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How can you claim mozilla stood for free software when it started as a closed source proprietary browser?

Your comment is irrelevant, because Firefox is now free software, except perhaps for the trademark license which the FSF considers potentially problematic. Whether the software was once distributed as proprietary software isn't really important at all.

On the other hand, Firefox binaries were once subject to an End User License Agreement, which made the binaries non-free according to the FSF. But they removed the EULA in 2008.

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)

Simplistic boycots, and especially the sensationalist news stories which give rise to them, are just not doing any good. Mozilla's mission is incredibly important, and Firefox is the single best tool we have to further that mission. No matter how important the position of CEO, it's completely overwhelmed by the position of everyone else.

I recommend reading some opinions of people who actually work together with Brendan Eich, or who make up the wider Mozilla community. Though Mozilla always fumbles publicity, the open debate which invariably follows is equally always heartening for the understanding and passion which pours out of the words.

The following list should get you started:

• On Brendan Eich as CEO of Mozilla - Christie Koehler
• On Including the Uninclusive - Matthew Riley MacPherson
• Building a Global, Diverse, Inclusive Mozilla Project: Addressing Controversy - Mitchell Baker
• qualifications for leadership - Myk Melez
• Open when it matters: please help Mozilla - Matt Thompson
• Whatâ(TM)s Happening Inside Mozilla - Geoffrey MacDougall
• On Brendan Eich as CEO of Mozilla - Eric Shepherd
• Mozilla, an inclusive space - Nate Otto
• Mozilla is messy - Mark Surman
• Caught Between Two Movements - Andrea Wood
• More Context on Brendan Eichâ(TM)s Appointment as CEO - Chris McAvoy
• The most important decisions we make - Patrick Finch
• On Brendan Eich and the Thought Police - Bobby Holley
• Thinking About Mozilla - Erin Kissane

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...

Principle 4 of the Mozilla Manifesto 1.0:
"Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and cannot be treated as optional."

Wonderful... Apple has drunk the Rapid Release Kool-Aid. Hey Apple, take a look at how Mozilla and their flagship application Firefox turned out when they started Rapid Releasing things.

*gets off soapbox*

Mozilla's core product should be (and is) a free and open web.

In 2004 that meant a web browser. And perhaps more to the point, that was all Mozilla had the resources to do at the time.

Today that's not enough. And, importantly, it's been done. Users have a pretty wide choice of web browsers. Improving Firefox is still important, but is no longer sufficient. In fact, overfocus (needed at the time due to resource constraints) on Firefox in the past has led to some of the issues that Mozilla is now facing on mobile...

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2011/07/26/the-browser-by-many-other-names/ is worth reading in this context.

You want silent updates and to nix the notifications? Fine. You got it: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2011/10/03/rapid-release-follow-up/

Yes the desktop battle is so last-decade, but you manage to utterly miss the current battle. The future may not and should not be compiled apps from a curated store written for a particular runtime on a platform controlled by a commercial behemoth. The alternative is running a bunch of HTML applications that run in any browser on ANY platform, that you can View > Source to inspect and modify. That's a free software battle worth fighting!

Most of the get-off-my-lawn graybeards on Slashdot miss this point. They refuse to understand the potential of HTML, they conflate it with cloud computing and web services (I run several "web" apps from my hard drive), and they make dismissive snorts that native Gnome/KDE/whatever desktop apps will always be superior while ignoring the relentless advance of exceptional HTML applications. I think that's what Mr. Proffitt is getting at in the original article when he write "I have some doubts that any Linux distribution is going to be able to get its collective act together in time."

At least Mozilla understands this battle, read The App Model and the Web and the rest of Mitchell Baker's recent posts. But the Linux users who should be Mozilla's natural allies in promoting an open Internet don't seem to understand what's going on; maybe that's why Boot to Gecko is based on Android instead of a Linux distro. A few other projects like Joli OS and Webian shell are moving past the Linux desktop to the browser. If these falter, there's still Google's ChromeOS, but it competes with Google's own Android ecosystem.

Why has Mozilla Foundation avoided fixing the biggest bugs in Firefox, the memory leaks? Many, many people have complained about the memory leaks for the last 5 years, at least, as did the parent comment.

Firefox leaks memory and eventually crashes Windows, or makes Windows unstable. Apparently the Firefox memory leak bugs interact with some weakness in Windows XP SP3, and that causes Windows to become unstable. It seems that whoever debugs Firefox might also gain a good reputation from finding a major problem in Windows.

Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every new version lists Crashes with evidence of memory corruption as one of the fixes. Those crashes are only the ones automatically reported by the crash reporter. Many of the crashes happen without invoking the crash reporter. Firefox is crashy.

We love Firefox because it has the add-ons we need. But we need it to be stable. I hope version 4 reverses the history of bad management at Mozilla Foundation. Remember, Foundation gets more than $50 million from Google every year to make Google the default search engine.

Mozilla Foundation has an enormous amount of cash: "Total assets as of December 31, 2008 were $116 million, up from $99 million at the end of 2007, an increase of 17% to our asset base." The foundation was run by Mitchell Baker, a lawyer with little or no technical knowledge and very limited social ability. Now that she is Chairwoman and no longer CEO, the management does not seem sufficiently improved.

The parent comment is currently marked "Flamebait". People have commented saying that they have no problems.

Some of the instabilities are difficult to debug because they don't always occur. Visit Mozilla Crash Reporter for more information. Some of the instabilities occur because of the interaction of Firefox with Microsoft Windows, apparently, when Firefox reaches the limit of installed memory and begins to require virtual memory. Firefox is more stable in Linux, apparently.

There is a web page discussing Firefox crashes and what users can do about it.

Look at the current crash statistics.

See the Top 300 Crashing Signatures in the current version of Firefox, 3.6.6.

It seems that an organization that has more than $100 million in assets could stop other work and address the instabilities.

Much more could be written, but that's enough for now.

> Where does the money go?

See http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/11/19/state-of-mozilla-and-2008/ and the documents linked from it for the 2008 data.

> Put that in the bank and you could easily pay the salary of 10 full time programmers

As of end of 2008, there were about 200 people being paid out of the $66 million, according to the link above. That would include programmers, QA, UI designers, marketing, administration, IT staff.

That's somewhat smaller than the number of people Opera, say, employs, at least last time I checked.

For comparison, by the way, FY 2008 revenues for Opera were about $87 million according to http://www.opera.com/media/finance/2009/2Q09.pdf

Or exercise some good ol' open source muscle and fork it.

Mozilla is backed by Big Daddy Google.

That buys a lot of muscle. Do you think you can cut it?

A footnote in Mozilla's 2006 financial report states "Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006, however Google renewed the contract until November 2008 and has now renewed the contract through 2011. Approximately 85% of Mozilla's revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract, this equates to approximately US$56.8 million. Mozilla Foundation

Our revenue and expenses are consistent with 2007, showing steady growth. Mozilla's consolidated reported revenues (Mozilla Foundation and all subsidiaries) for 2008 were $78.6 million, up approximately 5% from 2007 reported revenues of $75.1 million. The majority of this revenue is generated from the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox from organizations such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and others. State of Mozilla and 2008 Financial Statements

Urgh, I hate these links to useless tech news websites, rather than the original sources. To see what the Mozilla executives in question actually had to say, with their words in context, read Mitchell Baker: Browser Soup and Chrome Frame and Mike Shaver: thoughts on chrome frame.

And as a bonus, from a Mozilla-technology using developer (I don't think he's affiliated with Mozilla in any official capacity anymore) Daniel Glazman: Google Chrome Frame.

Those browsers should be competing on their merits, and they ARE. Look at the growing share of Firefox.

They are not, as Mozilla explains:

Ive been involved in building and shipping web browsers continuously since before Microsoft started developing IE, and the damage Microsoft has done to competition, innovation, and the pace of the web development itself is both glaring and ongoing. There are separate questions of whether there is a good remedy, and what that remedy might be. But questions regarding an appropriate remedy do not change the essential fact. Microsofts business practices have fundamentally diminished (in fact, came very close to eliminating) competition, choice and innovation in how people access the Internet.

When the only real competition comes from a not for profit open source organization that depends on volunteers for almost half of its work product and nearly all of its marketing and distribution, while more than half a dozen other "traditional" browser vendors with better than I.E. products have had near-zero success encroaching on Microsoft I.E.'s dominance, there's a demonstrable tilt to the playing field. That tilt comes with the distribution channel - default status for the OS bundled Web browser.

.

What's next? Requiring that they allow for the customer to choose what notepad program they want to use? What media player?

Yes, in fact, Microsoft was convicted because of their illegal bundling of WMP

As for Notepad, that comparison proves that you are either ignorant or dishonest. The browser is a communications tool to a worldwide network which should be accessible from any type of device. Microsoft tried to turn it into the Microsoft Network by locking people to IE by abusing their dominant position on the desktop. No such thing with Notepad, which actually produces plain text files that any text editor can read, and in addition to that, is only local to your machine (no network infrastructure relies on it).

Imagine for a moment that a car manufacturer had 95% marketshare and the government forced them to offer air conditioning units from three other companies in addition to their own - it's the same level of ridiculousness.

Your ignorance is astounding. Do you ever even try to educate yourself before spouting nonsense? Monopolies aren't illegal. Bundling isn't illegal. But abusing one's monopoly to prenvent competition by bundling is illegal. All over the world, including the US.

Ive been involved in building and shipping web browsers continuously since before Microsoft started developing IE, and the damage Microsoft has done to competition, innovation, and the pace of the web development itself is both glaring and ongoing. There are separate questions of whether there is a good remedy, and what that remedy might be. But questions regarding an appropriate remedy do not change the essential fact. Microsofts business practices have fundamentally diminished (in fact, came very close to eliminating) competition, choice and innovation in how people access the Internet.

And this:

When the only real competition comes from a not for profit open source organization that depends on volunteers for almost half of its work product and nearly all of its marketing and distribution, while more than half a dozen other "traditional" browser vendors with better than I.E. products have had near-zero success encroaching on Microsoft I.E.'s dominance, there's a demonstrable tilt to the playing field. That tilt comes with the distribution channel - default status for the OS bundled Web browser.

Despite your trolling, this is not about European vs. American. It's about whether Microsoft broke the law or not.

Wow ... you are spectacularly misinformed.

You remember the European Commission's antitrust case against Microsoft in 2004?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_v._Microsoft

All Opera did was point out that Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows-based personal computers is a violation of the same laws that caused Microsoft to fail in that 2004 case, or to put it another way if Windows+Bundled MediaPlayer is a violation then Windows+Bundled Browser must also be a violation. Not a massive jump in logic, particularly when the US Department of Justice had previously come to the exact same conclusion (Windows+Bundled Browser is bad for inovation and compitition). I refer you to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

Both of the above cases where initiated by US interests, so this is not really about some big conspiracy by the EU to protect its own. Also as others in this thread have pointed out to you, Norway is not even part of the EU.

Regarding Mozilla/Firefox. Saying a massive project like this is American is like saying Linux is Finnish. The roots may be from one country but any sufficiently large Open Source project is probably global. Also Mozilla have given out some pretty mixed statements recently regarding this case but on the topic of if bundling has harmed competition they seem to be in full agreement with Opera. Consider the following:

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/02/06/the-european-commission-and-microsoft/

I suspect the slightly contradictory comments coming out of Mozilla are because they see how certain groups of people (such as yourself) have misunderstood Opera and rounded on them and the Mozilla PR team wants to avoid the same fate.

Last month the European Commission stated its preliminary conclusion that "Microsoft's tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice."

In my mind, there is absolutely no doubt that the statement above is correct.
...
the damage Microsoft has done to competition, innovation, and the pace of the web development itself is both glaring and ongoing.
...
Equally important, the success of Mozilla and Firefox does not indicate a healthy marketplace for competitive products. Mozilla is a non-profit organization; a worldwide movement of people who strive to build the Internet we want to live in. I am convinced that we could not have been, and will not be, successful except as a public benefit organization living outside the commercial motivations. And I certainly hope that neither the EU nor any other government expects to maintain a healthy Internet ecosystem based on non-profits stepping in to correct market deficiencies.
...
Third, the damage caused by Microsoft's activities is ongoing. Mozilla Firefox has made a crack in the Microsoft browser monopoly. But even so, hundreds of millions of people use old versions of IE, often without knowing what a browser is or that they have any choice in the quality of their experience.

Between the two of them, I'd bet a pretty penny that Mitchell's thoughts are going to be the more decisive in forming Mozilla's official stance.

Wow, that's a pretty slanted writeup by ric482...

Back in 2005, before the Mozilla Corporation was created as a for-profit organization, the deal with Google went through the Mozilla Foundation. There was worry that the income derived then would need to be reviewed by the IRS (a large part of the reason the Mozilla Corporation was created in the first place). Mozilla set aside a large part of that income in case that happened and the IRS would end up disagreeing with the status of that income.

The review of that income is basically happening now (and the IRS is probably also looking at what happened since).

Mitchell says it like this:

In 2005 the Mozilla Foundation established a "tax reserve fund" for a portion of the revenue the Foundation received that year from Google. We did this in case the IRS (the "Internal Revenue Service," the US national tax agency) decided to review the tax status of these funds. This turns out to have been beneficial, as the IRS has decided to review this issue and the Mozilla Foundation. We are early in the process and do not yet have a good feel for how long this will take or the overall scope of what will be involved.

(Lots of other interesting information in that blog entry, too.)

http://lockshot.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/firefox-eula-in-linux-distributions/

Weâ(TM)ve been working for a while to fix some objections to both the presentation of a EULA and the content of the EULA in certain Linux distributions. The issue came to light because of a change in settings in the 3.0 builds, that turned on the EULA display at installation, similar to the Windows environment. This caused two big problems. One, it put a EULA in front of a set of end-users who are not accustomed to seeing such agreements. Second, the license grant itself was inconsistent with the values of many of the users in the Linux communities and our own. They viewed the EULA as improperly imposing restrictions on the use of Firefox. Red Hat and Fedora were staunch advocates for making a change, and helped us understand the problem and potential fixes.

Upon review, they were right. So over the past few months weâ(TM)ve redrafted the license agreement and changed the presentation requirements. This was a significant change for us from a licensing perspective, perhaps long overdue in the eyes of others. We believe the new terms address the objections we heard from both a substantive and presentation perspective. The plan was to post about it this week, so I guess that part is coming true, but not quite the setting Iâ(TM)d imagined.

The new agreement (shown below) isnâ(TM)t yet in the builds, but hereâ(TM)s what it does:
Makes the license grant parallel to the MPL;
It has optional terms that govern services provided by Mozilla through the browser (e.g. anti-malware and anti-phishing services). A user may opt of the services and continue using the browser;
The license grant excludes trademark rights; and
The license doesnâ(TM)t require explicit click through.

It is essentially structured in two portions, one dealing with the code, and one dealing with the services. The first part describes the license applicable to the code itself. The second part contains terms that govern use of optional services. From a presentation perspective, weâ(TM)re of the view that itâ(TM)s good for users to easily be able to see the license terms associated with their software; however, this doesnâ(TM)t mean it has to be a poor user experience. We have adopted an approach that tries to conform to the way the distributor presents license info. In cases where there is only a first run page presented, weâ(TM)ve proposed language to inform the user that there is a license agreement, and they can click a link to view the terms. In other cases, like corporate builds where an IT administrator is already presented with EULA terms, weâ(TM)ve asked distributors to include the terms with the terms that are already presented.

Over the next few days, weâ(TM)ll review any comments, and re-evaluate the draft language in light of the feedback.

The post itself has the current draft.

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/09/15/ubuntu-firefox-and-license-issues/

Ubuntu recently included a patch that causes an End User License Agreement for Firefox to appear. This has caused great concern on several topics. One is the content of the agreement. Another is the presentation. A third is whether thereâ(TM)s any reason for a license at all.

The most important thing here is to acknowledge that yes, the content of the license agreement is wrong. The correct content is clear that the code is governed by FLOSS licenses, not the typical end user license agreement language that is in the current version. We created a license that points to the FLOSS licenses, but weâ(TM)ve made a giant error in not getting this to Ubuntu, other distributors, and posted publicly for review. Weâ(TM)ll correct

Read Mitchell's own words.

I really don't understand why people keep linking to silly "news" sites when there's pretty much always far more comprehensive and accurate information available directly at the source.