
Mozilla CEO: Gay-marriage firestorm could hurt Firefox - caiobegotti
http://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm-could-hurt-firefox-cause-q-a/
======
tinalumfoil
It's ridiculous that people can't join causes because of their political
beliefs. So the community is saying we don't want people standing up for free
software if they are also against gay marriage. Should we go all-out liberal
and say representatives of our cause must be pro-abortion, pro-pot, pro-gun
control, pro-socialized healthcare? Hell, the conservatives can do the same
thing too! We'll make sure there's only 2 political parties you can vote for
and if you like some ideas from one and some from the other, too bad! All your
opinions must be grouped together, and the whole world should be divided into
2 opposite ends.

Or we can live in a world where we respect everyone's beliefs. We can allow
them to join both liberal and conservative causes, because we're not 2
political parties fighting but individual humans all trying to make the world
a better place? It's amazing the mentality with politics these days, where
people have to risk their life just for standing up for themselves.

~~~
nollidge
> Or we can live in a world where we respect everyone's beliefs.

Why? Some beliefs are stupid and/or harmful. Why should I respect bad ideas?

~~~
joshlegs
because respecting someone's beliefs == respecting that person. you can think
the the beliefs are stupid, but you can still respect them.

~~~
anaphor
Finally someone who gets it. Free speech isn't about some abstract right that
you can only technically exercise. Everyone also has the right to associate
with whoever they chose. But launching public campaigns designed to restrict
the speech of someone is not okay in my view, it's like a form of harrassment
I think. Launching campaigns to _discredit their ideas_ however, is better I
think. Also just launching a campaign to publicize their views is fine, as
long as they're backed up with evidence (which they are in this case).

I may be on the wrong side of this issue but I refuse to take part in boycotts
because I think they're ineffective and just harmful, unless of course the
product itself is harming people in some way.

~~~
nollidge
No, neither of you get it. All you have is the right to speech free from
_governmental impedance_ ; you do not have any sort of right to speech free
from _civil consequences_.

Boycotts are a form of free speech too, you know. How come you're not so antsy
to defend those rights, I wonder?

~~~
anaphor
While it may not technically be a violation of laws protecting freedom of
speech, consider for example...

\- Organizing a group of bookstores to stop selling a certain book because you
find it offensive for any reason

\- Using your privileged position at say, a conference, to get other speakers
removed because you dislike them

\- as a web service provider, removing a website about a topic you find
offensive

None of these have anything to do with the government making a law that
infringes on free speech. If they don't violate laws protecting free speech
then they certainly piss all over the spirit of it. Or are they only bad when
the speech is the "right" kind of speech?

Also as I said elsewhere in the thread, most of the time I find boycotts
ineffective, especially when it would only jurt innocent people and when the
change it creates is merely cosmetic. You're certainly free to boycott
anything you wish, and to ask others to boycott, but you can't expect everyone
to agree it's a good idea.

------
jballanc
I've often found that when an issue divides a group that would otherwise
cooperate willingly, the problem is that the two sides are battling over the
wrong issue. In this case, the CEO-ship of Brendan Eich has been continually
rehashed as an issue of freedom of thought/opinion/speech vs bigotry and
exclusion...but that's not the real issue.

The real issue is money as speech.

I'd wager that most of those against Eich's position would not begrudge anyone
freedom of opinion, or private speech, or even public speech so long as such
opinions or speech did not elevate to action. On the other hand had Eich fired
a LGBT staffer based on their sexual orientation, not only would he be in the
wrong legally, but I think even those carrying the banner of free speech in
this case would agree that his promotion was wrong.

So the real question is: by donating money to the Proposition 8 cause, was
Eich exercising his right to free speech? or was he taking a discriminatory
action?

Of course, you may note this is exactly the same issue in question with the
Citizen's United decision. I think this larger question, is money speech or
action, will be one of the most important questions of our time...

~~~
chime
> So the real question is: by donating money to the Proposition 8 cause, was
> Eich exercising his right to free speech? or was he taking a discriminatory
> action?

It's clearly free speech. Had he fired or refused to hire someone over their
orientation, it would be discriminatory action. That being said, as the CEO of
Mozilla, he is the face and voice of Mozilla. So it is natural that people are
looking into how he has exercised his speech, not just actions in the past, to
see how he will shape Mozilla in the future.

I make my living coding in JavaScript/CoffeeScript and my personal hobbies
include hacking 3D UIs in the browser. To say that my life was directly and
positively impacted by Eich's past actions is an understatement. On the other
hand, there are many people, more than a few in this very community, who were
indirectly and negatively impacted by the small part he played when exercising
his right to free speech.

To me the bigger question is, can you officially act 'for' when you personally
speak 'against' something?

~~~
joelrunyon
I'm curious how many people would stop using javascript because of this. Given
all sorts of ads & analytics are all served up with it, I bet many people
won't.

It's a slippery slope if we try to paint people as "wholy-bad" or "wholy-good"
based on one or two hot-button issues. Human's are flawed, complicated
creatures. Trying to pass judgment on their entire career & capabilities based
on one or two actions not related and/or affecting their job is a dangerous
decision to make.

------
TD-Linux
What do you guys want out of this? Do you want Eich to step down from CEO to
CTO? Quit Mozilla entirely (and never get employment at any other company you
use?) Issue a statement publicly renouncing his views?

Would it be better if he publicly lied about his views? Are we promoting an
environment where you have to announce all the "correct" political positions
to gain employment?

~~~
joe_the_user
_What do you guys want out of this? Do you want Eich to step down from CEO to
CTO?_

That would be a fine solution, really.

Is the argument that CEO is a position unlike other positions that hard to
grasp? The CEO is the "face" of a company and not just a worker.

~~~
cpeterso
If Eich stepped down, should future CEO candidates be required to state their
position on Prop 8 and same-sex marriage?

------
nashashmi
It really hurts to know that a person is being ostracized for having political
views. I think the pro-gay crowd has gone too far when they try to push an
individual to support "their" stance, or punish them if they don't. We should
be living in world of balance with supporters on both sides, not one in which
there is fear for expressing or having expressed belief.

~~~
MichaelGG
>We should be living in world of balance with supporters on both sides,

No, we should not. We should live in a world with correct ideas, full stop.
Some ideas are stupid, like racism, creationism, or flat-earth models, and
don't deserve "balance". What you call "pro-gay" is actually a human rights
issue.

Certainly everyone would be all over him if he was promoting racism, right? Or
donating to groups to track down and execute people that have committed
apostasy? Certainly Stormfront shouldn't be ostracized for having "political
views".

Where do you draw the line? Is disliking gay people to the extent of wanting
to deny them rights less important than Mozilla's goals?

Edit: I don't mean to imply that people shouldn't be able to hold incorrect
(untrue) beliefs - free speech and thought should be strongly defended. But
beliefs are obviously invalid and it should be fair to judge and dismiss
people stating untrue things. We don't leap to someone's defense when they say
the Earth is flat, why should we defend "two sides" for human rights depending
on sexual preference?

~~~
vezzy-fnord
_Is disliking gay people to the extent of wanting to deny them rights less
important than Mozilla 's goals?_

I'm curious as to how you came to the conclusion that Eich is an overt
homophobe. His intentions are still unclear.

~~~
beedogs
He donated money to prevent gay marriage. It's not really much of a stretch to
conclude he's a homophobe. His intentions are pretty transparently obvious.

~~~
joelrunyon
> homophobe

This is always an interesting word definition to me. Just because someone
donated against something, might mean he's against it it, but doesn't mean
he's "scared" of it (the definition of "phobia" being "fear").

The equivalence of the two words into it's current meaning has always been
interesting to me.

~~~
MichaelGG
I, too, dislike the "phobe" applied to things - it seems like a dirty bit of
rhetoric. But despite the definition, it's pretty clear the meaning of
homophobe is someone that dislikes/disapproves of homosexuality.

~~~
joelrunyon
I know that & get it, but by choosing that word itself, it becomes a loaded &
inaccurate word which hurts the argument (because which many anti-gay marriage
people can easily refute the accusation by simply saying "that's ridiculous,
I'm not scared of gay people").

~~~
beedogs
"I'm not scared of them; I just hate them and don't want them to be married,
for no rational reason."

~~~
joelrunyon
Your response indicates you've likely spent little-to-none meaningful time
with any of the people you're attributing words to. Very few people I've met
that hold those views would say that's an accurate view of their beliefs (WBC
not withstanding, but they're outliers).

~~~
beedogs
I don't think any time I'd spend with those types of people could ever be
meaningful.

Honestly, they can _say_ they're "not scared of gay people" all they want, but
the actions of a person who would donate their money or time to get same-sex
marriage outlawed speak much, _much_ louder than their words.

~~~
joelrunyon
> I don't think any time I'd spend with those types of people could ever be
> meaningful.

That's the same attitude you're accusing them of. It's not helpful on either
side of the debate.

There's a difference between being scared & disagreeing. Your refusal to
acknowledge the difference says more about your desire to perpetuate your
viewpoint of them rather than attempt to understand their background. It's one
thing to disagree with someone, it's another to refuse to come to the table
with them at all in the first place.

I think we could continue to go back & forth all day, but you don't seem very
open to the idea of listening to people with opposing viewpoints :).

~~~
beedogs
Not really, I just think you've done a very poor job of equating "a difference
of opinion" with "civil rights". And that's really what it boils down to: the
anti-same-sex marriage side is just _wrong_ on this one. And wrong opinions
don't deserve respect.

~~~
joelrunyon
> And wrong opinions don't deserve respect.

See that's where we fundamentally disagree. I respect all opinions - even if
they're wrong, offensive or I disagree with them completely. That's the whole
point of free speech

~~~
slavak
This is a wrong and dangerous interpretation of free speech. The whole point
of free speech is that people are allowed to hold differing opinions and the
need to respect their right to /voice/ such opinions. It is NOT about
respecting the opinions themselves, and certainly not about giving equal
weight or consideration to all opinions.

This latter interpretation is how we get creationists demanding equal time be
given to teaching their "theory" in schools. They certainly have a right to
not believe in evolution, and even _shudder_ to promote that opinion, but that
doesn't mean that opinion isn't stupid and somehow deserves to be given equal
standing to evolution in the public sphere.

------
steven2012
Eich is going to destroy Mozilla over his own ego of wanting to be CEO, when
anyone worth their CEO-salt knows that there is no chance in hell that they
can effectively lead with this much controversy hanging over their head.

~~~
Pacabel
Realistically, if anything is going to "destroy" Mozilla, it'll probably have
much more to do with their software offerings than with this particular
incident.

I'm talking about things like Firefox trying to imitate Chrome at the expense
of usability. Or the abandonment of Thunderbird. Or resources wasted on a
failed effort like Persona, or wasted on software like Firefox OS that's
inherently inferior to its many well-established competitors.

Mozilla's influence is directly related to the number of people using its
software products. I see far more of its existing users moving away from its
software due to usability problems or a lack of maintenance than I see moving
due to purely political anger directed toward Eich.

------
joelrunyon
> Eich: Two things. One is -- without getting into my personal beliefs, which
> I separate from my Mozilla work -- when people learned of the donation, they
> felt pain. I saw that in friends' eyes, [friends] who are LGBT [lesbian,
> gay, bisexual, or transgendered]. I saw that in 2012. I am sorry for causing
> that pain.

To everyone yelling about bigotry & discrimination, if you actually read the
article & those words, those don't sound like the words of a bigot to me.

~~~
Udo
I think the idea that religious extremists are always assholes is convenient
but unrealistic. Most of the time, most of them are just normal people, even
pleasant ones.

I'm not sure phrasing it as being a bigot or not is helpful, and neither is
the money/speech categorization.

Not knowing Mr Eich personally, I'd give him the benefit of doubt. I believe
him when he says that he has LGBT friends, and that they were hurt by his
actions, and that maybe he was sorry for causing that pain. It must be deeply
uncomfortable to believe in something that compels a person to hurt their
friends. It's not his religious views per se that got him into hot water, it's
the willingness to use legislation to deny a group of people equal rights
which still stands as an unethical act.

Speaking as someone who both admires Eich as a technologist but was
disappointed by the message Mozilla was conveying by his appointment as CEO, I
really don't care that much if he's a religious fanatic. It's not only his
right to believe these things, it also doesn't really matter. His achievements
can very well stand on their own, and likewise acknowledging the achievements
of a person does not imply endorsing all of their beliefs.

Beyond the initial ethics violation, Mr Eich has done nothing wrong that I can
see. The fault lies solely with the Mozilla board for appointing him to a
position that consists of little else but projecting the public image of the
foundation.

~~~
joelrunyon
I just wanted to say I appreciated a well thought out & reasoned comment in a
discussion filled with people yelling "bigot", "homophobe" at a person they
don't know personally.

There's often several lenses to see things through. People are complicated,
messy things.

------
xmonkee
Tldr: inclusive, inclusive, inclusive... Unless you are gay and want to be
included as an equal citizen.

~~~
joshlegs
I really think that people need to understand the difference in personal and
professional life. In fact, the tendency to make the two collide is one of the
biggest problems with this whole stinking country. People have _personal_
lives, and they have _professional_ lives, and others really don't need to go
about trying to confuse the two.

~~~
xmonkee
Paying money to influence policy that oppresses a group of people isn't your
"personal" fucking life. It's personal only if it doesn't affect other people.
I really really respect this dude, he's straight up legend. And no, I don't
think he should quit as CEO of Moz, that's totally unrelated to his politics,
if that was your point. But I do think it's really annoying when bigotry is
supported in the name of inclusiveness. You think it's okay to ruin someone's
happiness with your megabucks, yet you talk about inclusiveness? Get the fuck
out. This interview is bullshit.

------
deadlysyntax
I was humoured to read that people have boycotted Mozilla, guarantee they
don't boycott javascript, which he invented.

~~~
dsil
There's no point to doing that. He can't step down or be removed as the
inventor of javascript, but he could step down or be removed as CEO of
Mozilla.

~~~
deadlysyntax
No point and too inconvenient.

------
bakhy
i dislike this spin here. boycotting a company, asking for resignations, these
are common methods of protest. yet, when LGBT people do the same, we are being
"exclusive"? we must accept any kind of views of Mozilla's CEO, otherwise its
openness is lost and Firefox will fail? that's just silly.

personally, i'm most tired of this argument, that it's important for "freedom"
to let people discriminate me in peace. that i should not complain about being
discriminated, lest i ruin the freedom of society.

i love Firefox, and I'm still using it. never got this close to reconsidering
that decision before.

------
alecdbrooks
>A world without Firefox and without Firefox OS and without our approach to
putting the user at the center of cloud services instead of having users get
pulled into walled gardens -- I think that would be a pretty dark world.

What Eich fails to see that for many people, we are only just moving away from
the "dark world" where gay marriage is illegal. I appreciate his work for
Mozilla, but it's double-think to advocate "inclusivity" while promoting
narrow views of marriage.

~~~
ctdonath
"Gay marriage" has nothing to do with OSS web browsers. 'tis a dark world
where people cannot work toward common goals when their views on completely
unrelated subjects differ.

~~~
breadbox
If the owner of my neighborhood coffee shop had gone on record as supporting
SOPA/PIPA/et al, I would be strongly inclined to stop going to that coffeeshop
and giving them any of my money. I would also tell my friends about the
situation so that they might also take similar actions if they felt so
inclined.

I can tell you that, in the context of this hypothetical situation, any
arguments that my actions are uncalled-for because "coffee has nothing to do
with the Internet" would not have much impact on me.

~~~
joelrunyon
Are you going to stop using javascript too? He helped invent that.

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

~~~
breadbox
I try to avoid using Javascript whenever possible, though that has nothing to
do with Brendan Eich. And just to clarify, my hypothetical was in response to
one specific argument. I didn't say that I personally was joining those
calling to boycott Firefox. I honestly don't know how I feel, because it's not
a simple matter. But I object to those who argue that it is a simple matter.

------
dogmatix
He's not wrong, he's just an arsehole.

------
peteforde
It says a lot when you have to point to Indonesian homophobes to support your
position.

~~~
gojomo
Mozilla's mission requires it to serve, and engage into its projects,
countries that are still many decades from matching the urban/tech/rich-world
consensus on gay rights.

Indonesia is the world's 4th largest country by population, and the most-
democratic of all majority-Muslim countries. It's important. And other
countries that should be giant parts of open web projects are in similar
positions.

Should open-web advocates from these countries, who in their personal lives
express the same sort of political views on marriage as Obama did as recently
as his 2008 campaign, be excluded from leadership positions at Mozilla? How
deep should the proposed purge go?

~~~
MichaelGG
Islam also has death as a penalty for apostasy. If Eich supported that, would
it be OK because it's a "personal view"?

I do agree with you though, that Mozilla's work is more important than civil
rights. Eventually, it would seem that all people will give up poor, invalid
beliefs. It's a near certainty as technology progresses and definitely
disproves religions. However an open web is in quite the opposite position.

------
klepra
So ... javascript is created by homophobe :(

------
dmazin
This article reads a bit like a shill piece.

"It's pretty clear that people have latched onto this issue as a way to
express their own political beliefs." seems too loaded in Eich's favor to be
part of a respectable interview question.

------
lawnchair_larry
Unfortunately for Eich and his supporters, he's now in the awkward position of
having to convince everyone that they should tolerate his intolerance.

It's going to take one hell of a silver tongue to do that with your foot
wedged firmly in your mouth.

~~~
joelrunyon
It's ironic that people are intolerant of intolerance.

I get the 'tit for tat' argument, but if you're trying to get rid of an
oppressive opinion by being oppressive, you're not really getting anywhere.

You can't really "force" anyone to believe anything. If you have to "make"
someone believe something by force, then it doesn't seem like your argument is
strong enough to stand on your own (a statement that's applicable to both
sides of this debate).

------
beedogs
> Though Eich refuses to discuss his own beliefs explicitly or say whether
> they've changed, he disagreed with the assertion that being opposed to gay-
> marriage rights is equivalent to being sexist or racist, and he said
> political and religious speech is still protected.

Really? _Really??_ This guy's a CEO and yet he can't figure out why he's so
dreadfully wrong on this one? Doesn't bode well for the future of Mozilla.

