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.
Re:How do you know the company is dying? (Score:5, Informative)
Normally I might agree, but Firefox doesn't need to market in the same way that other companies do. Their income comes from very non-traditional sources, and their products are free. That's not to say I *like* the idea of marketing running the place, but I think it's better than it sounds. Mozilla's marketing has been about awareness, much more than about trying to sell something.
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Yeah, but he'll probably be able to keep his job as long as he wasn't dumb enough to publically say anything bad about gays.
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It's funny how the same groups aren't throwing a hissy fit over the head of OKCupid or Obama. Oh that's right, the head of OKCupid supposedly supported someone over a "tech" issue...something totally different...yep. And Obama supported exactly the same issue...
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What I really resent OKCupid for is that popup for Firefox users. Thanks, useless random website the internet could do without, for helping fuck up something actually necessary. Yeah it was not their call that Eich resigned, he did that - but they still what they did, riding the dick of this issue for brownie points, either not caring or not having the faintest clue how precious the few remaining players for a free internet are. Anyone reading this who cheered for this, you're a poopy head.
If only "referral
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Disregarding him as nothing more than a marketer is disingenuous at best --- Chris Beard was one of the early guys working on porting Linux to PA-RISC in the late 90s. He most certainly has experience of software engineering, and not just marketing it.
Nice name (Score:2)
Not to be "that guy" but I do kind of chuckle that there are connotations to the man's last name.
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Or are you talking about Bearding the Dragon (Mozilla)?
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self-woosh
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.
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Re: "Flamebait" mod .. (Score:4, Funny)
And we also need to identify people with no sense of humour
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If we wanted the truth we would have elected Ron Paul as President years ago. We prefer lies, tell us what we want to hear.
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For one, Rahm Emanuel didn't work to deny Chick-fil-A' anything in Chicago. He simply responded to a question by a reporter regarding an Alderman’s announcement that he would block construction of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in his district. Saying "Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values" doesn't really stop Chick-fil-A from doing anything, now does it?
I disagree, since Emanuel was speaking as mayor and giving tacit approval to the alderman's actions. That puts Emanuel on the "Irish need not apply" side. We can argue about whether such speech constitutes "working" or not. If speech isn't working, then I'm afraid mayors don't do very much work. :p
Also, there's a high likelihood that anything from a link to Fox News doesn't contain much factual information.
That may be true. But whenever I post a link, it is not with an expectation that people will either blindly believe, or blindly disbelieve it. I expect people to use these links to just become aware of stuff
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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 acc
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Also, there's a high likelihood that anything from a link to Fox News doesn't contain much factual information.
So rather than address the issue linked to, you're just going to slip into typical lefty ad hominem in order to avoid the substance of the matter? Yup, that's what you did.
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Get a grip, a freebie web browser isn't the same of a can of tuna with dolphin meat in it or whatever screed you wrote a baby-bible over.
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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?
What about people who are born intolerant? (if you don't think kids are intolerant, go watch a baby day-care sometime. They can be extremely insensitive, hitting each other and laughing and stuff).
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> progressive hypocrisy
Rather, hypocrisy pretending to be progressiveness.
But of course, slashdot was always full of sore AC who are just there to catch "liberals" be stupid, as if that would help improve their own station. Here's how you can help with global warming, go play in traffic.
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The same could be said about any other label politicians use, and we're not really talking about (just) politicians here anyway, so that's kind of doubly moot.
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Mod up... while this doesn't fit well with the utopian ideal of the DNC, it is reality.
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I would rescue the above from Flamebait if I had points. It's on-topic for this thread (sort-of). Whether you agree with it or not, it fits here.
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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.
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Wrong! Wholly fuck! Absolutely wrong!
Flamebait is not about "saying things to get people pissed off"! Flamebait is about intentionally trolling to insight a response.
Reading a damn dictionary is not that hard, so stop making up your own definitions for words. Further: I realize that people inventing their own definitions tend to be slow so I'll attempt to clarify. An opinion presented may piss you off by nature, because you have a different opinion. I.E. "There is a God" vs. "There is no God". If a
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Well, judging by your post (an excellent example of flamebait) you yourself have trouble distinguishing between opinions that are merely unpopular and may piss people off, and those those written to be as insulting and crude as possible.
If I had mod points I would give you and grandparent flamebait. The content of your post is a quibble over definitions, but you start off with "Wrong! Wholly fuck! Absolutely wrong!", and end with passive-aggressively suggesting that parent needs or cares about your posting
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I'll respond to your post the same way I responded above. Read the definitions provided instead of inventing your own definitions for words and terminology.
It takes a good amount of ignorance to confuse an expletive statement with ad hominem, and you are confused. No need to discuss the rest of your comments past that point.
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Why did you bother to reply when you clearly did not read my post?
I read your definitions, and your post. Flamebait: An email, usually to a message board, written with intent to offend\anger\enrage other persons, so that they will send a flaming email in reply. The post your replied to said flamebait is, "saying things to get people pissed off". The second statement lacks precision, but I don't see a huge disagreement here. You chose to respond with, "Wrong! Wholly fuck! Absolutely wrong!".
I honestly th
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You can not tell a difference between an expletive/exclamation and an ad homimem. Here is some basic language information and instruction. This relates directly to the language you are using, and claim to be offended by. I'd suggest that you attempt to educate yourself on the English language because this is not a University and I am not paid to teach you.
You claim falsely that my "Wholly fuck" and "Absolutely Wrong" are rude/rudeness/Flamebait by lumping them repeatedly into a single statement. Those a
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Wow, based on the exclamation points I must have really gotten your goat. Let's pick this apart, shall we.
You can not tell a difference between an expletive/exclamation and an ad homimem. Here is some basic language information and instruction. This relates directly to the language you are using, and claim to be offended by. I'd suggest that you attempt to educate yourself on the English language because this is not a University and I am not paid to teach you.
So you give people these lectures for free? That's even more pathetic.
You claim falsely that my "Wholly fuck" and "Absolutely Wrong" are rude/rudeness/Flamebait by lumping them repeatedly into a single statement. Those are 2 separate statements, and nowhere is there a personal attack or "rudeness" in either statement.
Most reasonable people who read the above would conclude you are an obnoxious person who lacks insight.
I provide examples and references, so the only way you can claim "flamebait" is to ignore the majority of the post and redefine words.
The statements "Wrong!" and "Absolutely Wrong" are statements of fact. Facts which were provided in the post and you claimed to read. If you are offended by someone being corrected you have severe psychological problems. Not that uncommon unfortunately. We have schools that reward children for being wrong because they rewarded a child for being adept and intelligent, but that is not healthy. (Yes, that is a fact based opinion and no further discussion should be had here.)
The statement "Wholly fuck" is called an expletive which is intended to emphasize that the person is (therefor you are) "Absolutely Wrong!" by a large degree.
I made it clear in my posts that you seem like a dumb asshole to me, so your again your passive insults are given zero weight. Don't worry, you can probably reuse them in another post.
I stand by my call. If I had mod points, and I seem to get them quite often, your post would have deservedly gotten a flamebait.
Thankfully people that can read and comprehend English have mod points instead of you today!
As stated previously, if you have to redefine words to make a claim then your claim is wrong! When you have to ignore more than 90% of a post to make your claim, that's even worse!
Honestly, its not even the language so much as
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So you give people these lectures for free? That's even more pathetic.
It was not a lecture, and barely even a piece of a lesson. I have zero confidence that you have adequate eduction to understand the difference between lecture and 'basic information and instruction". It's not the only example you have provided showing you completely lack fundamental knowledge of the language you are using.
Most reasonable people who read the above would conclude you are an obnoxious person who lacks insight.
Actually the post was moderated "insightful" and there is no chorus of people claiming I'm anything other than beneficial with my post. You are not a chorus, you are one person who has
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So you give people these lectures for free? That's even more pathetic.
It was not a lecture, and barely even a piece of a lesson. I have zero confidence that you have adequate eduction to understand the difference between lecture and 'basic information and instruction". It's not the only example you have provided showing you completely lack fundamental knowledge of the language you are using.
Well, you're clearly butthurt to be still so worked up about this.
Most reasonable people who read the above would conclude you are an obnoxious person who lacks insight.
Actually the post was moderated "insightful" and there is no chorus of people claiming I'm anything other than beneficial with my post. You are not a chorus, you are one person who has repeatedly shown a vast amount of ignorance.
Three people replied to your post and none of them agreed with you. I'm still not clear on how your definition of flamebait differs so greatly from the original post that you had to shout "Holy fuck!" at them. The OP was a disgusting right-wing rant, clearly meant as flamebait.
I made it clear in my posts that you seem like a dumb asshole to me, so your again your passive insults are given zero weight. Don't worry, you can probably reuse them in another post.
Pardon me if I don't give any weight to your opinion of me. Heaven forbid I should be offended by someone that focuses on 5 words out of 276 to make such an opinion, confuses ad hominem with exclamation, and equates "lecture" with "basic information".
The rest of your post was also crap.
Honestly, its not even the language so much as the hyperbole and rampant emotionalism in your post which offends me. You don't have to end every sentence with a bang (!), you know. In fact, I've sworn at you several times, but only in a measured way. Also, it kinda irks me that you called someone out for being wrong when its you who is wrong, as I already explained.
Your satisfaction and content with your own ignorance should offend you much more than I ever could. Ignorance leads to an irrational opinion. Focusing on 5 out of 276 words exemplifies both your ignorance and irrational perspective. I'm not offended or swayed by your irrational responses which demonstrate your ignorance of written English language.
Wholly Fuck! You seem to be simply trolling.
Ding, ding, ding! You finally get it! The irony of trolling someone who was arrogantly trying to lecture others on the definitio
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Well, you're clearly butthurt to be still so worked up about this.
There were no other people complaining about my post. It's terribly sad that you can not read what people write and invent your own words. That is not illiteracy, that is called delusional. Hint: One person corrected my use of "insight" instead of "incite", which I thanked them for correcting. You are lying about the other example as well, no need to continue down that path.
Further, correcting your broken logic and demonstrating your ignorance is not being butthurt. It's an attempt to make you a bette
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>Flamebait is about intentionally trolling to insight a response.
>Reading a damn dictionary is not that hard, so stop making up your own definitions for words.
Modded: Ironylicious
(ps. it's spelled "incite" in that context).
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Thank you for the correction. I made a few grammatical errors and chose a wrong word. Those errors don't may my post, opinion, or the provided facts invalid.
I see what you did their.
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Terms like "Gay mafia" should be used in cases where a bunch of people get up and scream loudly to assassinate the character and career of someone they disagree with, because uh... because they disagree with him about gays!
Otherwise it's stupid. Gay people wanting to not be denied employment is not "gay mafia", it's "your employer is an asshole".
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I really don't see any problem with the bakery incident. The bakery is a business, it offers products and services to the public. One of those services is baking cakes. Like all businesses it is required to abide by anti-discrimination laws, e.g. they can't put up a "no blacks, no Irish" sign in the window or refuse to serve Mexicans. That's the deal, if you want to run a business and benefit from all the things society offers you have to run it by the rules society laid down, even if you really would rathe
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You are confusing Rodney with Martin Luther.
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I'll just close with a really poignant statement Gandhi once made: "Can't we all just be the change we wish to see in the world?"
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I agree with the sentiment, I was just confused about your reference. Many great people have said very similar quotes. Gandhi and MLK are in a very different class of people from Rodney King in my opinion.
And for posterity I'm not saying he should have been beaten by cops. That act was very wrong. The reason he was beaten was because of illegal criminal activity. It was very different from speaking out against human rights violations like MLK and Gandhi did.
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Sadly, sounds like I was right (Score:5, Interesting)
In one of the earlier Eich threads, I speculated that he was kicked out less because of his former gay marriage-related politics (he did, after all, indicate he wouldn't change Mozilla's LGBT-related policies) and more because the board wanted someone who could better monetize Mozilla. Don't forget, the board members that quit over Eich's appointment didn't quit due to the LGBT nonsense, they quit because they wanted someone "outside the organization who could provide a new business strategy."
With this new appointment, it sounds like I was right: Eich was kicked out not over the Twitter whine-storm, but due to internal politics that want to see Mozilla turned into a money-making "product."
Losing Eich is going to be the worst thing to ever happen to Mozilla, mark my words.
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It's open source, I can feel the fork coming.
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Sadly that's windows only. Looks like a nice project though.
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That is totally absurd. If the board didn't want Brendan to be CEO, they wouldn't have appointed him in the first place!
The evidence is clear that the board, and almost everyone else at Mozilla, wanted Brendan as CEO. Then came the protests, the social media firestorm, and the boycotts, and he stepped down (and was not "kicked out").
If you believe differently from what's indicated by the observable facts and official statements, produce some evidence. No-one has so far.
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I said he was not coerced or pushed out *by Mozilla*. No way does that imply a free pass to the lobby groups that hounded him out of the job.
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Ah baloney.
Eich was tossed because he handled the controversy like he had aspergers. Those interviews he gave were cringe worthy. CEO's absolutely have to be politicians, they have to be able to handle bad situations in a manner that improves the problem not makes it worse. They can't get asked a question then provide an answer that makes it seem even worse than the initial impression. Even when handed a shit question in an ambush situation they need to be able to dance the discussion, not make it any worse
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Losing Eich is going to be the worst thing to ever happen to Mozilla, mark my words.
How is losing someone that thinks 20% of his employees are subhuman not a good thing? He hates his gay employees. He publicly admitted he is a Nazi that wants to steal their rights. He gave money to a cause that attacks them. Unless you are one of them, how can you defend his kind? Hopefully it won't be that many decades before society has progressed enough to put your kind behind bars to protect the rest of us from your intolerance.
20%? Got a citation for that, or just wishful thinking?
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.
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"Who wants a mustache ride!?"
Lets organize a boycott .. (Score:2)
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.
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As CTO, co-founder, and linchpin of Mozilla for all 16 years of its existence, not to mention creator of Javascript, Brendan was already as "public face" and "guiding force" as he was going to be as CEO. That's what bugs me about the whole "public face" argument.
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Jessica Klein and Jess Klein are the same person.
Christie Koehler doesn't belong on your list. She early and publicly supported Brendan as CEO --- a stand that made her quite unpopular with a segment of her LGBT community. She deserves great praise.
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Uh.... Christie Koehler explicitly said she thought Brendan would do a good job as CEO. So I'm a bit confused about why you're lumping her into your list.
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Just to be clear, I think the Eich thing was a witch-hunt. As is the counter-witch-hunt.
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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?
Re:Fantastic Google Chrome marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Because it is fun to bully a company into releasing their CEO. Damn three-letter executives make too much anyways - let's bully their income away with higher taxes for the rich. When we're "sick of bully's and hypocrites", we need to look into the mirror - the shit goes both ways.
This intolerant "tolerance" policy pisses me off... have an opinion and don't be a coward to state it. I have respect for a person who states and stands by their beliefs (regardless of what they are), and doesn't change them because someone else doesn't agree. Just recognize bullying for what it is- I hate hypocrites who are tired of bullying and decide they need to start doing the same.
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The reason the CEO gets big bucks is because he is one of the most public facing parts of the company. Regardless of the reason why it was clear that he couldn't perform that role well because of all the personal criticism he was receiving. People are of course free to speak their minds and state their opinions, but in his case their opinions of him made his position untenable and the only way to fix that would have been a massive censorship campaign to clamp down on all opposing speech.
He chose to do what
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In regards to his personal and political beliefs, those should not (but probably will) have a bearing on how he leads a company. We don't need a bunch of crowd-pleasing politicians, saying whatever people want to hear, to lead. Mozilla has just shown itself as willing to cave to any demand, and demonstrated its inability to support its employees. Similar to Benghazi (different subject, same concept) - the US Government, regardless who is "at fault", stood by while an Ambassador and CIA Operators were kil
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let's bully their income away with higher taxes for the rich.
I believe the rich should pay their fair share, and that fair share is precisely 18%.
In 2012, if we taxed everyone a flat 18% UBI tax--eliminating Social Security (and its 7.5% tax), government pensions, food stamps, housing assistance, welfare checks, unemployment, etc. but not medicaid--we would have drawn enough money to pay everyone over the age of 18 $10,000 per year. In practice, a transition to this system would be slow and cautious, due to the social contracts of social security and government pe
Re:Fantastic Google Chrome marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
They stood by and watched their CEO get ousted because of a donation to a cause that the majority supported. They could have championed free speech instead.
Knowing that Mozilla is now a "social justice" organization, who would trust their software? They could be cataloging everyone's surfing habits in order to use it against them later. They deserve a backlash.
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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?
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I'm sure a lot of us didn't even know about this until he was ousted. I would have supported you (at least here in posts) then had I known about this at the time.
If what you say is true, it's interesting. I haven't heard that anywhere else.
Re:Fantastic Google Chrome marketing (Score:5, Informative)
It's absolutely true. There were a bunch of blog posts by Mozilla employees supporting Brendan as CEO (even though many disagreed with his position on Prop 8), all completely ignored by the media. Looking at the relevant date range on http://planet.mozilla.org/ [mozilla.org] should find them...
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Certainly, in hindsight, it was a mistake to promote Brendan to CEO. But without hindsight, very few people can honestly say they saw this coming. Before this blew up, no-one was openly saying "OK, no-one on the pro-Prop-8 donation list can be a CEO in California now unless they publicly repent or the company is willing to take major damage". In fact AFAICT a large majority of people, even in California, were surprised and somewhat horrified to find out that's the case.
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It is rather horrifying. A lot of my political positions are volatile. Basic income is a paradigm shift on the welfare system, because our welfare system is broken. Social welfare is effectively "Steal from the rich, give to the poor", and our unemployment and housing assistance and food stamps programs do exactly that. Unconditional Basic Income throws all that out, stamps a tax number down (18% in this case), taxes that much money from everyone's income, and divvies it up between everyone over 18 (th
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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, ironic
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Why would it be different if he supported NAMBLA? Our puritan values are such that we believe it is somehow harmless for small children--hell, teens up to 17--to know about sexual activity. Because Jesus. Or something. Maybe in 100 years we'll reverse on that. Remember that in some cultures they still have pornography in the open--in Germany, children play outside of pornography shops with explicit sex images on display in their view. In Japan it was legal for 13 year olds to appear in pornography, b
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You're still framing this as a prop 8 issue. It's not. This has to do with people's private lives versus their public lives. I don't want my employer invading my life beyond the workplace, and I believe we all have a right to separate our personal lives from our work lives. I also think that anonymity plays an import role in a democracy. If people can't speak or donate or act for fear of their livelihoods, what good is free speech? Even the founders used pseudonyms before the revolution. There may no
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The problem is that in order for people who do a public facing job where their personal reputation and popularity affects the company's fortunes to have free speech without consequences everyone else would have to be forced to support the company no matter what. Boycotts could be made illegal, but how would you stop people uninstalling Firefox after his appointment?
Like it or not personalities matter when it comes to CEOs. Remember all the personal hate for Bill Gates and the way he acted at Microsoft? All
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The problem is that in order for people who do a public facing job where their personal reputation and popularity affects the company's fortunes to have free speech without consequences everyone else would have to be forced to support the company no matter what. Boycotts could be made illegal, but how would you stop people uninstalling Firefox after his appointment?
Why do you think laws are necessary? In this case, it's already illegal in that state to fire someone for political donations. Yes, murky, he "stepped down". I'm suggesting that we as a people do better. I'm sure if someone were to dig, we could find something on most people that others could take offense to. None of us are innocent.
The CEO distinction doesn't do much for me. I get what you're saying, but it still had nothing to do with his role at Mozilla. Do you want the best person for the job or
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I agree that leaks are worrying, but in this case I'd argue that donations to political campaigns should be public. If someone without money to spare wants to endorse or promote a cause they have to speak, revealing their position. Just because you can afford to give up $1000 shouldn't excuse you from that responsibility. Yes, you are free to say what you want, but you are never free from the consequences.
Leaks? You mean leaked from the publicly available, state mandated, campaign donation reporting database [ca.gov]? Which, we both agree is a good thing.
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I do, just so I can call people cowards when I run out of arguments ^^
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You raise an interesting point too. He was fired over information that should never have been released. That just makes it that much worse.
It makes the topic difficult, and it annoys the crap out of me that the info was revealed, and it annoys me that no one seems to care that this type of information should never be revealed. Democracy depends on it not being revealed. But... since it has been revealed, it's not like it can just be ignored.
Wrong. Your vote is supposed to be secret, not your political contributions. The FEC (and the laws of the various states) requires that candidates, political parties, PACs and certain other political organizations report the source and amount of each donation received. That information is then published and is publicly available.
Democracy depends on free discourse, a vigorous and *free* press, free and fair elections and a host of other things. It does not depend on secret campaign donations.. When we
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And it's a very bad thing that his contributions to Prop 8 were known, because those types of things are supposed to be kept private and we should all want them to be kept private. But since they were revealed, there's no way in hell he should have been offered the role of CEO of Mozilla. Once you learn someone is an A-hole, you have the right to decide if he/she/it should be the leader of a volunteer-based organization.
BZZT! Wrong. All political contributions should be publicly available for all to see. As a society, we should be able to know who voted with their wallets and to what purpose. We have that to a certain extent, but 501(c)3s and their ilk (as well as any other players attempting to affect elections) should be forced to publicly disclose all of their donors and the amounts contributed, just as candidates do.
Blowing my mod points on this thread because you need schooling, friend.
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I don't think I agree, but I admit I may be wrong. I'm very sure that it would be very bad to have to disclose how you vote. But with regards to monetary contributions to a Proposition ballot advocacy group, I'll have to think about it more. I do think it's proper to disclose contributions to nominees running for office, but I feel that way because it represents influence the donor has on the candidate, not because the candidate then spent money on advertising. And if PAC contributions weren't disclosed, that would just be a glaring loophole for candidate contributions through a middle-man.
But a $1000 donation to a Proposition group? I don't know. I agree there's a problem if someone wealthy can donate $1 Million, but a small monetary contribution feels more like a donate-to-your-cause type thing than try-to-influence-others type thing. On the other hand, you're right that ultimately it's spent on trying to influence other people, and that should not be done with secret backers. So maybe you're right and I'm wrong.
(I'm the AC you responded to)
Ballots are supposed to be secret, yes. However, campaign contributions are highly regulated (both federally via the Federal Elections Commission [fec.gov] and in most states.
In California, campaign contributions (including donor names) are reported to the California Secretary of State [ca.gov]. This link [ca.gov] will take you directly to the reporting for Prop 8.
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By his own actions he revealed himself to be an extremist.
Donating money to a cause makes you an extremist?
I must be on the top of one crazy watch list.
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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?
Their sexual orientation is relevant how? It justifies their intolerance how?
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Funny, as a Mozilla employee I feel much more bullied --- by both sides of the culture war --- than bullying.
It feels like someone smacked us in the side of the head, we fell over, and then someone else came along shouting "weaklings!" and kicked us on the ground.
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Why? No one cares. You won't be missed.