4 ms·

Andreas Gal is leaving Mozilla

62 points by hepha1979 11y ago

bevacqua 11y ago
He was the CTO for less than 1.5 years, I guess he didn't like having that position at Mozilla if he left so quickly?
- navyrain 11y ago
  7 years at any organization is a long time, and with so few rungs above him on the ladder, it is only reasonable that he'd move on to something else.
  - GuiA 11y ago
    Nah, that's a sign of an organization going in the wrong direction to me. When you reach the C*O level, you should pretty much be there for life unless you have serious doubts about the sustainability of the place/get kicked out/have a major life event that takes precedence (eg sick spouse).
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      You should only be in a position long enough to a) learn enough to move up to the next position or b) effect the change you want to if you're C-Level. If you're not learning anymore, it's not fun anymore, or you're not having the effect you want to (or any combination of those), its time to leave.
      - Manishearth 11y ago
        This. I think most Mozilla employees approach stuff this way. I've seen folks leave to form a startup other times too, and that's not because Mozilla is bad at keeping them. I (non employee; student+volunteer) certainly do this. I've drifted between open source projects and communities, reducing participation drastically when I find something I learn from more. Im pretty involved in a couple projects and I really want to stay because they're awesome, but it's quite possible that in a few years I'll be somewhere completely different. At the moment, I hope not. But only time will tell.
      - GuiA 11y ago
        Yeah, you're not disagreeing with what I just said. If he couldn't effect the change he wanted to as CTO, then Mozilla is probably in a very poor position.
ptx 11y ago
Hm, this seems discouraging. Brendan Eich, Andreas Gal and Graydon Hoare are all gone and Mozilla's leadership and public messaging seems to be getting more and more marketing-dominated.
- navyrain 11y ago
  Despite some well-publicized departures, I'm still bullish on Mozilla. As javascript becomes more capable, Mozilla's open-web mission becomes more attainable. Public awareness of widespread government surveillance increases the demand for trustworthy communication tools. Concretely, FirefoxOS is quietly reaching maturity, and Servo has a great deal of promise. I think that Mozilla's strange position, being a non-profit that is at various times either in competition or in cooperation with the world's largest tech companies, makes employee departures all that more press-worthy that the typical corporate churn. I wouldn't read too much into it.
  - hobarrera 11y ago
    > Mozilla's open-web mission becomes more attainable That's their mission (allegedly), but things like Pocket integrations, or the Telefonica chat thing (Hello?) really make me think it's not where the manpower is going.
    - Manishearth 11y ago
      Most of the effort behind Hello was independent of Hello. Hello is based on WebRTC, which is something Firefox needed to support anyway. Hello is just a neat way to use it, and I doubt that it required a lot of effort. ICBW, though. Same goes for Pocket.
      - hobarrera 11y ago
        Little effort, but we (eg: the community) don't get anything that's reusable. We just got a bunch of code that interacts with some proprietary system. Meanwhile, we still don't have any FLOSS implementation for WebRTC-based voice+video.
zatkin 11y ago
>Related: Technical Leadership at Mozilla - Today, I am starting my role as Mozilla’s new Chief Technology Officer. This is amusing.
mooreds 11y ago
The real question is, who is stepping in? Mozilla is very important to keep the major browser vendors honest (beyond being a great piece of software). Seems to me it needs deep technical leadership.
- kibwen 11y ago
  I don't know about the CTO role, but since Dave Herman has been leading Mozilla Research for a while now I wouldn't be surprised to see him take over.
  - Manishearth 11y ago
    That was my first thought too after wondering who would be the new CTO :)
anon3_ 11y ago
Mozilla lets cabals on Twitter call the shots over tech brains. Mozilla doesn't need to survive as a corporation after that blunder. They should downsize and just provide the browser and thunderbird as open source projects. Rescind what you did to Eich, Mozilla. Stand up for your employees rights and the ethics and people who got you where you are now.
- vegedor 11y ago
  > Stand up for your employees rights and the ethics They surely intended to stand up for some ethics, that are implicitly concerned with employees, just not Eich's ethics. Now the hypocrisy is to shun him for his ethics, because he opposed, very indirectly, other ethics.
sylvinus 11y ago
I really hope Servo & other real innovations (i.e. not Firefox OS) can turn Mozilla around. The open web needs them to matter!
- skrowl 11y ago
  Yep. If firefox and IE together dip below 20% or so, we'll see more and more of the horrible "This site only works in Chrome".
  - walterbell 11y ago
    > we'll see more and more of the horrible "This site only works in Chrome" There is still Safari/WebKit to provide some balance. Sites could move to a native app with bundled WebKit. If you're going to support only one client, make it your own client.

62 points by hepha1979 11y ago

bevacqua 11y ago

He was the CTO for less than 1.5 years, I guess he didn't like having that position at Mozilla if he left so quickly?

navyrain 11y ago
7 years at any organization is a long time, and with so few rungs above him on the ladder, it is only reasonable that he'd move on to something else.
- GuiA 11y ago
  Nah, that's a sign of an organization going in the wrong direction to me. When you reach the C*O level, you should pretty much be there for life unless you have serious doubts about the sustainability of the place/get kicked out/have a major life event that takes precedence (eg sick spouse).
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    You should only be in a position long enough to a) learn enough to move up to the next position or b) effect the change you want to if you're C-Level. If you're not learning anymore, it's not fun anymore, or you're not having the effect you want to (or any combination of those), its time to leave.
    - Manishearth 11y ago
      This. I think most Mozilla employees approach stuff this way. I've seen folks leave to form a startup other times too, and that's not because Mozilla is bad at keeping them. I (non employee; student+volunteer) certainly do this. I've drifted between open source projects and communities, reducing participation drastically when I find something I learn from more. Im pretty involved in a couple projects and I really want to stay because they're awesome, but it's quite possible that in a few years I'll be somewhere completely different. At the moment, I hope not. But only time will tell.
    - GuiA 11y ago
      Yeah, you're not disagreeing with what I just said. If he couldn't effect the change he wanted to as CTO, then Mozilla is probably in a very poor position.

ptx 11y ago

Hm, this seems discouraging. Brendan Eich, Andreas Gal and Graydon Hoare are all gone and Mozilla's leadership and public messaging seems to be getting more and more marketing-dominated.

navyrain 11y ago
Despite some well-publicized departures, I'm still bullish on Mozilla. As javascript becomes more capable, Mozilla's open-web mission becomes more attainable. Public awareness of widespread government surveillance increases the demand for trustworthy communication tools. Concretely, FirefoxOS is quietly reaching maturity, and Servo has a great deal of promise. I think that Mozilla's strange position, being a non-profit that is at various times either in competition or in cooperation with the world's largest tech companies, makes employee departures all that more press-worthy that the typical corporate churn. I wouldn't read too much into it.
- hobarrera 11y ago
  > Mozilla's open-web mission becomes more attainable That's their mission (allegedly), but things like Pocket integrations, or the Telefonica chat thing (Hello?) really make me think it's not where the manpower is going.
  - Manishearth 11y ago
    Most of the effort behind Hello was independent of Hello. Hello is based on WebRTC, which is something Firefox needed to support anyway. Hello is just a neat way to use it, and I doubt that it required a lot of effort. ICBW, though. Same goes for Pocket.
    - hobarrera 11y ago
      Little effort, but we (eg: the community) don't get anything that's reusable. We just got a bunch of code that interacts with some proprietary system. Meanwhile, we still don't have any FLOSS implementation for WebRTC-based voice+video.

zatkin 11y ago

>Related: Technical Leadership at Mozilla - Today, I am starting my role as Mozilla’s new Chief Technology Officer. This is amusing.

mooreds 11y ago

The real question is, who is stepping in? Mozilla is very important to keep the major browser vendors honest (beyond being a great piece of software). Seems to me it needs deep technical leadership.

kibwen 11y ago
I don't know about the CTO role, but since Dave Herman has been leading Mozilla Research for a while now I wouldn't be surprised to see him take over.
- Manishearth 11y ago
  That was my first thought too after wondering who would be the new CTO :)

anon3_ 11y ago

Mozilla lets cabals on Twitter call the shots over tech brains. Mozilla doesn't need to survive as a corporation after that blunder. They should downsize and just provide the browser and thunderbird as open source projects. Rescind what you did to Eich, Mozilla. Stand up for your employees rights and the ethics and people who got you where you are now.

vegedor 11y ago
> Stand up for your employees rights and the ethics They surely intended to stand up for some ethics, that are implicitly concerned with employees, just not Eich's ethics. Now the hypocrisy is to shun him for his ethics, because he opposed, very indirectly, other ethics.

sylvinus 11y ago

I really hope Servo & other real innovations (i.e. not Firefox OS) can turn Mozilla around. The open web needs them to matter!

skrowl 11y ago
Yep. If firefox and IE together dip below 20% or so, we'll see more and more of the horrible "This site only works in Chrome".
- walterbell 11y ago
  > we'll see more and more of the horrible "This site only works in Chrome" There is still Safari/WebKit to provide some balance. Sites could move to a native app with bundled WebKit. If you're going to support only one client, make it your own client.