
Mozilla Moving Forward - tweakz
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/14/mozilla-moving-forward/
======
natural219
I'm still mad about the Brendan Eich thing. Like, _mad_. I'm totally fine with
anybody pursuing whatever kind of political agenda they want, but at the
moment you start to derail _real_ progress, the moment you attack one of the
best organizations who has literally been busting its ass for the last decade
to change the world for no profit...

Well, you declared war. I think this whole debacle should be a rallying cry
that we're not going to accept this kind of bullying anymore.

The worst part is, the progressive platform has some really important things
to say about the way we live. We're not an equal society yet. We still have
more changes we need to make to secure the freedom and happiness of everybody,
especially groups that have been historically marginalized.

All the more reason to shut down the bullies who have domineered the
narrative, produced nothing but useless bickering, and have sought nothing but
divisiveness at every turn in the everlasting quest for more pageviews. I'm
looking at you, Gawker.

Don't tolerate this any more. Brendan Eich was just one casualty. It's time to
start sticking up for ourselves.

~~~
nostromo
And where do you draw the line?

Are you going to defend people that oppose Women's Suffrage too? What about
slavery supporters?

These were just political opinions once too. But today you'll find that they
get you fired as CEO. And for good reason: blacks and women (and gays) are
your customers and employees and business partners.

~~~
twoodfin
I'm genuinely curious where you would draw your line. Would you support firing
Mozilla's CEO if it's revealed he voted for Mitt Romney? What if he gave his
campaign $1000?

~~~
bunderbunder
Speaking for myself, I find the idea that a line should be drawn to be
downright antithetical.

What I support is individual liberties. Which means that it doesn't
necessarily matter whether or not I support something. Individuals and
organizations are generally free to do what they want, including being free to
do things I don't like, and vice versa.

Meaning:

    
    
      1. Brendan Eich was perfectly free to make political contributions.
    
      2. He was perfectly free to say whatever he wants about the issue in public.
    
      3. People who don't mind are perfectly free to not care.
    
      4. People who do mind are perfectly free to complain loudly.
    
      5. People who do mind are free to walk away from the company.
    
      6. Companies are free to respond to the above according to their interests.
    

Yes, the upshot of all of this is that the court of public opinion can feel
like a meat grinder sometimes. But as far as I'm aware there's not necessarily
anything you can do about that without resorting to curtailment of some of our
most sacred human rights.

~~~
coldtea
How's that different from lynching? Or McCarthyism?

~~~
mpyne
Well it's kind of obvious how it'd different from lynching, I hope.

I'm not so sure how it's different from McCarthyism though.

"The Company is infested with homophobes. I have here in my hands a list of
names that were made known to the Board as being contributors to and members
of anti-gay organizations and who nevertheless are still working and shaping
policy in the Company..."

McCarthy's "speech" wasn't illegal either. It's not a crime to inquire of
people whether they were or were not a Communist.

And before you comment that _this_ is different, but of a gay person's moral
rights, keep in mind that Communists actually _were_ on a designed program of
the violent overthrow of capitalist societies in order to bring about
international Communism.

To protect gay marriage, a first step is to defend the very legal framework
that would make gay marriage possible in the first place, which is what
McCarthy actions were (when taken at face value).

~~~
bradleyjg
I think you draw the wrong lesson from McCarthyism.

If McCarthy had only gone after people that were actually trying to violently
overthrow the US government and/or working for Stalin, history would look at
him a lot differently. There were Soviet spies and they did a fair bit of
damage. However, the people on his list were not in fact spies or communists
and there was no good reason for him to believe they were.

~~~
rfrey
So the only thing wrong with McCarthyism was accuracy?

~~~
bradleyjg
No I wouldn't say that. Other problems included: too broad a definition of
communist, guilt by association, the demand for loyalty oaths, and an
unwillingness to take into account ideological changes over time.

However, I strongly disagree with the notion that there was no problem at all
with people working for the State Department, the Army, or even in major media
outlets, who actively supported, and were working towards, the violent
overthrow of the US government in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

If we look at the Eich situation, there were few concerns about accuracy, no
guilt by association, and Eich had ample opportunity to disclaim his prior
views/actions but declined to do so. So we are left with only the core
question of whether or not there is something wrong with keeping avowed
communists or bigots out of public positions.

------
jvehent
People who are going to comment on this blog post need to realize how
disturbing this episode has been for Mozillians.

We are talking about a small group of people, a couple thousands at best, that
work with limited resources to keep the web open for everybody.

When this tidal wave hit Mozillians, the base contributors and employees who
spend most of their days in code and features, we lost focus of our work, and
stepped into a world of politics that most of us dislike, and are
uncomfortable to navigate.

I believe Chris Beard is a true Mozillian, as is Brendan Eich. And I am glad
that we can refocus on our mission, and move forward. I just wish people can
put their differences aside, accept each other's beliefs, and share code!

~~~
ender7
"Accepting each other's beliefs" seems like a simple solution, but it has a
very problematic result. To LGBT Mozillians, this becomes "you must respect
beliefs that say that you are a second-class citizen."

No one should feel like they must respect beliefs that devalue their person.

~~~
Mikeb85
Why not? Religious people get ridiculed all the time, people drink and eat
pork around Muslims, and yet somehow they fit in fine.

And being a member of a religion isn't always a choice, being that usually
you're born into it and your name identifies you as such.

~~~
quasque
By implication, are you saying that being homophobic is not a choice?

~~~
Mikeb85
I'm saying that if you're named Mohammed people will make certain assumptions
about your beliefs your whole life, and will treat you differently.

~~~
quasque
Well, some people may do that.

------
rebelidealist
There is a stark contrast with how Drew Houston of Dropbox defended Condi Rice
vs Mozilla's lack of effort in defending someone that instrumental part of
what Mozilla is today.

[https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/04/our-commitment-to-your-
righ...](https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/04/our-commitment-to-your-rights-and-
privacy/)

His pointed response is short and stern. "We’re honored to have Dr. Rice join
our board"

Mozilla's was apologetic.

"We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to
engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do
better."

If Drew is the chairman of Mozilla, he would said. "In 16 years that Eich was
in leadership position in Mozilla, he welcomed and worked with everyone with
different personal beliefs, religious values, and sexual orientation. We are
honored to have the creator of Javascript as our CEO". End of story.

~~~
GuiA
You can't really compare Dropbox and Mozilla. They don't have the same
structure, they don't have the same goals, they don't attract the same kind of
leadership or employees, they don't have the same people pulling the strings,
etc etc.

~~~
asaddhamani
So apparently being a war criminal is a lot better than donating $1000 to Prop
8? The world would be a better place if instead of Eich, Rice resigned.

~~~
GuiA
Re-read my comment. I'm not saying it's better at all; just that you can't
compare the two (and saying "If Houston had been at Mozilla..." is
nonsensical).

The kind of people involved with Mozilla, and the kind of structure Mozilla
aspires to be, makes it logical for them to dismiss their CEO in the way they
did.

The kind of people involved with Dropbox, and the kind of structure Dropbox
aspires to be, makes it logical for them to defend their board of directors
choice and not back down.

 _(FWIW I have deep disgust for some of the actions taken by both Rice and
Eich.)_

~~~
zheshishei
Has Eich done anything else besides donating to Prop 8? It might just be me,
but the way I'm parsing the postscript is that both Rice AND Eich have
multiple actions that invoke disgust. Or is it that Eich's one action is on an
equal level with any one of Rice'smultiple actions?

~~~
MetaCosm
Three major points.

1\. Eich's action had no complexity or other goals. Eich supported something
where the SINGULAR purpose was to strip a class of people of a right they had
only recently acquired. There was no complexity to it, no shades, it wasn't as
part of his duties, it wasn't as part of a team, it wasn't as something he was
forced into, it wasn't something he regretted. 2\. Mozilla isn't Dropbox 3\.
CEO isn't Board Member.

------
grej
To me, one of the saddest things about this whole episode was the fact that
Brendan Eich was a true technical leader. His contributions literally helped
create and define the modern internet. I believe he was well positioned to
help move Mozilla beyond simply being a browser company/nonprofit org, and
advance the Mozilla mission of bringing openness and innovation to the web.

Rust, ASM.js, and Firefox OS are some of the biggest projects at Mozilla and
are critical areas that have to be executed well for Mozilla to gain traction
in the mobile device world and beyond. I thought that Brendan Eich's
background uniquely qualified him to guide Mozilla over the next few years in
maturing these technologies into something that can help disrupt the trend of
"walled-garden" web ecosystems. I was and still am really rooting for Mozilla
to succeed in these efforts, because the web needs them to. Sadly Brendan Eich
is now gone from Mozilla and along with him goes a wealth of knowledge,
history, and experience that would undoubtedly have helped advance the cause
of a free and open internet.

All that said, I don't know as much about Chris Beard's history as I did
Brendan's, and I don't know if he can provide the same level of technical
leadership in these areas that Brendan Eich could have. I suppose we will find
out. I remain hopeful, but not yet optimistic.

------
hackuser
Mozilla's mission is vital and they have been very successful overall. Much of
the credit must belong to Mitchell Baker, Brendan Eich, and others who led the
organization until now but I'm starting to be concerned about the leadership's
future, a future that is important to everyone -- I'd much rather lose almost
any software company than lose Mozilla.

* Why do they appear to have difficulty finding a long-term CEO? Appointing the founder/CTO (edit: and after a long search and many short-term leaders) raises the possibility that either they couldn't find a willing external candidate or that there was conflict between the founders and the board. Which leads to ...

* Why do they appear to have difficulty finding board members? Even 5 seemed too few for such an important non-profit; to have 3 resign with only 1 replacement ready seems alarming.

* The PR of Eich's appointment, transition, and the political issue was poorly managed; Mozilla looked badly managed and the brand was damaged. The image of the organization is a responsibility for the CEO and, when hiring a new CEO, for the board. Even if the political issue never arose, losing a 3 of 5 board members when a new CEO is appointed looks bad no matter what public explanations are given. The appearance was that only 2 people supported the new CEO and one was his co-founder (again, appearances can be deceiving but managing them is essential).

These signs look worrying to me, but you'll notice that I wrote a lot about
appearances -- I don't know the inside of Mozilla (I've participated at a low
level for many years and have a sense of the culture and a few personalities,
but that's all) nor do I know how to run a major non-profit or major open
source project. Maybe someone here knows more.

~~~
bzbarsky
> * Why do they appear to have difficulty finding a long-term CEO?

I can't speak for the board here, but lack of stock options and the like
probably has something to do with it.

I expect that it's also difficult to find a CEO that is willing to operate in
the sort of environment described in [http://blog.finette.com/on-
mozilla](http://blog.finette.com/on-mozilla) (see the quote from John Lilly in
there). This extends to broader culture fit issues: finding a CEO who would be
a good culture fit for Mozilla's stance on openness and the like may not be
simple.

~~~
hackuser
I recently saw John Lilly's presentation to WordCamp ~2009. Truly amazing and
inspiring how you guys operate.

I understand many people seek big financial returns and others might have
difficulty with the culture, but for anyone in the non-profit world or with
the mission-oriented motivation, it's hard to imagine a better opportunity to
change the world. If I had the skills I would leap at it.

~~~
ndesaulniers
There's more ways to contribute than just writing code. ;)

------
finder83
I'm still rather disappointed in Mozilla's handling of the issue. I've since
gone back to using Chrome, and away from thunderbird as well. Free speech is
important to me; more important even than using and supporting open source
software, which is pretty important to me. Someone's personal life, and their
professional life, should be able to be kept separate, and the fact that they
dragged out his political support of Proposition 8 into his professional life
is a clear violation of free speech. If the issue were so important, why did
they choose him as CEO in the first place? Instead, they created an obvious
and blatant attack against his character for his own beliefs which had
absolutely nothing to do with his day to day work, particularly given that he
was a great leader, technologist, and could have brought Mozilla to the next
step technologically.

Would I support a member of the KKK, or any other known "hate" group? It is
their right of speech, and they are still free to have it, so long as it is
not in a manner of defamation (such as slander, or libel), which looks much
more like how Mozilla responded.

~~~
wonderzombie
Whose free speech was violated? Free speech doesn't mean the freedom from
consequences or criticism. It means the exact opposite! He's free to speak as
he likes and donate as he likes, and everyone else is free to exercise their
_own_ rights to free speech. That's how it freaking works.

There's no right to be a CEO, either. I wouldn't dispute a racist's right to
speak as they like, but free speech doesn't mean turning a blind eye to
bigotry and prejudice. Views are not somehow exempt from criticism just
because they are sincerely held.

~~~
izacus
Erm no... if you have to be afraid for your job, your career prospects, your
house or your family then your have NO free speech, no matter what some paper
somewhere says.

Economic pressure was used to great success in (socialistic) countries like
mine to curtail free speech (even though there was a "free speech" law). And
it looked exactly like this - if you had an unpopular opinion, you'd just be
marked as "unfit for leadership position", "unfit for advancement", "we cannot
have someone going to church as our CEO", your children would get scholarship
denied, etc.

You know... consequences. The definition of free speech is the ability to
voice political opinion without fear. Haven't you learned anything from cold
war?

~~~
wonderzombie
Is he afraid for his house and family? Mind you, I believe death threats in
_any_ situation are unwarranted and despicable. This is not the least bit
unique to Eich's situation. It's a much larger problem we as a society have
yet to address.

The analogy to socialism is vastly overstating the problem, and a cheeky way
to deny Eich's critics' freedom of criticism. A sincerely held belief is not a
shield against criticism, and free speech isn't absolute. It never has been.

The fact is that free speech means people are free to disagree en masse when
they find a view abhorrent. A pro-slavery, misogynist, racist, or anti-
interracial-marriage individual has a right to their views. They don't have a
right to avoid social censure when their views are beyond the pale. And that's
exactly what happened here.

------
nsxwolf
Most importantly, Chris Beard has correct views on today's political hot
button issues.

------
SethMurphy
I tweeted in praise of Mozilla's support of the web a few days after he
resigned and was asked in a response if Mozilla helped support my preferred
bigotry. While I don't disagree with the criticism of Brendan Eich, it has
gone a little far when my praise of Mozilla's support of the open web got me
labeled a bigot (IMHO I am not). Making a correlation like this is wrong and
can only hurt even a good cause.

~~~
Yoric
Consider yourself lucky you were just called a bigot. Some of us (not me)
received death threats.

------
pvnick
Unfortunately, the reality is that one of the first questions they probably
asked Chris when vetting him for interim CEO is "Are you or have you ever been
an opponent of same-sex marriage?"

------
Xdes
Time to see Chris Beard's track record for contributions.

~~~
twoodfin
Let's not. I think the folks who feel someone's political actions and views
are a good reason to shun or punish them are wrong. I don't care what you're
for or against: If you participate non-violently in a political debate and
don't let your views interfere with your work, including how you treat your
coworkers, I'm happy to work with you or for you. Or grab a beer with you and
try to change your mind.

~~~
Mikeb85
Why not? They already burned Eich at the stake, why not apply the same
scrutiny to everyone?

~~~
king_jester
If by burned at the stake you mean rightly called out questionable
contributions that flies in the face of respecting LGBT Mozilla employees and
then deciding not to say anything about it or make an apology, then yes he was
burned at the stake.

------
gojomo
"Moving Forward" is my least favorite management euphemism.

~~~
userbinator
Agreed, although I've heard "going forward" a lot more.

------
drawkbox
This is a pretty massive change.

Eich was technology/standards focused. Someone from the product/marketing side
is ok as long as they get Mozilla is really a technology product company
(business and marketing is easier when technology/products are the base focus
and you don't lose developers targeting the platform).

I am a little concerned that a switch was flipped at Mozilla when the former
Chief Marketing Officer is now CEO over the CTO previously. Granted the new
CEO has been around the company a while and oversaw Firefox is helpful, I just
hope they keep the technology/standards as their base focus. I feel many of
the things I love Mozilla for, asm.js most recently, may not be as focused as
before. Also, I lost a ton of respect for Mozilla for throwing a founder under
the bus.

~~~
pcwalton
> I feel many of the things I love Mozilla for, asm.js most recently, may not
> be as focused as before.

Chris Beard is the most technical person who's now marketing-focused I know. A
little-known fact: he wrote the first prototype of the Firefox themes feature
(formerly known as Personas).

~~~
drawkbox
Information is thin on him so this is great to hear. I am still hopeful for
the webgl/asm.js revolution that they are doing and hope it continues in
force.

~~~
nnethercote
It's also an interim appointment. My understanding is that he's not expected
to be CEO for a long time.

Some tidbits about Chris:

* He's a former Linux kernel hacker.

* In the 90s he started a company that, among other things, ported Linux to the PA RISC.

* He worked for HP and helped start up their Linux division.

* He was Mozilla VP of Products for three years before becoming CMO.

He has deep tech skills and deep product/marketing skills. Indeed, the board
had been considering inviting him to join them (on the board) for some time.

------
ender7
Can anyone proffer an opinion on Chris Beard as the new CEO? Is he a good
choice, or should this remain an interim position? I don't know anything about
him.

~~~
nnethercote
He's been a part of Mozilla for a long time. He was CMO among many other
roles. He's a smart guy and good at handling difficult situations. I think
it's a solid choice. It does sound like it's definitely planned to be an
interim choice, though.

Fun story: my one personal interaction with Chris was a few years ago. I had
learnt that the McAfee Site Advisor add-on was causing Firefox to leak the
JavaScript contents of _every single page you visited_! This was _bad_.

I was incensed, and I wrote a blog post entitled "McAfee is killing us"
([https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/02/16/mcafee-is-
ki...](https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/02/16/mcafee-is-killing-
us/)). Chris was CMO and got rather upset with me for my undiplomatic choice
of wording. And understandably so; he didn't want a loud-mouthed engineer
triggering some kind of Mozilla vs. McAfee story in the tech press.

Fortunately nothing much came of it, publicity-wise. It's worth noting that I
offered to take the post down, and he said not to, which is why you can still
read it today.

Best of all, we did find a way to prevent that leak -- one which many add-ons
triggered variations of -- and it shipped in Firefox 15
([https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/07/19/firefox-15-p...](https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/07/19/firefox-15-plugs-
the-add-on-leaks/)).

------
ruggeri
I like how the board continues to take no responsibility for the situation
they created. Right or wrong that Eich was fired, this was a foreseeable
event; Eich's prior contribution was well-known.

This whole thing really doesn't make me feel good about Mitchell Baker or Reid
Hoffman.

------
simbolit
also read: [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2014/04/12/earth-to-
mozilla...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2014/04/12/earth-to-mozilla-come-
back-to-us/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7584900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7584900)

was on HN homepage earlier in the day.

------
coldtea
I'm against what happened to Brendan Eich too -- for the reasons it happened.
His personals opinions and political ideas, even if he was a card-carrying NRA
member slash confederate flag bearering bigot, should be his own.

But (and I'm only half kidding) I'm actually in favor of sacking him for his
incompetence, for so many years, to bring bloody ES6 to a final standard and
into our browsers.

When HTML5 progressed so fast in so few years, and things like CSS Animations,
Canvas, WebGL, etc also moved on, heck, even when IE picked up steam, the
glacial pace of Javascript looks really unacepptable, and a throwback to the
bad old days of W3C dragging its feet.

------
adrianlmm
#uninstallfirefox

------
dredmorbius
It makes solid sense for a company to choose a leader, the person who sets the
tone and communicates to the public, partners, and stakeholders for it, who
reflects the values of the organization and its stakeholders.

Mozilla stands, among other things, for freedom both online and off.

Eich certainly has technical chops, and has contributed, technically, to both
Mozilla and the Web. There's no doubt about that.

His personal values, as reflected through his public political actions, were
an extremely poor fit. In his prior role as CTO this wasn't as significant an
issue (though it could likely have emerged eventually). As CEO there's simply
no question that they were polarizing and distracting to the extreme.
_Especially_ in light of how he addressed the controversy once it emerged.

Quite bluntly: he wasn't up for the job.

I'm not saying this as a GLTBQ individual, or someone with an unblemished
record myself on this (attitudes have changed tremendously over the several
decades I've been aware that alternative sexual orientation is a thing) or
other issues. It's a reflection of contemporary moral values -- and I
absolutely believe that there's a large room for movement in such values.

If you want to reflect on that for a while, I'd recommend James Burke's _The
Day the Universe Changed_ , which addresses beliefs. The first and last
programmes in the series address this particularly episodes 1 and 10, which
reflect specifically on how beliefs have changed over time.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Universe_Changed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Universe_Changed)

If nothing else, this is a mark of just how far we've gone from beating up
faggots for lols (not that this doesn't still happen) -- even under cover of
law (Stonewall and similar events), if not without sanction or consequence for
those so engaged.

For those who are suggesting that Eich was singled out where others more
deserving haven't been: Mozilla proved itself to be more susceptible and
responsive to moral suasion and pressure. There are plenty of companies (and
other organizations) exhibiting poor moral character: Dropbox's appointment of
someone widely regarded as a war criminal to its board, ongoing boycotts
against Chick-fil-A, growing actions against the Koch brothers and the
industrial and political network they control, campaigns I recall against
Nestle, Carl's Jr., grape growers, and other causes.

The fact is that moral and market pressures _can_ work, and in a world in
which enterprises far too often disclaim all but the smallest shreds of moral
responsibility, they're often one of the few effective tools available.

So while I do feel a slight bit of sympathy toward Eich (he was caught up in
changing times), I applaud the action and result.

------
xname
Imagine: when they were looking for the next CEO, the first question was: does
he/she support gay-marriage?

------
exabrial
Bullying goes both ways. Hilarious how some people are trying to justify this.

------
moron4hire
I stopped using Firefox because it's gotten really buggy in the last couple of
months, not because Brendan Eich stupidly voiced his opinion in a debate he
should have seen he was on the losing side of a long time ago.

~~~
nnethercote
What are the bugs?

One option is to try resetting Firefox: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-
firefox-easily-fix-most-problems)

------
jackbauer
can't understand why this story is ranked at 1

------
Mikeb85
Well, Firefox is first of all quite inferior to Chrome. Worse JS performance,
worse stability, worse interface and worse Cloud sync and features. The only
reason to possibly use it was openness and their motto.

With them refusing to stand up for Brendan Eich and his right to his own
personal opinions, which it's clear he never brought to work with him, I no
longer think they have any moral high ground. I know I'm done with Firefox,
and none of this is good PR, and they were losing tons of market share
before...

