
Chris Beard Named CEO of Mozilla - Osmose
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/07/28/chris-beard-named-ceo-of-mozilla/
======
webwright
For those who are asking about his politics and getting downvoted, here's why.
His politics almost certainly don't matter, UNLESS they are _way_ outside
those of the majority of his "constituents". For example, if he pro-religious-
freedom, that's fine. If he's for a flat-tax, that's okay to most folks. If
he's pro-choice, there are a few who'd get grumpy. If he's a climate-change
denier, a lot of folks would question his thinking and/or ethics. If he was an
enthusiastic neo-nazi, we'd start marching on Mozilla. For Mozilla's
constituents (users, developers, employees), being anti-LGBT was well outside
the realm of acceptable political beliefs.

In short, let's leave politics out of this kind of stuff UNLESS the candidate
is demonstrably in one of the outer circles of "unacceptable viewpoints".

~~~
ScottBurson
This is too weak. His politics don't matter, period, unless he brings them
into the office himself.

~~~
webwright
No. Bringing views into the office can be a subtle thing. Would you work for
an unapologetic racist if he promised to not let race impact his management?
If you think prejudice is something that a person can turn off when they walk
into the office, you need to study it more.

~~~
mcantelon
Cultural consensus was reached long ago about most matters involving race, but
cultural consensus about gay marriage is more recent (Obama, for example,
opposed gay marriage not so long ago). So this comparison is a bit apples-to-
oranges.

But, following this comparison, what if this hypothetical racist had an
established work history of not letting his/her racial opinions impact
management? Eich founded Mozilla and likely had a great deal of influence on
the its culture. Yet he did nothing I've heard of to impede Mozilla's
organizations from embracing diversity in all forms.

~~~
webwright
Apples-to-oranges-- true. But somewhere early in the race discussion in our
country, some companies stopped hiring people who were openly racist... Likely
these companies had constituencies (customers, employees, neighbors) who were
unusually liberal. Unsurprising that a company in SF (15%+ LGBT, very liberal,
etc) would be the first.

"what if this hypothetical racist had an established work history of not
letting his/her racial opinions impact management?"

I'm not sure that's possible (bias creeps into just about everything we do--
and this is a pretty strong bias). Is it possible for someone with these views
to not have them creep into promotion discussions, pay raises, meeting
invites, tone in emails? Even if it is, having an opinion that is abhorrent to
a majority of your potential hires, partners, reporters, and customers makes
it pretty hard to lead.

~~~
ScottBurson
I realize it's hard to imagine someone with such prejudices treating everyone
fairly nonetheless. But I read everything I could find on the Eich
controversy, and I found no evidence that Eich had brought his politics into
the workplace. One thing is for sure -- had he remained CEO, he would have had
a lot of eyes watching to make sure he did not do so.

I stand by my original statement.

EDITED to add: after all, if you're right that he would have been unable to
keep his prejudice out of the office, you wouldn't have had to wait very long
before he screwed up in some way, and then he could have been fired with real
cause.

~~~
ivanca
I completely agree with you. Coping with him and working pacifically would
have been a totally admirable move by the LGTB mozilla community, showing that
you can work side to side with people who strongly disagree with you.
Specially when the LGTB comunnity themselves have been target of similar work
discrimination for centuries.

------
TallGuyShort
So it's hard to tell if the existing comments are trying to be snarky or if
they just failed to explain their non-snarky intent, but they're getting voted
down into an abyss and I would sincerely like to know what his political
background is. So far my searches only yield people who are probably not the
same Chris Beard. I do not mean this question to voice any particular opinion
or as a commentary on the last CEO, but given the reason a new CEO was needed
in the first place, I think it would be very interesting to see the political
background of the person they chose as a replacement. Are they publicly pro-
gay? Or have they been relatively neutral?

~~~
Alupis
I believe the snarky comments are targeted at Mozilla's last short-lived CEO.

However, what does the political background of a CEO matter? Can he do the
job? Can he lead them to success? Those are the questions that should be asked
about any new big business executive... not rather or not he supported issue X
at some point in the past.

~~~
mmatants
I'd argue that a CEO's past causes and political background affects their
ability to lead towards success.

Not because of innate analytical/communicative capacity difference in the
individual, but just public relations angle and the ability to rally teammates
of diverse backgrounds under one banner. It's nothing personal in that case.
Just business.

~~~
ivanca
Which means that the less opinions you express the more likely is for you to
be accepted by the community as CEO of a company. How ironic, freedom of
speech tampered by those alleging being depraved of basic rights.

~~~
Permit
How many times does it need to be repeated: Freedom of speech is between you
and the government, not anyone else.

~~~
scintill76
Yes, that is the only legal meaning of "freedom of speech" in America, but
apparently a fair amount of people believe individuals should voluntarily
grant the freedom to each other more often. Now, if you want to say "I will
not be tolerant of intolerance" or "When they ask for that freedom, it's code
for demanding they get what they want", fine, but at least it's now a
conversation, instead of just shutting it down with this response every time.

------
e15ctr0n
What were Chris Beard's qualifications to become CEO? Honestly curious.

~~~
mbrubeck
He used to be a Linux kernel hacker. In 1998, he entered the business world by
founding a consulting company around his kernel porting work. His company was
acquired and he continued leading related work at the new owner (Linuxcare).
From there he went on to various entrepreneurial and senior management jobs at
technology companies including HP and Sun.

Chris left Sun to join Mozilla almost ten years ago (October 2004), just
before the release of Firefox 1.0, making him one of the first dozen or so
employees. He stayed at Mozilla for nine years in a variety of roles. As CIO
he founded and led Mozilla Labs, and later was the CMO until leaving last year
to work in venture capital and then start another company. He returned to
Mozilla as interim CEO after Brendan Eich stepped down several months ago.

[Disclosure: I've been a Mozilla employee for the past 4.5 years.]

~~~
caio1982
That's a nice summary. Actually your two paragraphs should be in their blog
post about him :-)

------
bgun
Wow, this comment thread went full Reddit in record time.

~~~
tptacek
Yes, it did.

In the short term, making sure junk threads like this fall off the front page
of the site (or to the bottoms of their threads) quickly is an important goal.
That protects the site itself, by preventing it from collapsing in on itself
due to pointless hostility. This is the problem the HN mods have been working
on for the past year or so.

In the long term, figuring out how we can host relevant discussions about
volatile partisan subjects is important, and I imagine something that will
become a focus for moderation.

Not having completely solved the first problem, it's probably a bit wishful to
hope that we can address the second one.

HN doesn't have to be all things to all topics. If we lose some stories in the
service of repairing comity, I think that's a fine tradeoff in the short term.

~~~
zorpner
I would disagree that those are two different problems -- "preventing [the
site] from collapsing in on itself" and figuring out how to host relevant
discussions are tied together more deeply than that. As an example, if heated
discussions/topics are systemically removed from view, it makes HN more of an
echo chamber, and it will _attract_ more people who will make having volatile
discussions more difficult in the future.

If you can get past the title, this is actually a very excellent article on
moderation requirements for a successful online community:
[http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-
assh...](http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its-
your-fault.html)

~~~
tptacek
The systematic removal of volatile topics _does_ make HN more of an echo
chamber. I agree. And that's _not_ a good thing.

But there are worse things than being an echo chamber, and preventing those
worse outcomes takes priority.

The irony about the link you provided is that HN does literally all the things
Dash says sites should do. Of course, the problem HN faces is much bigger than
the problem Dash is contemplating.

~~~
zorpner
I think that HN appears to do the things Dash suggests, but actually fails at
a number of levels. Since dang took over he's been much better than previous
moderation about responding specifically to people, but it's still done
infrequently and haphazardly. What's actually necessary and implied by Dash is
the continuous feedback loop between moderation and community, which
explicitly excludes hellbanning, deading threads, and other forms of heavy-
handed moderation _without_ concomitant explanation of reasoning. This is, as
you note, a very large problem and likely impossible to solve with a low level
of staffing and any belief in the ability of automation to guide a community
of individuals.

 _But there are worse things than being an echo chamber, and preventing those
worse outcomes takes priority._

I would disagree on this, but I see where you're coming from. HN serves a lot
of purposes to a lot of people.

~~~
danielweber
Moderating high-emotion topics requires moderation heavy in both quantity and
quality. If HN is not willing to commit resources to that -- and it takes
quite a bit of resources -- then connecting hot-button topics to GND is the
least-worst alternative.

------
nawitus
Has Chris Beard made any public political donations?

EDIT: Why the downvotes?

~~~
jasonlotito
> EDIT: Why the downvotes?

You should remove that. Otherwise, you should receive down votes.

Edit: For clarity's sake, you should remove the complaint about downvotes.

~~~
TallGuyShort
I disagree. A political donation was the sole reason the previous CEO left
that position. I think it's quite crucial for the future of Mozilla, not to
mention an interesting insight into how this decision may have been reached
internally, to see the public political record of the successor. I don't
believe this question intended any snark or negativity whatsoever - it's a
valid question, IMO.

~~~
dragonwriter
> A political donation was the sole reason the previous CEO left that
> position.

No, I don't think that's a justifiable claim. A political donation was the
trigger for a public controversy, which was a key event leading to the
previous CEO leaving the position. The evidence does not, however, provide
anything like clear support that the political donation itself was the _sole_
reason that the CEO left the position.

~~~
TallGuyShort
I didn't mean that he was let go because of his opinion - he stepped down
because he couldn't lead in controversy, and the donation was the sole reason
there was a controversy AFAIK. If politics was so relevant for the previous
candidate, it would be this time too. I had forgotten that he was already
interim CEO, though, so it's a good point that anything interesting would
probably have already been covered.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If politics was so relevant for the previous candidate, it would be this
> time too.

This conclusion is only justifiable with the assumption that the salience of
politics to the community with which the incumbent in the office in question
must deal is fixed. This is a fairly counterintuitive claim that requires some
justification; salience of issues -- particularly those aside from the ones
that define a particular community -- is generally quite fluid.

------
hamax
Wow, the comments...

Some people seem to be really mad about some other people voicing their
opinion.

~~~
jasonlotito
It has nothing to do with voicing opinion. It's the manner in which it's being
done. They are making short, snide commentary, trying to be clever. They add
nothing to the conversation, and indeed, are not trying to have one. They are
merely trying to "make a point" or cause a stir. They have an agenda, and a
civil discussion is not what they are looking for. They know exactly what they
are doing.

On top of that, if they go bad and edit their posts, complaining about down
votes, which should then earn them down votes regardless.

There are civil ways to hold a discussion. Many of these comments are not an
example of that.

~~~
avalaunch
Asking why you're being down voted is not the same as complaining about being
down voted. If you legitimately don't know why I think you should ask. It's an
opportunity to learn what is and isn't considered proper etiquette.

~~~
dogecoinbase
These are comments which are already clearly disingenuous concern trolling,
pretending to not understand why they're being downvoted in the hope of
baiting someone into responding. It's the lowest level of discourse.

~~~
avalaunch
I agree but I tend to get the benefit of the doubt because it's impossible to
be sure that they're pretending to not understand as opposed to actually not
understanding.

------
qwerta
Whatever. I just hope Mozilla will not run out of money as Gnome Foundation
did. Firefox is harder to replace than Gnome.

~~~
dblohm7
Being a regular Firefox user helps that cause :-)

------
lodes
A political donation of $1,000 that someone (presumably more than one someone,
but who knows) in Mozilla did not like, and the CEO is ousted.
[http://lodes.net](http://lodes.net)

------
yuhong
It would be interesting to sue OkCupid for coercing Mozilla to violate anti-
discrimination laws. Which brings up the fact that I don't really like them. I
am thinking of ditching them, but allowing the EEOC or similar to order
particular sets of companies to stop discrimination for a period of time if
necessary.

------
thrillgore
Watching how the comments here have sunk gives me little hope for Hacker News.

------
wuxiekeji
In other news, Chris Mustache named CEO of Google Chrome

------
rjohnk
No word on if he supports the GLBT community hook, line and sinker. That's the
litmus.

EDIT: Wow. So if he does support the GLBT community, we don't need to know
about it? My post that offensive to people? It's an important question to ask.

Edit 2: I just love tolerance ;)

Edit 3: I'm removing the /sarcasm tag because people are really confused by it
for some reason.

~~~
bellerocky
Your sarcasm doesn't help your argument, and this post is about Chris Beard
and Mozilla, not anything else.

~~~
obvious_throw
Except that, as has been demonstrated, the position itself carries particular
requirements for the candidate's personal political opinions.

~~~
untog
Semantics are exactly what makes this difficult.

You might say "requirements for the candidate's personal political opinions",
others might say "requirements for the candidate to not hold offensive,
discriminatory political opinions".

~~~
masklinn
> others might say "requirements for the candidate to not hold offensive,
> discriminatory political opinions".

Or just you know don't give significant amount of money to enshrine your
offensive and discriminatory political opinions into law, expect open arms
when nominated to head a company generally considered progressive then whine
that it's unfair to scrutinise and criticise your actions.

~~~
vgharl
> significant amount of money

Is that what we're calling $1000 today? That's not even rent money in the bad
areas of the Bay Area.

> then whine that it's unfair

Citation please.

I really can't believe HN right now, trying to deny the fact that prop 8
passed. Unbelievable. Let's all rewrite history, getting rid of an
inconvenient _fact_. Oh, and screw political freedom too.

Your sense of offensiveness is offending.

~~~
untog
_trying to deny the fact that prop 8 passed_

Who is trying to deny that? What relevance does it even have to what we're
talking about here?

~~~
vgharl
Because if you are a reasonable person, then you realize crucifying a guy for
having a consensus, mainstream opinion is absurd. It's revisionist, retro-
active punishing from the political losers here. A majority of California
agreed with him.

Not only that, but targeting Mozilla but ignoring JavaScript is the absolute
height of hypocrisy and hollowless grandstanding, done by people that have a
_financial_ stake in JavaScript, but not Mozilla.

In short, fuck these people.

~~~
untog
I'm not sure what defines a "consensus, mainstream opinion", but support for
gay marriage has been over 50% for a few years now. Hardly a definitive yes,
but it's certainly not a consensus to the opposite. In California
specifically, 61% supported gay marriage in 2013[1].

And he wasn't 'crucified' for having the opinion, it was because he actively
contributed to a campaign. Holding a private opinion and financially
contributing to a cause are quite different things.

 _Not only that, but targeting Mozilla but ignoring JavaScript is the absolute
height of hypocrisy_

It absolutely is not. Does "JavaScript" pay Eich a salary? Is it a money
making entity? Does he even have anything to do with the day to day running of
it? Of course not.

[1]
[http://field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/Rls2443.pdf](http://field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/Rls2443.pdf)

~~~
vgharl
> 61% supported gay marriage in 2013

So?????

You do realize that we're talking about Prop 8, which was 2008 here. Prop 8
passed.

Again, stop this revisionist bullshit.

> Does "JavaScript" pay Eich a salary?

Eich's entire fucking resume could be:

"Created JavaScript"

That's it. He would sail from conference to conference until the end of bloody
time, raking in thousands if not millions of dollars here.

OkCupid wanted it both ways. They wanted to keep their skin out of the game
when it would hurt their bottom line, but wanted to make political points for
that _easy_ PR gain. So they targeted Mozilla.

~~~
untog
The Prop 8 result doesn't matter. The Mozilla community are not the population
of California. They are entitled to have different opinions to them.

As for the JS stuff, you're now just throwing out a bunch of coulds, woulds
and shoulds. Could he really go from conference to conference until the end of
time? The same people calling for him to be fired would likely boycott
conferences. So they're just as consistent as you say they aren't.

------
ryanthejuggler
Read this backwards at the first go. "CEO of Mozilla named Chris Beard."

------
tosseraccount
Presumably he's not donated to campaigns which are not approved by the elite.

~~~
tosseraccount
Why the down votes?

~~~
npinguy
Since noone is explaining it to you honestly, I'll tell you.

By implying that supporting gay marriage (which is the opposite of what
Brendan Eich did in his active campaign against it) is a "campaign by the
elite" you are revealing yourself as an anti-progressive dinosaur who is on
the wrong side of history when it comes to LGBT human rights.

~~~
tomp
> wrong side of history when it comes to LGBT human rights.

But as long as the majority of Californians agree(d) with him, does he really
deserve down-votes or being called an anti-progressive dinosaur?

~~~
masklinn
Yes? How is majority opinion relevant? Storm Thurmond was a hateful and
bigoted anti-progressive dinosaur in the 50s. That the majority of South
Carolina agreed with him does not change that.

------
jeremyt
Whatever. I'm sure we can find something completely unrelated in his
background to disqualify him. Just give the Internet a little bit of time.

~~~
daviis01
He doesn't have any facial hair while his name suggests the opposite. That's
doublespeak if I've ever heard it.

