[anon3_]

I boycotted firefox after the Brendan Eich affair.

Mozilla is supposed to be a symbol of the hacker ethic.

When they bent to the whims of social media lynch mobs - they betrayed the one who literally built the foundation of their existence.

[pluma]

They didn't bend to social media. They made it very clear they were surprised by the internal reactions and that's why he stepped back down. Besides, social media or not, the primary reason the issue blew up at all was a lack of transparency in their organizational politics. This isn't about Gamergate.

[Flimm]

The truth is, we'll never know the whole truth about why they did what they did. I find it hard to believe that social pressure played no part in their decisions.

[anon3_]

> They didn't bend to social media.

https://www.google.com/search?q=eich+mozilla+ceo

> They made it very clear they were surprised by the internal reactions and that's why he stepped back down. Besides, social media or not, the primary reason the issue blew up at all was a lack of transparency in their organizational politics.

Eich wouldn't have been canned if not due to external political forces.

The core of Mozilla is gone, the organization's ongoing denial of it further sinks the brand off the deep end.

Create a wound. Deny it happened. When in history did that ever work?

It gives me the impression "mozilla are liars, they just don't care." Why do organizations continue to go along with lie as if repeating it rewrites history to washes away treachery like that?

[tickit]

Agreed. Same with the deprecation of HTTP. There's a political agenda and they probably don't know that they are doing it.

[vdaniuk]

> 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?

[anon3_]

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.

[vdaniuk]

>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?

EDIT. Damn, it seems that I've fed a troll.

[anon3_]

"Why I won't mourn Mozilla" by Eric Raymond

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6688

[vdaniuk]

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.

[0]http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26 [1]http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=184 [2]http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1046&cpage=1#comment-236592

[Delmania]

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.

[anonbanker]

I boycotted as well. The only person as important to Mozilla as Eich was JWZ.