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You do realise that you can do your own research, right?

E.g. some other resources that discussed the topic:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/q...
https://www.wired.com/2014/04/...
https://brendaneich.com/2014/0...

But there wasn't an argument to lose, merely an insight into a potential factor behind Mozilla's reduction in relevance.

Fogle was a company spokesperson, who got fired before the trial started because whether or not he had actually committed any crime, the appearance of his behavior made him unsuitable as a spokesperson.

Was Eich similarly a company spokesperson? You need only look at Mozilla's press releases. He's quoted in them while he's CTO, and if you go on Youtube, you can see that he makes a number of conference keynotes representing the Foundation. Once he's CEO, he writes this piece on inclusiveness which is linked to in this Mozilla Foundation press release. So, there's Eich representing the Mozilla brand on exactly the issue they already know he has a problem with. He doesn't get a chance to represent the foundation again, as they know they have a problem.

That would be nice if the W3C wasn't such a terrible standards body. It has done nothing but create shitty buggy standards that _nobody_ can implement fully and correctly. They have no fucking clue what they're doing.

https://brendaneich.com/2004/0...

https://www.nothings.org/writi...

LISP is probably the most powerful language every discovered. I say "discovered" here and not "created" deliberately. There is a quality about it that makes it feel more like an extension of mathematics rather than a language.

It might have conquered the world if only Eich had been allowed to build Scheme in the browser, as he was hired to do.

Instead, it languishes for some reason I can't really understand. I still wish for a day it becomes a mainstream language but I think it'll just remain a wish.

Brendan Eich voluntarily resigned as the CEO of a nonprofit when it was revealed he, publicly, advocated including LGBT communities and their input in the Mozilla project, but privately supported a campaign to deny LGBT people their constitutional rights.

He didn't lose his job for his beliefs, he lost his job because he was the head of a huge non-profit and it transpired he was duplicitous and had no integrity.

If by bytecode you mean 8-bit instructions for a stack machine, such as Python and the JVM use, then WebAssembly is NOT NOT NOT a bytecode. In fact, it is a concise binary encoding of a program in AST form. The team are working on a polyfill for existing browsers which will translate the AST into Javascript for execution. Future browsers will be able to JIT-compile the WebAssembly in much the same way as they JIT-compile asm.js or its equivalent.

Basically, WebAssembly is a distributed compiler infrastructure for the web, where browsers get to see a pre-parsed top-down view of a program instead of the bottom-up view that the JVM gives. Low-end devices will be able to quickly translate the AST into something that runs relatively slowly; browsers etc on high-end devices will be able to do lots of optimization.

Further reading:
  * https://brendaneich.com/2015/0...
  * https://github.com/WebAssembly...

BTW, the really scarey thing to be learned here is near the top of that FAQ: "pthreads ... are coming to asm.js". Yep. Asm.js will support pthreads. And people will write code that uses pthreads. In your browser.

<sarcasm>I am so disappointed with the ACs. It's like they don't care about the very freedom of choice this community was built on. They don't care about users freedom what-so-ever. All they care about are their own principles. If they wanted to use a decent, free, fast, secure, customizable and even hackable operating system, web browser or you-name-it they could just buy one, download one, compile one or write one themselves. Most of these systems have even a pref to turn DRM support off. Whatever they're trying to accomplish, it's quite hard to get.<sarcasm>

Ok, this one apparently wants to rid the world of DRM, by itself a noble stance. But just expecting others to do the heavy-lifting won't work. Neither will complaining without spreading the word about or contributing to one af the already proposed alternatives.

Insightful parent? Pfffffft...!

Here's Eich's blog post from October, 2013. Let me quote one of his comments on it -

DRM is about gaining leverage over "playback devices" and ultimately "users" in order to jack prices a bit higher, a bit longer Ã" but not so long as to tip things to darknets too much. YouÃ(TM)re right that all "robust" DRM schemes are cracked, rapidly. ItÃ(TM)s clearly not about preventing copying.

and

a mission to do X with the Web, without hundreds of millions of users loving the products upholding that mission, is toothless. We had to build Firefox to restart standardization and (via) competition, remember? When you read "promote", think more than cheerleading. We have been doing a lot more, and effectively, for over nine years.

He knows what DRM means for open source, what it means for the larger social context, and what Firefox and Mozilla mean for open source and the larger social context.

He was threatened that his name would be used to smear Mozilla and hobble what he saw as Mozilla's mission... and after resigning, Mozilla immediately betrays that mission.

Cmon Grateful... Under what basis do you qualify Eich as a bigot?

Bigoted:
"having or revealing an obstinate belief in the superiority of one's own opinions and a prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others."

Eich's statement shows ultimate tolerance of the opinions of others. He promises to treat others as equal, continue to work with the LGBT community, continue the non-discrimination policy, equal health benefits, etc, etc. His tolerance is shown clearly: he doesn't agree with gay marriage, but commits to treating all of his employees as human beings. Others at Mozilla that worked with him were shocked to find out he contributed to Prop 8, because they had never seen him treat anyone with inequality. All of the facts, both from himself and others, have shown a full commitment to treat others with respect.

Eich's statement:
I ask for your ongoing help to make Mozilla a place of equality and welcome for all. Here are my commitments, and here’s what you can expect:

Active commitment to equality in everything we do, from employment to events to community-building.
Working with LGBT communities and allies, to listen and learn what does and doesn’t make Mozilla supportive and welcoming.
My ongoing commitment to our Community Participation Guidelines, our inclusive health benefits, our anti-discrimination policies, and the spirit that underlies all of these.

My personal commitment to work on new initiatives to reach out to those who feel excluded or who have been marginalized in ways that makes their contributing to Mozilla and to open source difficult. More on this last item below.

I know some will be skeptical about this, and that words alone will not change anything. I can only ask for your support to have the time to “show, not tell”; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain.[1]

“That was shocking to me, because I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness,” (Mitchell Baker-Chairperson of Mozilla) [2]

This is not the statement of a bigot. Silencing, attacking, and treating his political views as invalid is bigoted.

Without a difference of opinion, you cannot have tolerance. A monoculture has no room for tolerance. Why the heck is disagreement these days automatically "bigotry" and why do people see love as "accepting all opinions that another holds"? Why would it be "shocking" that someone could treat others with respect, but disagree on a political issue?

[1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/0...
[2] https://blog.lizardwrangler.co... (note: this post appears to have been taken down on her blog, or archived, but it's still widely quoted on the internet)

to be fair we dont know, he has never made a statement about it as far as I am aware.

He had ~10 days to repudiate his former position and didn't.
In that time, he's made statements, but all his statements were non-apologies and evasions.

https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

I can only ask for your support to have the time to "show, not tell"; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/01/mozilla-ceo-brendan-eich-refuses-to-quit

"So I don't want to talk about my personal beliefs because I kept them out of Mozilla all these 15 years we've been going," he told the Guardian. "I don't believe they're relevant."

Eich refused to be drawn on whether he would donate to a Proposition 8 style campaign again in the future. "I don't want to do hypotheticals," he said. "I haven't thought about that issue and I really don't want to speculate because it's not relevant."

"Tolerate my intolerance" was never really a good place to be starting from, but nowadays it's a completely unviable position to take.

There are still culture warriors out there bemoaning this trend as the end of free speech, but all that really means is they don't understand how free speech works.

As far as we know he just doesn't like the idea of Gay Marriage, that is a far cry from being a radical anti-gay advocate.

I was wondering this too, but unfortunately his blog post on the subject - which I would say is the only really authoritative source of information - is basically just gutless corporate-speak (e.g., "Mozilla will remain egalitarian blah blah blah").

It does nothing to explain his personal opinion or his history on the topic, so the only thing I can get out of it is that I'll have to remain largely in the dark about what his personal opinions are and hope it doesn't influence any decisions he makes for Mozilla.

I would like to see an honest, up front post on his blog where he lays out his opinion. Even if I disagree with it (as I suspect I would), at least then I'd respect him for being up-front about it.

It's amazing how clueless some people are. "They" would be a "he", who's well known in computer tech for having created that language (not originally called "JavaScript") and its first implementation. It was written in 10 days.

A homosexual Mozilla employee's take on the topic: http://subfictional.com/2014/0...
A statement from Mitch Baker, Mozilla chairperson: https://blog.lizardwrangler.co...
A statement from Brendan himself: https://brendaneich.com/2014/0...
An official Mozilla statement on its policy regarding employee and contributor diversity: https://blog.mozilla.org/press...

There may be some backlash, such as RareBits pulling their app from the Firefox Marketplace, due to Brendan Eich's support of the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 initiative in CA. Eich publicly responded back in 2012. The issue is being discussed on Hacker News as well.

I'm against gay marriage. I think it's ridiculous that people who aren't religious want to engage in a religious institution. That said, the type of attitude you have is much much worse than anything you could possibly ascribe to me. You wish not to discriminate against gays, fine, but then turn around and want to discriminate against people like Eich and myself.

You're a hypocrite of the worst kind. Eich is free to disagree with gay marriage all he likes. If he breaks a law then you can kick and scream and stamp your feet like a fucking child, until then piss off.

There may be some backlash, such as RareBits pulling their app from the Firefox Marketplace, due to Brendan Eich's support of the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 initiative in CA. Eich publicly responded back in 2012. The issue is being discussed on Hacker News as well.

A "scripting" language is just a programming language targeting applications instead of the OS or bare metal.

JavaScript was originally intended only for the browser, yes, but Brendan Eich had big ideas about it. He wanted to use Scheme, but management insisted that the language "look like Java."

https://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/

Plus that's only for the major browsers - are all the many obscure ones supposed to go begging for a free license and sublicensing (hah!) rights too? The only way out of this would be for the MPEG LA to simply relinquish all patent rights entirely, and that's not going to happen.

Or someone like Cisco commits to releasing H.264 builds that everyone can use. Yes, it relies on Cisco keeping to its commitment and, yes, it's a binary blob, but it is one alternative for licensed H.264 distribution that's being actively pursued. It is, of course, less useful without AAC but Brendan Eich seems to think there maybe some possibility of doing something similar with AAC. Some links:

http://www.openh264.org/
https://brendaneich.com/2013/10/ciscos-h-264-good-news/
http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/61927.html

(Followup: the quote from Brendan Eich is in the comments here: "[...]downloadable codecs do not need to be freely licensed. IPR even if only defensive patents may be in play. But none of this taints the browser.")

Skillset momentum aside, why would anyone choose Ruby over Node.JS?

Node is *significantly* faster right out of the box (while Ruby JIT is still in its infancy). With so many well-funded implementations (Google, Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft) competing to be a tiny bit faster in any way possible, JavaScript is very likely to remain the fastest dynamically-typed language. Node is also built with a specific emphasis on scalability / parallel performance.

Node.JS also has the advantage of using the same language on the server that you inevitably have to use on the client end of Web-based applications. This avoids the overlap where you end up writing the same thing in different languages, adding complexity to the project. JavaScript / EcmaScript is also the preferred language of browser extensions, many desktop / mobile widget kits, GNOME apps, QtScript, etc. By focusing on one language instead of several (in a finite amount of time), you'd gain more expertise with that one language and be able to accomplish more things with it.

Of course JS syntax leaves much to be desired, but that will be revised some time in the future. CoffeeScript's syntax is even more intuitive and compact that Ruby's!

--libman