[Laaas]

Mozilla has been going down a bizarre path for a while. If only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla instead of getting excommunicated, then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox.

(What _really_ showed me Mozilla is going crazy is when they fired sunfishcode (IIRC) and the Servo team! Both were essential to their success. It makes little sense.)

[fhd2]

I agree, Mozilla has been on a very weird path since then.

Not sure Eich would have made a positive difference though. Brave's main claim to fame is that they took Chromium and added an ad blocker. At the same time, they dabble(d?) in injecting ads and crypto, to just name the shady things I know about.

I suppose there just isn't much money in building a non-compromising browser, and Mozilla is struggling with this pretty publicly.

[seanw444]

Well the whole point was that there wasn't supposed to be any money in building it. That's why Mozilla is a nonprofit (in theory at least). Originally the idea was that enough companies and individuals would donate to support its development as a common interest, because obviously people want a good private browser, right? Now the status quo has shifted to a big corporation making money off of peoples' browsing habits via closed-source components, and then paying the nonprofit to have a consistently worse browser to prevent a full monopoly.

Mozilla now is best described as a vassal.

[Laaas]

Much in this world would be better if we donated to what ought be a public service. If browser vendors didn't have to chase profits, perhaps they wouldn't be so user-hostile, and the same principle applies to most software I'd say.

That we don't have a world where this is possible is in my opinion both a cultural and political failure. What if every person on HN gave 1% of their income to various open source projects they use? What if we made this a cultural norm, and you'd be shamed if you didn't?

[seanw444]

That's my opinion. We need more of a culture of giving back. I dislike proprietary software, but I have no problem paying for software.

For example: there are several apps on F-Droid that give you full functionality (even if there is a paywall for those features on the Play Store version), and all they do is say "hey, this took my time to develop, and I'd appreciate if you could throw some bucks my way." I enjoy contributing more than what they'd charge with a paywall in those cases.

[BrendanEich]

It seems what you "know about" "injecting ads" comes from malicious claims that you repeat without checking them out carefully. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138152.

Why spout off on browsers as a business without doing your own research? I know, it's HN, but it's also 2023.

Mozilla seems to be getting more money from Google now (https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202..., see also Chair compensation at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...), even though Firefox share per statcounter.com is flat or down (https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2022...).

It's possible to make money as an independent browser if you put the user first and deal them in on >= what you make from the gross. That's what Brave does, and we're building out search ads now to do the same. These revshare and payment rails use crypto, no "dabbling".

[jraph]

> If only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla instead of getting excommunicated

Mozilla actually encouraged him to stay by giving him the role of CEO. He decided to step out.

> First, though, there's a matter that we should all be clear about: Brendan Eich was not fired. After his appointment, there was backlash from the Mozilla Community. He came under pressure to resign and he did. The Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his donation; they did not "remove him because of his views." If that alone was the issue, they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ce...

I guess we could point out that the Mozilla Board should have seen this coming and not encouraged him to be the CEO, but they could also have been criticized for this.

> then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox

I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do privacy wise. Unfortunately.

The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you can achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled chromium and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are better off installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1]

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

[moralestapia]

>Mozilla actually encouraged him to stay by giving him the role of CEO. He decided to step out.

Sure, but for those that don't know the story, Brendan was being portrayed as being evil incarnate because of the donations (which were a perfectly legal thing to do, btw). Brendan's resignation was his way of saying "f*ck this crap, I have better stuff to do", and he showed.

>they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place.

LOL, are you aware that Brendan co-founded Mozilla? HE was the one that gave them THEIR jobs.

[jraph]

> are you aware that Brendan co-founded Mozilla?

Yep.

> HE was the one that gave them THEIR jobs.

Yeah, no. Being co-founder is not everything. He was CTO back then. He pretty much didn't give them their jobs, alone anyway. And of course, to go from CTO to CEO, the board gave him the job. I don't know how that can be wrong.

And in any case it does not give him any specific kind of immunity against criticism.

Note that I didn't write this sentence, I'm quoting the linked article.

> which were a perfectly legal thing to do, btw

Of course. But legal ≠ good. Not speaking about Brendan because my opinion on this is irrelevant, but I'm sure you can find something legal that you don't like. For Brendan homosexual wedding is one example of something legal that's bad, if his opinion on this matter hasn't changed.

[andyjohnson0]

> Brendan was being portrayed as being evil incarnate because of the donations (which were a perfectly legal thing to do, btw).

Im not sure why you posted this as it has never been suggested that his donation was illegal.

The campaign against his appointment as CTO was on the basis that his financial support for proposition 8 showed him to be hostile to the protection of civil rights for some members of society, including Mozilla personnel, and that this was incompatible with his leadership role.

[mozman]

Is there or has there ever been any evidence that Brendan did not separate his personal views from professional views?

[jraph]

He might have separated his personal views from his professional views. He probably did, actually. But I don't think it matters.

People still didn't like it. His right to have these views, their right too.

It would only have been worse if he hadn't.

The world is not neutral, organizations neither.

[moralestapia]

But organizations should be, at least I'm on that camp.

Edit: Well actually, I can think of some orgs. that should be polarized by nature, like those meant to promote change. But a foundation that "works to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to us all" should be quite neutral on all others topics beyond that.

[naasking]

> People still didn't like it. His right to have these views, their right too.

Yes, the question here is who mixed their personal right to their views with their professional responsibilities. If Eich didn't, then it seems clear that everyone at Mozilla who objected to his appointment did. That wasn't the conversation that took place though.

The "professional responsibilities" in this case was being a good steward for Mozilla's products and the vision of products that preserved digital rights for its users. Not clear what this had to do with civil rights like gay marriage.

[infamia]

That doesn't make any sense., and there was something else going on. Eich's position was exactly the same as the platform that Obama when he initially ran for president. Somehow that supposedly makes Eich unfit to run a company, but it is fine for Obama to be President.

[andyjohnson0]

Obama and Eich are both people, but the president of the USA and the CTO of Mozilla are completely different roles. It "doesn't make any sense" because the comparison is invalid.

[skeeter2020]

>> The campaign

And this really is the crux, isn't it:

1. a political campaign inside Mozilla

2. by some employees that interpreted risk that

3. his donations were an attack on what they perceived as their rights

4. and this made him unable to fulfill the role of CTO

That's a whole lot of one-side conclusions to get to "he's unfit to be the CTO". No wonder he left.

[jraph]

> a political campaign inside Mozilla

And outside too. I read that OKCupid invited Firefox users to switch browsers, and CREDO mobile gathered 50K signatures for a petition. So nothing specific to Mozilla in the end.

> No wonder he left.

He indeed wrote on his blog "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader" and he was probably right about this.

[andyjohnson0]

What do you think "they" should have done?

This was all discussed at the time: the campaign against his appointment was far from just being "inside Mozilla". And "what they perceived as their rights" are now actual civil and legal rights because US society decided that was the right thing to do.

[HideousKojima]

You mean because five unelected judges decided

[asddubs]

I don't think anyone questioned the legality, but you seem to be conflating that with morality. evil (to use your term) is a moral judgement, not a legal one.

[moralestapia]

What he did wasn't immoral. Whether you agree with that or not that's a different topic, and if you disagree with that let me remind you that people have different points of view and that shouldn't be an issue.

Since morality is subjective in the end, the only discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was legal, which it was.

[jraph]

> What he did wasn't immoral

... to you. Like you say in this very comment, morality / ethics is personal / specific to each person.

If you did something legal I despise (I might even think what you did was moral, but still strongly disagree), I understand that you did something legal but still might reject the idea to have you near me or representing something I like and might employ legal means to try to get rid of you, too. By protesting for instance. I have the right to do so as long as I respect the law.

The fact that what he did is legal is settled but he still decided to step out, as a consequence of people protesting against him being the CEO because of his past actions. Since legality is settled and everyone agrees about this, it's not a discussion worth having, actually. Only the rest remains. This is absolutely non-legal concerns that people don't agree on.

Law does not settle everything. Legality is not sufficient for something to be moral. It might not even be necessary.

Now, the rest has also been discussed at length, so it's not clear it's worth keeping discussing this neither.

[wolverine876]

> morality / ethics is personal / specific to each person

It's not. Almost all of humanity, every culture now or historical, has agreed on many of these things. Others have very wide support, including universal human rights (which include your rights). You can find many arguments supporting these things, throughout human history. Societies and much of the world agree on them (including universal human rights). Research shows evolutionary advantages and connections to these things, and that animals share them with us.

Ethics and morality are not some arbitrary things we each make up.

[asoneth]

> What he did wasn't immoral ... Since morality is subjective

I agree that morality is subjective -- what he did was immoral to some and moral to others. Similarly there are people who considered it immoral when CEOs were publicly voicing support for pro-choice policies.

For a leader it probably hinges on the perspectives of the people they lead. You won't have a healthy organization if a significantly large number of people believe you are behaving immorally, especially at a nonprofit paying below-market rates.

[wolverine876]

> What he did wasn't immoral. Whether you agree with that or not that's a different topic, and if you disagree with that let me remind you that people have different points of view and that shouldn't be an issue.

> Since morality is subjective in the end, the only discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was legal, which it was.

That's a philosophical point, a student's thought experiment taking the (positivist?) requirement for objectivity to a logical extreme - and it's a very incomplete experiment that takes only the first step.

Reality doesn't work that way: Most information and decisions in life are subjective and we have many tools for doing it that way. Subjectivity doesn't make something arbitrary or meaningless or infinitely relative. Almost everything important is subjective, including morality.

[tripleo1]

> > then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox

> I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do privacy wise. Unfortunately.

> The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you can achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled chromium and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are better off installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1]

And LibreWolf is pretty much Firefox with uBlock origin. But Brave is popular and Vivaldi is popular (among some). A successful mega project is supposed to have (gently) knockoffs.

[BrendanEich]

You don't know what you're talking about.