Please don't take HN threads into flamewar, and especially not on classic flamewar topics that reached dead-horse levels years ago.

Surely we're not going to be repeating the same angry arguments all the way until we die?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think the poster is making a distinction between Firefox and Mozilla founders, but it could be more clear. Mitchell, a Mozilla founder, is still around. The Firefox founders, who are Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross, and possibly Joe Hewitt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_version_history only states the first two, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#History all three), have not been at Mozilla since the early 2000s.

You're misinterpreting the statement in your search for a soapbox. Brendan was one of "Mozilla's founders," not "Firefox's founders," so he was the wrong person for the job anyway.

I actually missed that too, I guess because it wasn't where it seemed he was going after the previous paragraph.

So looking at that section again, his argument seems weak on that point. He is promoting founders as leaders because they have innate clout and don't have to engage in consensus building, but that should apply to Mozilla's founders too.

You're right, founder effect wears off in terms of consensus-free authority, and it should. Founder effects in code style and culture last practically forever, in my experience. But with Mitchell pulling $3M/year, the top job needs leadership and consensus around what to do to save Mozilla, not resting on laurels from a couple of decades ago. (BTW Mitchell was not on founding staff @ mozilla dot org; she was on Netscape's legal team and wrote the NPL and MPL.)

Oh boy, I HIGHLY DOUBT that Brendan "was the wrong person for the job" ...

From the article:

> I remember when Brendan Eich was briefly the Mozilla CEO. It was noted that a founder has a special place and ability as a leader. We never got to find out, but there was some sense to it: a founder has particular authority, without getting that authority through consensus-building. If you bring in a decisive outsider they will probably fail, lacking the authority (and probably the wisdom) to guide the company. If you bring in or promote someone appropriate for a more mature company, then the company may be operated well but the choices made will be more conservative.

When FireFox Quantum first came out, I was amazed. All the speed and performance problems started to fade and I was so happy to use Firefox again, switching back from Vivaldi. I also noticed a lot of bad information going on about Eich at the time. People were claiming he wasn't very competent, that he didn't put priority on multi-thread/cpu/quantum support (he did) .. lot's of stuff to discredit him.

I do think it was sad that Mozilla forced him out. Diversity of ideas? Not at Mozilla. Diversity based on identity and not thought has become the focus at many companies and it feels insane.

I will not use Brave. Their crypto stuff and ad injection and privacy concerns bother me. However, Firefox has continually gotten more and more unstable. I may switch back to Vivaldi, which I do not really want to do. Diversity in the browser eco system is pretty critical to an open web.

Brave has never done and will never do "ad injection".

Just as an FYI, Brave has done some sketchy stuff in the past, including inserting affiliate links / ads into content.

You're mistaken, or simply misleading. Brave has never inserted affiliate links into any content. What you may be referring to was the offering of affiliate links within the suggestions-dropdown in the browser itself. We wrote about this back in June of this year: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/.

When a user searched (e.g. 'binance'), the browser would check to see if an affiliate link existed. If it did, it would be displayed as a suggested URL. If the user were to press Enter at that point, they would be sent to the domain, with Brave's affiliate code in tow. We did make a mistake, however. We unintentionally matched against a fully-qualified URL as well (e.g. binance.us). We were able to fix that within a couple of days, however.

This is not in any way "sketchy". Open Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, or Edge and perform a search for "Hacker News". You'll note that in Firefox, and Opera (IIRC) you're sent to Google with an affiliate-identifier in the URL. In Edge and Vivaldi, I believe you're sent to Bing, but with the same type of identifier.

It's weird how consistent this claim is when the ad stuff (which I personally never used when I tried Brave) was always opt-in and always an advertised feature part of Brave's (possibly misguided) mission to change the landscape of internet advertising.

It's not weird. A lot of people (especially on HN) repeat false claims they hear that "sound right" to them, especially where they have some animus against someone involved (me, in Brave's case). Brave was inspired by All Advantage, but we knew going in that Gator and worse examples of personal ad systems would be used to dismiss or disparage. Marketing challenge, not a reason to give up.

“A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” —Mark Twain

I know, but I'm gonna cite Twain anyway, it's truthy ;-).

Their entire business model is sketchy. They'll collect payments on your behalf whether you're signed up to them or not while removing your ad revenue.

This is incorrect, and based on misinformation from 2018. In 2018, Brave users could tip unverified content creators with BAT. Those tokens would go into a settlement wallet until claimed by the intended recipient. This was a bad design.

Within 48 hours we had a new build of Brave out which held the tips locally, in the browser. The tip would be attempted for up to 90 days; if the unverified publisher were to verify within that time, the tip would be sent to their wallet. If the 90 days passed, the user's BAT would be released within the browser to be distributed elsewhere.

You can read more about these changes in our blog post from December of 2018: https://brave.com/rewards-update/.

> This is incorrect, and based on misinformation from 2018.

Great, I love being incorrect and learning something new.

> In 2018, Brave users could tip unverified content creators with BAT. Those tokens would go into a settlement wallet until claimed by the intended recipient. This was a bad design.

So it wasn't incorrect or misinformation then?

Glad you've fixed that shitty practice but that doesn't expunge it from history or make the fact anyone in a decision making position thought that was in any way ethical/acceptable.

You're missing quite a bit of context here. Brave distributed tokens to users (from our User-Growth Pool of 300M BAT) as a means of ramping-up this new support model. Users then, in turn, could send received tokens to verified creators. If they wished to send the tokens to an unverified creator, the tokens would go [back to Brave] (in a settlement wallet), where they would reside until claimed by the publisher. Meanwhile, at Brave, we would reach out to unverified creators who had a growing balance waiting.

The change we made kept the tokens on the user's device. We also introduced better UI/UX as well, with many thanks to our community for helping us spot some areas for improvement. Although I'm part of the team, I still stand in awe of those few days in December, 2018. A great, yet flawed, system was radically improved in a matter of hours with a few small (yet profound) changes. And it wouldn't have been possible without Brave's incredibly engaged community.

Does Brave have ad blockers as feature rich as uBlock Origin and uMatrix?

Most blockers these days use the same lists; this includes Brave. Brave also does additional work, liking inspecting the CNAME to see if the domain is an alias for a third-party, known tracker. One area where Brave is a little behind is in the aesthetic blocking, things like clearing elements off a page. We have that ability as well, but it's not quite as mature and well-rounded as you would see in something like uBO. Our work is not complete :)

Yes, and more. See https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/ and prior posts in the series.

We support uMatrix as extension and will continue to do so even after Chrome breaks it via Manifest V3. We don't build all its powers in (yet).

uMatrix was abandoned. Did you mean uBlock Origin?

No, I mean uMatrix.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail//ogfcmafjalglgifnm...

>forcibly kicked out founder Brendan Eich because you disliked his unrelated politics

>belittles everyone who doesn't share your narrow ideology

Wake up to the present. People who actively try to ban same-sex marriage are just as bad as segregation was back in the day.

Calling this "narrow ideology" is preposterous.

There is nothing wrong with homosexuality and they should be given the same rights as everyone else. It's NOT a debate. So if someone is actively trying to campaign against equality then they are flat out wrong and deserve the backlash.

Not to mention half of Mozilla's board of directors at the time quit because of him.

(I work for Mozilla and was there when this all happened)

That is false. Only one of them quit "because of" him. You don't need to take my word for it: Stephen Shankland's piece [1] is the least-inaccurate account of what happened there.

And in fact, your statement is not even logical. Think about it: Who hires a CEO? A company's board. Now you're saying that a huge chunk of the board quit because of a hire that they themselves were responsible for making? That makes no sense.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-under-fire-inside-the-9-da...

You forgot to mention the most important and commonly misstated fact that Brendan Eich was NOT fired, and was NOT asked to resign, and was NOT "kicked out".

The false narratives that the board fired him, and also that half the board quit because of him, both directly contradict the official statement published on the Mozilla Blog, and Brendan's own words he published on Twitter:

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

>On April 3, 2014 Brendan Eich voluntarily stepped down as CEO of Mozilla. [...]

>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.

Despite that irrefutable proof of Mozilla's and Brendan's own words that he resigned of his own free will, and the Board actually wanted him to stay, GamerGate followers love to spread conspiracy theories based on those false narratives, framing Brendan as a victim and martyr, instead of respecting the human rights of the people whose marriages Brendan donated his money to destroy.

Indeed. This is very true, but I've become exhausted from repeating it ad infinitum. Six+ years is a long time in tech, and yet we're still talking about this nonsense.

I guess that's what happens when I trust Wikipedia without looking it up further. Thanks for the correction!

In the 2nd link you posted Brendan Eich himself replies to you tell you to search for "constructive separation". So while he "quit" it didn't sound like he had much of an option.

I disagree with his views and believe Mozilla did the right thing in severing ties but I don't think it's as cut and dry as you're making it sound. It definitely comes across as a "We expect your resignation by the end of the day or shit will get messy for everyone" situation.

But it is your position that he should have been fired, correct?

It is my position that he should have resigned for the good of the Mozilla community (which he did, because what he did was hurtful and mean, and the consequences of his actions make him a poor leader), or justified his homophobic beliefs and kept his job (which I believe are unjustifiable, unless he has some new information that is news to me, which is why I think he should have spoken up instead of resigning if he had some special insight into why same sex marriage should be illegal, or simply admitted he was wrong and sincerely apologized, instead of clinging to an indefensible position).

Even anti-gay born-again Christian Gervase Markham certainly didn't hold back trying to defend his indefensible position against same sex marriage, and Mozilla never fired him or asked him to leave as he continued to speak out, until the day he died. And he too testified that Brendan wasn't asked to leave, either. Do you accuse him of being in on the conspiracy, too? How do you theorize they bought him off, a presumably morally upright born-again Christian?

http://blog.gerv.net/2014/04/your-ire-is-misdirected/

>Hi. My name is Gervase Markham. I’m a supporter of traditional marriage, and I work for Mozilla. In fact, as far as being on the record goes, I believe I’m now the only one.

>Many people who agree with me on this issue are very upset about what happened to Brendan Eich, our co-founder and, for two weeks, CEO of the Mozilla Corporation. Brendan was appointed and then, after 10 days under the Internet’s lens of anger based on his donation in opposition to the redefinition of marriage, stepped down and stepped away from Mozilla – to our great loss.

>I am assured by sources I trust that Brendan decided to leave of his own accord – he was not forced out. My understanding is that the senior management of Mozilla (many of whom disagree with him on this issue) worked very hard to support him, even if I would not agree with all the actions they took in doing so. However, he eventually felt that it was impossible for him to focus on leading if he was spending all of his time dealing with the continued, relentless news and social media storm surrounding the donation he made. In other words, he wasn’t forced out from the inside – he was dragged out from the outside.