[anaphor]

Even if Mozilla started actively discriminating against people and campaigning against minority rights I would have no problem taking the code and starting a forked version. IMO that's what's so great about FLOSS, if you disagree with how something is managed you can ignore the people who created it and start your own version along with other people who agree.

So I wouldn't really be worried about the current state of affairs. If people want to boycott then they can do that, but I doubt it will have much effect unless Eich starts going insane, in which case Google will probably cut their funding. In that case we can all start hacking on Iceweasel and forget about it. Yay for free libre open source software!

[TheZenPsycho]

Yes that's the fantasy. The reality is you can't just casually fork a project as big as mozilla. The only way that codebase stays even barely maintained with security bug fixes, is with its army of coders. The great thing about FLOSS is that it's POSSIBLE. The not so great thing about it is, in many cases you're probably better off just starting from scratch.

[anaphor]

In the hypothetical scenario that Mozilla management decides to start discriminating against gay people I think we can count on the support of many of the people who are familiar with the codebase. Would you agree?

[TheZenPsycho]

I find hypothetical scenarios quite challenging. I suppose it's possible the people within mozilla may pull another "mozilla" and spawn a new company made out of many of the same people to maintain its codebase.

I think it's more likely Mozilla, as an organisation, would fire or enfeeble Brendan Eich before that happens.

I only recently learned about the donation, so you have no idea the cognitive dissonance I have been going through.

I believe that, as a champion and a leader, you can't get anyone better than Brendan Eich for the free software movement. But as a symbol, and a figurehead, the donation is really problematic. If it had never come to light, if he had never revealed his inner feelings about homosexuals, would it be a problem for mozilla with him in this role? Maybe, I doubt it though. I think he is utterly professional at keeping those things seperate and interior.

On the other hand, it could very much affect his leadership abilities if he ever has to work directly with someone he knows to be gay. Or many someones. Or an entire company of someones.

This is not to justify his donation. Which was a bad bad idea on his part, and bad ethically speaking too, not just because he got caught. but that I think it's not enough to discard a whole person over.

But on the other hand.. can you sense my cognitive dissonance?

[mason55]

People probably would have said that about MySQL a few years ago

[TheZenPsycho]

And all it took to fork mariaDB was the support of several large corporations.