Mozilla has become too politicized for me. When the board intervenes to fire the CEO for basic civic engagement which we should generally encourage in citizens, then they don't need my money any more.
I don't keep up too much, so what basic civic engagement issues have they acted on since the one highly publicized incident? A browser like Mozilla, and its place in the market, is overtly political in itself. It always has been; open source is politics. Heck, dozens of major OSS projects have the "don't donate to us, donate to our sponsored charity" thing going on. Those projects focus on very liberal, social justice issues too though with a more global focus.
Politics is a part of human behavior. Software decisions are also political. For example, the new Firefox privacy mode 2.0 which besides not saving any information also prevents sites from tracking you by blocking tracking pixels and other similar stuff. This may sound just technical but it is also political, its about maintaining the right to privacy online which is more important than people realize.
When the Mozilla Foundation launched the Mozilla Clubs program to help people teach and learn about digital skills and webmaking this is also a political tool. The Mozilla Clubs program spreads digital skills which can then be used to do civic engagement both online and offline. Here in Rio de Janeiro, we're running these program in poor neighborhoods with teenagers. We're trying to change the internet user profile from a consumer of media to a producer of content. This has political implications as people start to realize that they can and should put their voices, opinions, demands and dreams online.
Mozilla is the single browser vendor today that is not a for-profit company. Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Coorporation and Mozilla Community are together the only open group that is at the same time working on advocacy, web technologies, language design, operating systems, web literacy, net neutrality, human rights on the internet, and web standards. There is no other group trying to do this much for the online world and we all know how the online world affects the offline world.
Yes, mistakes are made. We're all humans but that doesn't mean that we don't learn, that we don't change. Mozilla has a unique perspective in many things and a power that can be put to very good use. If you like a Web made by people and for people, then, you should care about not only the tech but the politics involved because when bad people can't stop others with tech, they stop others with laws... and sometimes these laws are against you.
If you want, check out the Mozilla Foundation advocacy work and web literacy programs. Mozilla goes beyond being browser vendor.
This is a quite naive point of view that even very smart people hold. Open source software makes and breaks whole industries in software, of course it's political.
Ah, but politics isn't limited to governmental affairs, it is everywhere: communities, technical committees and standard groups. Also some projects contribute more change to the structure of the society than most governments. I would say that linux and *bsds had a much more pronounced impact on global affairs than most countries governments.
I stopped donating as well, and I used their contact link in the donation page to explain my reasons: I disagreed with hounding Eich out of his job, and if they want any more donations from me, they first must hire him back.
But, what's happened since the one incident?