> There's a political agenda and they probably don't know that they are doing it.
Ah, the old good FUD. Anything done on Mozilla's scale has political agenda as complex problems include multiple stakeholders and conflicting interests.
Perhaps you'll be able to shed some light on the negative externalities of Mozilla's agenda?
And could you name the people who know what they are doing?
I'm not saying there's a conspiracy or covert political agenda. There is no allegation to set forth they're aligned with anything.
The organization is reactive to the whims of external political / social pressures, namely that of social media, and they cave to them. They're not engaging in self-introspection, responding based upon core values we would expect, namely, the hacker ethic.
The hacker ethic is about merit. It's about protecting ideas and valuing curiosity, wit and cleverness to spur innovation. Ideas and opinions, especially if unpopular, would be tolerated - which is in essence is diversity. On twitter, Eich's out of work donation for a political cause, in the eyes of mobs, was juicy bait for professional agitators.
Are we to just let every organization get bullied into submission until all expression, down to how you want to raise your family, puts great engineers homeless and on the street?
If they could do it to Eich - they could do it to everyone.
>core values we would expect
Who are the "we" you are speaking for?
>the hacker ethic.
You are trying to impose your own, personal values, a subset of vaguely defined hacker ethic, on Mozilla. However, Mozilla's stated "mission is to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web."
>The hacker ethic is about merit. It's about protecting ideas and valuing curiosity, wit and cleverness to spur innovation. Ideas and opinions, especially if unpopular, would be tolerated - which is in essence is diversity.
This is your personal interpretation. Let's compare your interpretation with the opinion of a person who is an epitome of hackers.
Richard Stallman describes:
"The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had—that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted."
"...Some hackers care about ethics—I do, for instance—but that is not part of being a hacker, it is a separate trait... "
You don't get to define hacker ethic and attack Mozilla from your personal ideological platform.
>...down to how you want to raise your family...
The whole controversy originated from the fact that Eich donated funds to the campaign designed to reduce freedom of expression(marriage) of particular group of people(LGBT). No-one challenged his opinions on raising his family.
>puts great engineers homeless and on the street? If they could do it to Eich - they could do it to everyone.
Really? Homeless and on the street? Nice fear mongering you've got there. Who is an agitator now?
This Eric Raymond?
"Pederasty, at least, remains a common behavior among modern homosexuals. The `twink’ or compliant teenage boy (usually blond, usually muscled, depicted in the first dewy flush of postpubescence) is the standard fantasy object of gay porn."[0]
Or this Eric Raymond?
"I believe, but cannot prove, that global “AIDS” is a whole cluster of unrelated diseases all of which have been swept under a single rug for essentially political reasons".[1]
Or this one,. Eric Raymond?
"You picked an extremely bad example there; Turing was atypical in a way that damages your case. If you examine the actual circumstances of Turing’s exposure, you’ll discover that he was remarkably and willfully self-destructive about it. Outed himself, under circumstances where he could easily have covered and (as I read it) the cop was trying to look the other way. Still, I’m not “pro” Turing’s suicide, just refusing to blame anyone else for it. He made his choice and died. End of story."[2]
Such hacker ethic, so much aspiration for meritocracy.
Excellent job of taking him out of context, while providing quotes that actually disprove your tenet that he's a bad person. After, if the reader was paying attention, they would clearly disagree, so you can claim no culpability for the act of misleading everyone.
I had no idea either and was quite surprised to see the attack on Mozilla from the author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". Decided to dig deeper and lost a significant chunk of my naivete concerning a certain type of open source advocates.
The cherry on top. As far as I understand these are true Eric Raymond's beliefs:
"It is relevant here that I am a third-degree Wiccan, which means that I’m pretty experienced at designing rituals that invoke god-forms for specified purposes."[0]
So the guy speaks his mind. In a work environment, you'd get canned. In a group of close friends at a bar / playing xbox, I could imagine buds laughing at that.
...
Some people are eccentric. Some people get validation from saying shocking things and getting a reaction.
Gay men do both of the above, at least as much if not more than straight men. Most gays I know are the most thick skinned, provocative people. They don't want Special treatment or pity and in fact learned to get amused by people who gawk at them. Case in point, Folsom street fair in sf.
My point is, so maybe he thinks he is redpill. maybe he's being an idiot and speaking aloud. Maybe he has a lesson to learn, but he's still a hacker.
He'd have difficulty running for political office. But I'm not about to censor his thoughts.
Eich was judged on the merit of his work and found wanting. At the time he was ousted, he was the CEO of Mozilla, which is both a leadership and a PR job. His views made it difficult for a number of talented people to work for him, and even more, those views made him a liability to the company's brand.
You're correct, being the CEO, he has a higher level of stringency and scruples to adhere to.
But then, there are a lot of Republican CEO's for publicly traded stock companies. Frankly there are also one's that attend campaign dinners and go to yacht clubs. I highly doubt that prevents people from working for them. In America, workers are focused on the task at hand, CEO's don't have any care (to judge against) the private lives of their own talent.
If you are reading this and are this or that - don't be dissuaded from working for a corporation just because the CEO's political beliefs. People are blowing this totally out of proportion.
Unless you're directly in contact with the CEO and he's spewing hate (rare) you are ok.
