilla-13422.html http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/victoria/vac-gmhc-to-boyco... The Victorian AIDS Council and Gay Men's Health Centre, one of the most important gay charities in the state of Victoria in Australia, is boycotting Mozilla and removing Firefox from their machines. More than that, they issued a PRESS RELEASE to this effect. So the Firefox brand is becoming toxic well outside the world of disgruntled techies.

sp332 13y ago

The article could have been clearer, but this is the important bit: The three board members who resigned sought a CEO from outside Mozilla with experience in the mobile industry who could help expand the organization’s Firefox OS mobile-operating system and balance the skills of co-founders Eich and Baker. So it's not about the Prop 8 thing at all.

KuraFire 13y ago
…that the article and board members in question are willing to reveal. It's still entirely possible (and more likely if you ask me) that the Prop 8 angle and subsequent objections raised by many Mozillans and Firefox developers have changed their minds about this, but these are big-time board member CEOs we're taking so of course they're not going to say the political position on Prop 8 of the newly appointed CEO is what's making them resign. That's still a bad career move in today's world, but saying "we wanted someone from outside the organization with experience in XYZ" is not.
blisterpeanuts 13y ago
There are some people within Mozilla who are demanding he recant his Pro 8 support. Google "eich" and you'll get one or two such bloggers, within the first 5 hits or so.
- sp332 13y ago
  That's true now, but it doesn't seem have been a big deal at all last week when these 3 board members decided to leave.

andrewflnr 13y ago

Lots of people, including AFAICT a large chunk if not a majority if the tech community, consider same-sex marriage to be a human rights issue. To them, yes, it would be better if he had fought Prop 8, assuming they didn't just take it for granted.

blisterpeanuts 13y ago
Suppose he didn't oppose same-sex marriage per se, but opposed the way it was being implemented in California. Would he still be anti "human rights"? These issues are complex and people's beliefs and opinions can't always be distilled down to some simple, binary good/bad bit. I'm opposed to mandatory integration of public schools and mandatory racial-based quota systems. Does that make me a racist? Some would say so, others would say not. I would vigorously argue not; I totally oppose racial discrimination and I believe that a blind meritocracy in the long run brings about real, permanent integration. So should I be locked out of a non-profit tech organization because of my views? From what I've observed over the last couple of decades, the tech community hosts plenty of diverse political opinions, but generally with a serious streak of anti-authoritarianism. Do we want to now define the tech community as being on one side of any particular political or social issue? Is that a fair or healthy approach?
- arrrg 13y ago
  Then I guess we are lucky to know exactly what Prop 8 stood for and we also know he donated a substantial amount of money to it. Prop 8 was about specifically banning gay marriage. A blanket ban. It wasn’t about changing the implementation or any such nonsense. Your argument makes no sense in light of that.
  - blisterpeanuts 13y ago
    Actually, the purpose of Prop 8 was to insert the following into the state constitution: "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" It doesn't ban gay marriage. It does explicitly assert that only traditional marriage is legally recognized.

rogerbinns 13y ago

The root cause is: "According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are 1,138 statutory provisions in which marital status is a factor in determining benefits, rights, and privileges." You can be against gay marriage because you don't like and don't want others to do it. But at the government level that also means denying gay couples those 1,138 benefits, rights and privileges. It means making them less equal. People are upset about someone who believes that and donated money to continue it. Another comment from me with link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7490855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7490855

vixen99 13y ago
There are plenty of gays who don't want and don't approve of gay marriage on theological grounds. One example: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10729717/Brian-Sewell-Why-I-will-never-be-converted-to-gay-marriage.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10729717/Brian-Sewe... You can be an atheist and still appreciate this argument as I do. As for the resignations, fine! Let them do what they want to do. Is it a big deal?
- rogerbinns 13y ago
  From what I can tell from the article, Britain has civil partnerships which have the same rights, benefits and privileges as marriage. That is a completely different debate from the US where there is are various similar things (eg civil unions) but only marriage has the full rights, benefits and privileges. The correct fix in the US would be decoupling all those rights, benefits and privileges from marriage (only). However the chances of that happening at the moment are very low. So today the issue is all about marriage.