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> This is baseless FUD; any serious objections he might have are only hinted at: "things I can't talk about" The author is Robert O'Callahan, who is a Distingu
by nnethercote 12y ago
> This is baseless FUD; any serious objections he might have are only hinted at: "things I can't talk about"
The author is Robert O'Callahan, who is a Distinguished Engineer at Mozilla and a 15-year veteran of browser development. He's not just some random blogger spouting off.
- dwaltrip 12y agoBeing a distinguished engineer at Mozilla doesn't necessarily make one far more qualified to understand the vast array of potential implications of Google gaining monopoly power in a variety of web sectors.
- 2muchcoffeeman 12y agoNo, but it might. I'm sure the author has spent vastly more time looking at web standards and trends than I have and as such, his opinion should carry more weight than your average person. You've simply pulled out a variation on the old "correlation does not imply causation" retort.
- dwaltrip 12y agoNo, I pulled a more wordy version of "that's an appeal to authority fallacy". And I believe my point still stands. The author is speaking of issues that are several orders of magnitude of complexity above "writing amazing web software at Mozilla" and also impacted by a variety of fields that are very different than software engineering. Thus he is only marginally more informed than your average HN user.
- nnethercote 12y agoBeing a distinguished engineer at Mozilla does make it more likely that there is something significant behind the "things I can't talk about".
- seanflyon 12y agoIt also gives him an ulterior motive. I am happy to hear what he has to say, but "just trust me" is not convincing. To be clear, I am not accusing him of dishonesty, but I don't trust him to be impartial. People have a tendency to overvalue the thing they are working on.