I think that’s when their values changes from being a technically excellent product to being a friendly company that values harmony over function.

So it did stick to their values, but their values seem superficial rather than functional.

As a user, I would rather have a better browser than a company full of people who think that being against gay marriage 10 years ago means they are dangerous to coworkers or whatnot.

I think it’s great for companies to choose their own values and make their own way. And I can prefer companies that focus on other things.

I don’t necessarily think firing Eich causes Mozilla to suck, but I think Brave is a much better browser and they have far fewer employees with less funding.

I don’t donate to Mozilla and one of the reasons is because their mission is so vague.

Brave is just (yet another) wrapper for Chromium. The scope of the project is nothing like the scope of Firefox, let alone Mozilla.

As for being a better browser, built in adblocking is great (especially on mobile). But the whole Brave rewards thing is kind of weird and never made sense to me.

It’s a very different browser, but I used it as an example because I think it’s much better than Firefox and Chrome.

Mozilla could have made Brave, they didn’t. Brave is simpler, but better, I think, and even more so shows off how Mozilla’s values aren’t in making awesome software, but in something else.

I largely ignore the weird Brave blockchain thing and just use it as a nice, simple browser.

Are you suggesting that Mozilla should have made a chromium skin instead of an actual browser? So far as I can see the only thing meaningful brave offers over chromium is adblocking on mobile which is indeed huge but also available on mobile Firefox. Meanwhile Mozilla has given us rust, servo, and and an addon ecosystem that is still more powerful and flexible than chrome even post giving old school addons the ax.

I don’t think Mozilla should have Brave per se, but it shows some of the work they could have done.

If they had to literally skin chrome to do then I guess they could. But they should be capable of so much more.

Specially Brave is faster to launch and uses less resources than Firefox and had privacy and ad blocking features turned on by default. I particularly like the little bug that shows you how much bloat it’s blocked.

Adblocking out of the box would be hard given that most of mozillas ad money comes from search partners which are at root ad companies. They still advertise adblockers like ublock origin among their recommended addons and enabling adblocking is 30 seconds work and with sync it will be automatically added to firefox as soon as you sign into sync.

Ultimately this money is what has enabled Mozilla to exist at all. Brave is living on borrowed money from presumed future revenue from its cryptocurrency scheme which may or may not come to fruition.

Then they are putting themselves against their customers.

They could still just get search placement and make tons and tons of money, enough to develop their browser.

Brave was a good browser. Now it's... what, a Chromium extension? I liked pre-rewrite Brave much more than post-rewrite. The tab contexts (or whatever they were called, it's been so long that I've forgotten) were great - pre-rewrite Brave had ten separate containers for cookies and so on, so if you kept Facebook in context 8, you'd only be logged into Facebook in context 8, and you could do all your other browsing in the nine other contexts.

This was also good for multiple accounts; most social media doesn't support clients anymore, or doesn't have good clients, and in order to keep separate topics separate, you need multiple accounts. So now I keep three different browsers open, because there's just no good way to do this otherwise.

I still mostly use Brave, but IMO it's much less differentiated from other browsers than pre-rewrite.

Firefox containers does this, and pretty well at that.

> I think that’s when their values changes from being a technically excellent product to being a friendly company that values harmony over function.

What part of this announcement is valuing "harmony over function"? How does laying off 250 people compute with that?

You too: Eich was not fired. Get your facts straight, and stop spreading misinformation.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...

Q: Was Brendan Eich fired?

A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said:

“I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next.”

Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic.

Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board?

A: No. It was Brendan’s idea to resign, and in fact, once he submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role.

I think it’s disingenuous to split hairs like this. Eich didn’t exhibit any plans t resign until the episode and pressure that resulted in his resignation. I think that’s the same thing and I would also use this term any time a CEO “resigns to spend more time with her family” instead of being fired.

How is quoting the official Mozilla FAQ "splitting hairs"? It doesn't claim he's leaving to spend more time with his family, it literally asks if he was fired, and answers no, then asks if he was asked to resign, and answers no. How more explicit can you get? Do you have reason to believe the FAQ is lying?

> How is quoting the official Mozilla FAQ "splitting hairs"?

This just sounds like willful ignorance to be honest. It was obvious that Eich did not have the backing to remain as CEO.

The whole situation was an embarrassment and a disgrace for everyone involved to be honest. No one came out of it looking good.

So you're calling Eich willfully ignorant to claim he was not fired or forced out, when he actually was? Has he said that himself, or are you putting words into his mouth?

If you're a CEO of a company why would you resign? Just for fun? The idea of a resignation does not come randomly and the closest reason why Eich decided to resign appears to be extremely petty.

If you're a CEO of a company why would you be against gay marriage? Just for fun? The idea of a destroying someone else's marriage does not come randomly and the closest reason why Eich decided to destroy other people's marriages appears to be extremely petty.

It's obvious that he was urged to resign. Aka fired but with a face saving facade.

If he was forced to resign, then that makes him a liar, because he explicitly stated that he was not forced to resign. And if he's a liar, then he certainly shouldn't be the CEO of Mozilla.

He was forced to do it voluntarily. "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse". Or bullying till resignment.

Applies to the current CEO then too. Baker shouldn't be CEO.

> He was forced to do it voluntarily.

There is something very wrong about that sentence of yours.

No. Like I said, resigning to safe face for him and/or Mozilla. But not by "choice". It's obvious really.

Sorry, but no. You can't 'force' someone to do something 'voluntarily'.

The obvious reality is that Eich realized he fucked up and could no longer effectively lead Mozilla, given that they are as much about their self reinforced myth of being the internet good guys as they are about tech.

And so he stepped down.

The kind of scene that you are envisioning occurs in Maffia movies but not IRL. Eich was under a lot of pressure, but most of that as a direct consequence of the inherent conflict between Mozilla's stated external position and Eich's personal actions. When you are CEO of such a large company you know that you can't combine the two unless you mean it.

Props to Eich for doing what was right instead of further harming Mozilla.

So it was forced uppon him. Like you said "pressure". How can a choice under pressure be "voluntary"?

That's outside pressure. Not inside pressure. Mozilla board + employees actually wanted Eich to stay.

Anyway you seem to be quite stuck on your interpretation, all of the people involved have a single consistent story and instead you want to believe your own. You are of course welcome to your opinion.

It's flabbergasting what intellectually dishonest mental gymnastics and strained misinterpretations and denials of proven facts that homophobes will resort to in order to bravely stand up for each other and proudly justify their bigotry.

Puzzles the crap out of me. Logic doesn't seem to enter into it.

I don't care what Eich thinks about homosexuality.

Pressure nontheless. Seeing that he went to another browser company I don't think he would have gone voluntarily.

Which isn't Mozilla. Anyway, I'm out of here. Good luck with your reality.

Technicality. Eich was a victim of cancel culture and he was effectively fired. Anything else is revisionist bs.

Cancel culture is honestly not a very good weapon, silencing people doesn’t produce any dialogue but makes people afraid of saying anything, creates a sensation of paranoia and fear. And lots of innocent folks fell into that trap and had their lives destroyed for no good reason. Canceling has been overused and what could once be used as an ace in the sleeve it became a nail bomb. I don’t think we could get anywhere fruitful by allowing these, it may in fact take us backwards a few steps. Dialogue and debate is the only way

He didn't donate to "ban gay marriage."

He donated to leave the existing law in place that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Hell, even Obama ran on keeping that the law.

> That's a deserving case of cancel culture, if there is any.

Be careful what you wish for. The mob is all fun and games until they show up at your door.

>He donated to leave the existing law in place that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

This is wrong in every way that actually matters.

The California State Supreme Court struck down the law which banned gay marriage, and gay couples were allowed go be married. Many many gay couples were married during this period.

Eich donated to Proposition 8, a ballot initiative which provided an amendment to the California State Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman within the state consitution, in effect overruling the judgement of the California Supreme Court.

It was not an effort to "leave the law in place", it was an effort to remove from gay couples a right which they had already been granted by the court system, and to freeze this into the constitution itself.

So imagine being a gay Mozilla employee and knowing that your boss not only wants to prevent you from gaining civil rights, but wants to remove civil rights which you were already granted.

> Hell, even Obama ran on keeping that the law.

DOMA is completely unrelated. This is about the California Constitution, not any state or federal law.

I am not into this whole lets destroy people because of their speech thing that seems to permeate the entire modern political dialogue.

FYI: I'm queer.

I agree with you that the internet version of torches and pitchforks is probably more counterproductive than righteous, but I think in Eich's case the backlash and ultimate result were probably fair. In his own words, he could not be an effective leader under the circumstances. That was exactly right. In 2014, LGBTQ rights were still very much an active fight, and placing someone who was publicly fighting against those civil rights into a position to be the public face of the organization and the leader to everyone working for and with it was untenable. Public protests in that very specific scenario were warranted, and their success should be held as an example of when and how the influence of public opinion was wielded appropriately and effectively.

Brendan Eich was in no way destroyed, and it certainly wasn't over speech. The anger against Eich was because of _actions_, specific and concrete, the entire purpose of which was to deny people like you basic civil rights.

>FYI: I'm queer.

So are Aaron Schock and Lindsey Graham, but that doesn't mean they're not also self loathing bigots.

https://signorile.substack.com/p/lindsey-grahams-queer-predi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/politics/aaron-schock-...

"deserving, if there is any" Ah yes, clearly no more imaginable deserving case in all the world than legally protected political donations COUGH METOO COUGH

No. That is not deserving, even if there was any.

Because how dares he have a political opinion different than yours, right?

It wasn't the opinion, it was the actions that were taken. As CEO you're in the spotlight. A CEO also (together with the board) sets direction. That's quite different from any other position within the company. Meaning, for most positions I do not understand why people are getting fired. For a CEO to act in a way that is highly frowned upon, plus goes against what the company is trying to convey, that's just plain weird. IMO keeping such a person on would be strange.

Mozilla's directions have nothing to do with donations to keep the law as it is.

> The FAQ literally asks if he was fired and answers no.

The faq is lying. If a company is going to pressure someone out of a position in this kind of a situation, they are obviously going to lie about it.

In the same way that companies will lie and say things like "he quit to spend more time with his family", this FAQ is also a lie.

> Has Eich himself ever claimed

Obviously Eich was paid money to not try and take down the company with him.

That's how these situations work. Of course he isn't going to go scortched earth. He doesn't benefit from that.

Aaaaand where's you evidence? Or are you just lying and spreading unsupported conspiracy theories for your own ideological reasons?

How did he benefit from going scorched earth by trying to destroy other people's marriages?

> Aaaaand where's you evidence?

The evidence is that he was pushed out of the CEO position, and received a monetary settlement lol.

A person would have to be extremely stupid to think that if someone got pushed out of a CEO position, that it is somehow impossible that the company/ceo would be incentivized to not talk about.

There is quite obviously a financial incentive here. I am not sure how someone could deny the existence of this financial incentive.

This is standard stuff. It is completely reasonable that either of them would not want the bad publicity from that, and that there are financial incentives to not admit that he was pushed out of the CEO position.

Executives get pushed out of positions, without companies or the executives admitting to it, or lying and saying that they left voluntarily.

Again: where is your evidence that he was "pushed out" and that he "received a monetary settlement lol"?

I specifically asked you for evidence, which you failed to provide. "Laughing out loud" is not proof, it just highlights that you don't have any.

So I'll ask you again for proof: provide a link to a reputable source that proves that he was pushed out, that he received a monetary settlement, and that Eich and the FAQ are lying.

Otherwise the only thing you've proven is that homophobes will bend over backwards, twist facts, and lie to rationalize and cover up for each other's bigotry. If you can't prove it, then apologize for spreading misinformation.

You're accusing Eich and the board of lying, but now I've asked you to prove that YOU are not lying, and you've failed.

If someone is really going to deny the existence of an extremely obvious financial incentive for a company to lie about idea that it pushed out the CEO, then I am not sure what could be possibly told to convince that person of anything.

Someone would have to be completely and entirely lost, to not be able to see the clear and obvious motivations for a large corporation to lie about the idea that it pushed their freaking CEO out of the position.

So you don't have any evidence, at all. Just as I thought. Then apologize for (and STOP) spreading misinformation.

I will state again. I am referencing the obvious financial incentive here. Only someone who is completely lost would not recognize that as an obvious motivation.

It is not misinformation to point out the completely apparent financial motivation for them doing this.

That is the evidence that I am referencing.

I absolutely consider it to be evidence if there is a huge and obvious financial motivation.

That's not a fair point about virtue signalling. I get the motivation there, the term rubs you the wrong way (me too) because it's frequently used by the wrong people, and you're trying to either help the guy write or write off his arguments. But there's no guilt by association. There's nothing inherent about 'virtue signalling' that makes it bigoted, and if corporations found a way to make money by pretending to be bigoted, the scale would tilt in the other direction.

Free speech and anti-corporate attitudes are traditionally liberal values. Nowadays, you see arguments from bigots that oppose corporate power over free speech. We shouldn't be forced to withdraw our positions on free speech or corporate power just because they're associated with bigotry now. The idea of expecting others to do so is apalling to me, even if I'm not on board with the virtue signalling stuff specifically.

Nice way to police language