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Mozilla Businesses

JavaScript Inventor Brendan Eich Named New CEO of Mozilla 112

Posted by samzenpus from the man-with-the-plan dept.
darthcamaro (735685) writes "Mozilla today announcedthat Brendan Eich would be its new CEO . Eich had been serving as Mozilla's CTO and has been with Mozilla since day one — literally day one. Eich was a Netscape engineer when AOL decided to create the open-source Mozilla project in 1998. The choice of Eich as CEO seems obvious to some, after a string of recent short-tenured CEOs at Mozilla's helm."
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JavaScript Inventor Brendan Eich Named New CEO of Mozilla More

JavaScript Inventor Brendan Eich Named New CEO of Mozilla

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  • Sorry about the mess...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by davester666 ( 731373 )

      um, shouldn't he be apologizing to us for Javascript...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        Why?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Joce640k ( 829181 )

          Why?

          The name, for starters. How much untold confusion has that caused?

          Then there's the language....

          Still, JavaScript isn't any worse than all those other languages that the BASIC programmers of the world seem to prefer. Even if JavaScript hadn't 'won' it would have been something similar. Better the devil you know.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by narcc ( 412956 )

            That doesn't really answer the question, does it? What do you think is wrong with the language?

            Even if JavaScript hadn't 'won' it would have been something similar.

            Really? It's pretty unique as far as programming languages go. Are you sure we're talking about the same thing?

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Megol ( 3135005 )
              Just like you want arguments of what's wrong with Javascript I'd like some arguments why "It's pretty unique as far as programming languages go".

              Personally I read the book "JavaScript: The Good Parts" wondering when it would be finished with describing patching the language to be marginally usable and come to the good parts. Sadly I arrived to the last page before finding that section.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • > What do you think is wrong with the language?

              See my post for the specifics on what JavaScript totally fucked up on. It was designed by someone who didn't learn a dam thing about all the pitfalls of programming languages in the 80's.

              http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]

          • I don't know that the name was his fault. Originally it was called LiveScript and was changed to JavaScript for marketing purposes. Myself, I have never cared for the name "ECMAScript".

            • I frecuently have to explain to "HeadHunters" that Javascript & Java aren't the same thing. Sometimes, to I.T. students or undergraduates.

              In many forums the name change is debated, but, many people is too used to the "Javascript" brand. There are also developers who argue that there are so many versions or implementations of Javascript, that does not conform to the ECMA standard, that believe its areason not to support the "ECMAScript" name.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • JavaScript has some completely idiotic design in a few places:

          * it will use variables without any warning unless you use this hack at the top of every .js file
          "use strict";
          * lack of proper specific bit wide types -- we had to wait for ECMAScript v5 Float32Array(), Uint8Array(), etc.
          * All numbers default to float64, aka C double, for wasted speed and unnecessary precision until Chrome's V8 generated x86 optimized array access to in32
          * Idiotic semi-colon insertion; you can not put a retu

  • Possible backlash over Prop 8 support (Score:5, Informative)

    by CritterNYC ( 190163 ) on Monday March 24, 2014 @05:04PM (#46568749) Homepage
    There may be some backlash, such as RareBits pulling their app from the Firefox Marketplace [teamrarebit.com], due to Brendan Eich's support of the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 initiative in CA [latimes.com]. Eich publicly responded back in 2012 [brendaneich.com]. The issue is being discussed on Hacker News [ycombinator.com] as well.

    • Re:Possible backlash over Prop 8 support (Score:5, Funny)

      by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Monday March 24, 2014 @05:26PM (#46569025)

      Dear Brendan,

      gay people have the rights to be miserable too.

      Signed,
      someone who hopes more gay men means more single women.

    • I do not think I'd feel especially comfortable to be a gay Mozilla employee right now. (Though I haven't heard that Mozilla internal culture is problematic.)

    • He's entitled to spend his money as he wishes... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 24, 2014 @06:36PM (#46569637)

      I'm amazed at how much negative feedback this is generating. He had to list his employer to make his donation, it wasn't Mozilla supporting Prop. 8. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, and (at least a few years ago) he was active in the newsgroups and willing to help / support developers. As to his support of Prop 8., I'm sure he had his reasons. He's entitled to his opinion and he's entitled to spend the money he has earned as he sees fit.

      Just because an individual may not support gay marriage does not mean they also hate gay people. Personally I would prefer it if the state would just wash it's hand of the 'marriage' issue altogether. Introduce civil unions between people and award benefits and/or tax breaks accordingly. If (as some suggest) the motivation behind a tax break is primarily to help support children / raise a family, strip the benefit and award when they actually have children (their own, or adopted children). Leave marriage between individuals to the churches.

      • Re:He's entitled to spend his money as he wishes.. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Fancia ( 710007 ) on Monday March 24, 2014 @07:01PM (#46569829)

        He's entitled to his opinion and he's entitled to spend the money he has earned as he sees fit.

        The issue gets a lot more thorny when you remember that he's the CEO of the foundation and is now the ultimate authority on employee benefits. I've already seen people express concern that their top-level boss, or potential boss, thinks they should not be able to get married and has put forward money to try to make it that way.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by flagboy ( 670403 )
          The CEO cannot unilaterally change company policy on employee benefits or anything else. And if the extent of his activism is to donate to a campaign 6 years ago (he has not spoken publicly on the issue very much) then it probably isn't a major issue for him.
          And even he were a major campaign leader against gay marriage, it doesn't necessarily mean he is going to bring his politics into the Boardroom. The founder/owner of the Stagecoach bus company in the UK (Brian Souter) campaigned very strongly and publ

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dabadab ( 126782 )

        I'm amazed at how much negative feedback this is generating.

        He is spending money to fuck with other people. And not in the literal sense. Frankly, if he would donate to a campaign to ban disabled parking spaces I would be a lot more understanding because there he could gain something. But supporting prop 8 is just pure jerkage.

        Just because an individual may not support gay marriage does not mean they also hate gay people.

        In my experience, yes, it does.
        There may be some pseudo-rational mumbo-jumbo but it alm

      • He's entitled to his opinion and he's entitled to spend the money he has earned as he sees fit.

        And everyone else is entitled to their opinion that he's a hateful asshole. What you're saying is, "he's entitled to his opinion, but no one else is entitled to a contrary opinion."

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 1s44c ( 552956 )

          He is entitled to his opinion. You are entitled to yours.

          Mine is that gay rights are blown up as some mega-issue when there are in fact many more important things people should be worrying about.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by devent ( 1627873 )

        > Just because an individual may not support gay marriage does not mean they also hate gay people.

        "I not hate black people, but black people should drink from a special sink, or should use a different entrance to bars". That is state and federal law what we are talking about, not some personal opinions. If marriage would be just a religious ceremony, then there would be no debate about gay marriage. But we are talking about the legal status of marriage, that have legal aspects, like tax breaks, property

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
      I am sure that losing a clone of pixelated will be devastating to the Firefox OS marketplace.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by devent ( 1627873 )

      Eich's respond in 2012 is not very convincing. Just replace "gay people should not allow to marry" with "black people should not allow to marry", or "Asian people should not allow to marry". The issue of gay marriage have nothing to do with religion or personal opinions. It is an issue because married couples have certain advantages under the law, like tax breaks, property rights, etc. And to support a bill that will disallow certain state granted advantages to some people only on the reason that those peop

  • Met him in Whistler back in 2008 when he was doing JIT.
  • "AOL decided to create the open-source Mozilla project in 1998"

    I don't think AOL would have created an open source browser. AOL never did anything with Netscape.
    • That's why they released the source code starting the mozilla project (not the same as mozilla).

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by linuxci ( 3530 )

        No. AOL bought Netscape after they decided to open source their browser

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          No. AOL bought Netscape after they decided to open source their browser

          You have the order of operations backwards. AOL bought Netscape in 1998, primarily to get the netscape.com portal, and Netscape Enterprise Server was handed over to Sun.

          The Netscape browser languished under this structure, and The Mozilla Foundation was created in 2003, to spin off the browser as open source.

          -Someone else who was acquired by AOL in 1998 and who still has the "Netscape 6" fleece vest we all got when it was released

  • The "Proprietary Codec" guy? (Score:3)

    by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Monday March 24, 2014 @05:56PM (#46569313) Homepage

    Wasn't he the one who's been pushing so hard to get proprietary codecs being used in Firefox? (Not just h.264, but also the proprietary OTOY "orbx.js" codec for remote video)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No, he's the one who gave in after Google refused to remove h.264 support in favor of their own VP8 codec.

      • Po-TAY-to, Po-TAH-to... :-)
        (If h.264/mp3/aac was the only issue I wouldn't be all that worried, but the "ORBX.js" followup makes it seem like Eich doesn't really care beyond "as long as 'consumers' don't have to pay money to 'consume', who cares if 'producing' is by proprietary permission only?")

  • Seems the CEO numbering scheme... (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday March 24, 2014 @07:01PM (#46569827)

    The choice of Eich as CEO seems obvious to some, after a string of recent short-tenured CEOs at Mozilla's helm.

    ... mirrors the one used for the Mozilla products. I predict there will be a new Firefox and CEO next month.

    • after a string of recent short-tenured CEOs at Mozilla's helm.
      Kovacs became CEO in 2010, and announced his departure in 2013, I think 7-year veteran Jay Sullivan has been acting CEO since then. Before that John Lilly was CEO for 2 years, taking over from Mitchell Baker who remains as Chairman. Two short-term CEOs in a row makes a pair, not a string.

      People who don't like Firefox's six-week release cadence can quit bitching and run the Firefox Extended Support Release [mozilla.org].

  • that the Eich were a bunch of evil aliens, enemy of the Lensman series (E E Doc Smith)

  • Does it make sense that we would elevate the creation of an interpreted C variant to the level of invention? It reminds me of a self-promotor type who was bending my ear with the tale of how his team "invented an XML" - meaning, they came up with an XML spec for their data.

  • I once saw Brenda Eich at a conference in Amsterdam maybe 10 years ago, where he did the final keynote.

    As usual for such conferences in Europe, 90% of the audience was not of English mother tongue, but spoke and understood it quite well (thanks, Slashdot). But Eich's keynote was barely understandable to many people : he managed to speak at the same time too fast and too low, with inside jokes that only a few Americans seemed to understand.

    Most of us thought "What a jerk".
  • A programming language can surely be _inventive_ by creating new methods of programming, the creation of functional programming as a usable method of programming is surely inventive (though it is based on mathematics which that didn't invent). But Javascript is in no way inventive. It was created using well known, already used methods. Polishing of known things aren't the same as inventing.

    TL;DR Javascript was created, not invented. IMHO of course.

  • ... of prototypical, and not class, inheritance. Which is not to say Brendan doesn't have class, in fact he is a prototypical classy guy.

  • I'm withdrawing all of my support for Mozilla, including using it as a development target, until Eich is fired. I'm teetering on the edge right now of simply banning the browser from my sites. I only get maybe 10% of users with Firefox, but fuck those users too. Fuck every extra hour that I worked around some awful Mozilla bug for those users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 1s44c ( 552956 )

      You do that and let us know how well it works out for you in 6 months or so. Personally I try to keep my business non-political, a customer is a customer no matter what browser they use or who they vote for.
       

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