Mozilla Appoints Former Marketing Head Interim CEO 204
itwbennett (1594911) writes "Following the contentious and ultimately failed appointment of Brendan Eich as CEO last month, the Mozilla Corporation has appointed Chris Beard to the board of directors and made him interim CEO. Beard starting working as chief marketing officer for Mozilla in 2004, and oversaw the launch of its current browser, Firefox, in 2005. Beard also managed the launches of Firefox on Android and the Firefox OS for mobile phones."
See the official announcement. Quoting: "We began exploring the idea of Chris joining the Board of Directors some months ago. Chris has been a Mozillian longer than most. He’s been actively involved with Mozilla since before we shipped Firefox 1.0, he’s guided and directed many of our innovative projects, and his vision and sense of Mozilla is equal to anyone’s. I have relied on his judgement and advice for nearly a decade. This is an excellent time for Chris to bring his understanding of Mozilla to the Board."
How do you know the company is dying? (Score:4, Insightful)
Marketing begins to run things.
It's not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
As we find these scumbags, we can work to deny them the right to start businesses in our cities like Rahm Emmanuel did in Chicago [foxnews.com]. Some of them are artisans: we can attempt to commission artistic works in conflict with their beliefs, and sue them into oblivion when they refuse [foxnews.com]. We can pressure them to resign from their jobs. [huffingtonpost.com]
As recent Obama voters, it's not like we're huge hypocrites [liveleak.com] or anything. Please understand that the Democratic party is about democracy -- that's why we rejoice that California's popularly-voted Proposition 8 was overturned by a few activist judges. And we're about tolerance -- that's why we're trying to drive Christians, Muslims, and Jews out of public life by destroying their ability to hold jobs or participate in commerce.
Re:How do you know the company is dying? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fantastic Google Chrome marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
I and 5 others deleted Mozilla and moved to Chrome. It felt weird after all these years to not have Firefox but we voted with our feet. It's not even a gay thing, it's a "we are sick of bullies and hypocrites" thing.
But what about the LGBT employees there? The CEO was just one of the employees (and now he's gone) so the only people you're hurting are the other Mozilla employees, why are you so against them?
qualifications (Score:5, Insightful)
One wonders whether Mr. Beard had to do a lie detector run to prove his loyalty the cause(s) du jour.
However, I need to know. (Score:0, Insightful)
What his opinion of Orange pants may be.
I myself am ardently against anything orange being worn as clothing, and if this man should believe in the hypocrisy that is orange pants, then he must be pushed out.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lets organize a boycott .. (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't weighed in on the Eich thing yet because I couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly was giving me an uncomfortableness about it. I support gay marriage, I'd question why anyone would be insane enough to actually want to get married, but if they want it why not.
What burns about the whole affair is that the relevant parties had their say, the people voted, and that should be that. Instead we've got vengeance seeking from those in favour of gay marriage, making lists, hunting people down and persecuting them by whatever means are available. In other words, McCarthyism.
Fuck that.
Re:Fantastic Google Chrome marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
We did not "stand by and watch". Many Mozilla staff made public statements supporting Brendan as CEO, including (courageously) many LGBT Mozilla staff. Many more publicly supported Brendan than publicly opposed him. The media of course focused on his opponents because "Mozilla employees call for CEO to step down" gets more clicks than "Mozilla employees support CEO".
Maybe we could have done more. At the time the firestorm was hot enough that it was unclear whether speaking out (and what sort of speaking out) would help. Brendan's resignation came as a great surprise to almost everyone at Mozilla, including me, and up to then I honestly thought simply saying nothing and letting the controversy blow itself out was going to work and was the best course of action.
To all the people who are shouting about "free speech" now: did you speak up to support Mozilla while we were defending Brendan as CEO? If not, why are you more enthusiastic about bashing us now than you were about supporting us back then?
Re:Fantastic Google Chrome marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
Step back and see the bigger picture, will you? Mozilla has a lot of power in that their browser is used by a whole lot of people. Is that a group that should take sides on political issues? Protecting free speech should be their absolute number one priority. No one wants a web browser or mail reader that has ideologues controlling it. Would you use a web browser pushed by the NSA?
It's true what you say about free speech, and it does have consequences. Chrome got a lot of new users out of this, ironically. Ousting a CEO for one donation many years ago when even the President of the USofA believed the same at the time is a bit absurd. You raise an interesting point too. He was fired over information that should never have been released. That just makes it that much worse.
Think about the shoe on the other foot. What if companies started firing people for donating to some issue you care deeply for? Prop 8 is a side show here. This could have been about any issue, left or right. I'm not in favor of going after people in the workplace for what they believe in their personal life. If he was supporting NAMBLA, that's one thing. But this is a contentious issue, one of many. We need conversation, not condemnation. Forcing silence for fear of losing one's profession is horrible. That's not American.
Many, many ways (Score:1, Insightful)
You distort facts to imply that they mean something other than what they mean, then act like you expect us to believe your "interpretation". For example, I don't really care what the Democratic party claims - I don't vote any party's line (nor do I support Obama generally speaking, except by comparison to some), and I look at voting records instead of claimed positions - but I doubt you'll find many on either side of the aisle who disagree with the claim that they support the constitution. The constitution explicitly gives the Judicial branch the ability to do what it did to Proposition 8 (overturn it on the basis of higher law). This is to prevent the tyranny of the majority over a disliked minority group, which is one of the obvious failures of a pure democracy. As for "activist judges", you do realize that 5 of the 9 current justices were Republican presidential nominations, right?
Oh, and lots of people who call themselves "orthodox" or "fundamentalist" members of the religions you listed are fine with gay marriage. *Your* view might be that this is inherently contradictory, but their view is that however unrighteous those people are is a matter between them and God but secular law should be fair to all, or that a God of love would not turn His back on somebody on account of who they love, or any of many other arguments. You will probably find many more such people like that than you will find people who believe that the wrathful or gluttonous are nearly so bad, and that (heterosexual) adulterers deserve death. As such, it is quite obvious that religious folk can go about their daily lives without trying to enforce their religious beliefs on others. If you personally cannot, that is a failure of you personally, not of society or even of religion.
Oh, and the bit about tolerance? You really didn't think that part through, did you... it's about creating a tolerant society, not about personally tolerating everything. You present a false dichotomy: tolerate everything including intolerance, or don't be "about tolerance". Try this thought on for size: "we advocate tolerance towards every individual's nature, but oppose those who choose to be intolerant of the nature of others." It may help some people to think of it as advocating tolerance towards the ways in which God created us, and opposing those who are intolerant of some of God's creations. After all, sin is supposed to be about (making the wrong) choice, right? Are we not innocent and pure, until we choose to be otherwise? Well, religious belief is a choice. Sexual orientation is not.
Finally, there's the fact that you cite Fox News, which is just stupid around here. Even assuming that the story was both accurate and unbiased (having read both sides, Fox's account is generally the first but far from the second), that's just asking for trouble. The stories were widely reported; you can find better sources than that.
For the first story, Emmanuel is, to the best of my knowledge (though IANAL), not allowed to deny or revoke business licenses on the grounds of an implied intention to discriminate; an actual act of discrimination or at least a policy requiring it would be required first.
For the second story, that's straightforward: if you run a business open to the public, you are not permitted to discriminate against certain classes of people and refuse them service. This has probably been law since before you were born, in the case of racial discrimination (incidentally, at least one religion in the US held that black skin was the "mark of Cain" and thus they were justified in refusing to interact with them) and for that matter in the case of religion (which, unlike skin color or sexual orientation, is a matter of choice) or several other classifications. Oregon had simply expanded the list of classes against which a public business may not discriminate to include sexual orientation. If "Sweet Cakes by Melissa" had in fact been a Christian bakery - that is, a religious entity only open to Christians - they would probably have won thei
Re:It's not enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Flamebait doesn't have to be off-topic. Off-topic stuff is supposed to get modded off-topic, not flamebait. Flamebait is saying things to get people pissed off, like talking about Congress outing and ostracizing religious people, and linking to a news story about the "gay mafia" (about as idiotic a term as I've ever heard).
The other of the post emself admitted it was flamebait.
Re:It's not enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, my dear AC. It doesn't really matter whether you want to quibble about whether Emanuel's public statement amounted to efforts/actions/etc.
I'm not quibbling with you, I'm trolling you. The fact that you can't resist replying shows you're desperately trying to salvage an untenable position.
I grant your point that the alderman took the action, and Emanual made a public statement in support of it. So what?
First of all, that isn't my point. Second, the "so what" is this: If you said "Alderman Joe Moreno" instead of "Rahm Emmanuel" in your post, you would have been correct. But you didn't say that, and therefore you were wrong. You then smugly asked /. to tell you which part of you post wasn't true. Well, you obviously can't handle the truth - or more accurately - you're one of those unfortunate people who can't admit when they're wrong. Too bad for you, my dear.