Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Appoints Former Marketing Head Interim CEO
itwbennett (1594911) writes "Following the contentious and ultimately failed appointment of Brendan Eich as CEO last month, the Mozilla Corporation has appointed Chris Beard to the board of directors and made him interim CEO. Beard starting working as chief marketing officer for Mozilla in 2004, and oversaw the launch of its current browser, Firefox, in 2005. Beard also managed the launches of Firefox on Android and the Firefox OS for mobile phones."
See the official announcement. Quoting: "We began exploring the idea of Chris joining the Board of Directors some months ago. Chris has been a Mozillian longer than most. He’s been actively involved with Mozilla since before we shipped Firefox 1.0, he’s guided and directed many of our innovative projects, and his vision and sense of Mozilla is equal to anyone’s. I have relied on his judgement and advice for nearly a decade. This is an excellent time for Chris to bring his understanding of Mozilla to the Board."
Marketing begins to run things.
Congress needs to establish a commission of inquiry to help us identify people who don't agree with gay marriage, so they can be outed and ostracized. You know the routine: "Are you, or have you ever been, a conservative/orthodox/fundamentalist Christian, Muslim, or Jew?"
As we find these scumbags, we can work to deny them the right to start businesses in our cities like Rahm Emmanuel did in Chicago. Some of them are artisans: we can attempt to commission artistic works in conflict with their beliefs, and sue them into oblivion when they refuse. We can pressure them to resign from their jobs.
As recent Obama voters, it's not like we're huge hypocrites or anything. Please understand that the Democratic party is about democracy -- that's why we rejoice that California's popularly-voted Proposition 8 was overturned by a few activist judges. And we're about tolerance -- that's why we're trying to drive Christians, Muslims, and Jews out of public life by destroying their ability to hold jobs or participate in commerce.
I and 5 others deleted Mozilla and moved to Chrome. It felt weird after all these years to not have Firefox but we voted with our feet. It's not even a gay thing, it's a "we are sick of bullies and hypocrites" thing.
But what about the LGBT employees there? The CEO was just one of the employees (and now he's gone) so the only people you're hurting are the other Mozilla employees, why are you so against them?
In one of the earlier Eich threads, I speculated that he was kicked out less because of his former gay marriage-related politics (he did, after all, indicate he wouldn't change Mozilla's LGBT-related policies) and more because the board wanted someone who could better monetize Mozilla. Don't forget, the board members that quit over Eich's appointment didn't quit due to the LGBT nonsense, they quit because they wanted someone "outside the organization who could provide a new business strategy."
With this new appointment, it sounds like I was right: Eich was kicked out not over the Twitter whine-storm, but due to internal politics that want to see Mozilla turned into a money-making "product."
Losing Eich is going to be the worst thing to ever happen to Mozilla, mark my words.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
One wonders whether Mr. Beard had to do a lie detector run to prove his loyalty the cause(s) du jour.
But what about the LGBT employees there? The CEO was just one of the employees (and now he's gone) so the only people you're hurting are the other Mozilla employees, why are you so against them?
Because it is fun to bully a company into releasing their CEO. Damn three-letter executives make too much anyways - let's bully their income away with higher taxes for the rich. When we're "sick of bully's and hypocrites", we need to look into the mirror - the shit goes both ways.
This intolerant "tolerance" policy pisses me off... have an opinion and don't be a coward to state it. I have respect for a person who states and stands by their beliefs (regardless of what they are), and doesn't change them because someone else doesn't agree. Just recognize bullying for what it is- I hate hypocrites who are tired of bullying and decide they need to start doing the same.
"Congress needs to establish a commission of inquiry to help us identify people who don't agree with gay marriage"
..
And we also need to identify people with no sense of humour
They stood by and watched their CEO get ousted because of a donation to a cause that the majority supported. They could have championed free speech instead.
Knowing that Mozilla is now a "social justice" organization, who would trust their software? They could be cataloging everyone's surfing habits in order to use it against them later. They deserve a backlash.
So, when can we expect Obama and Hillary to fall on their swords? Their position on the issue was exactly the same as Eich's at the time he gave his donation.
Oh, that's right. They couldn't possibly be hypocrites - they're Democrats. Yeah, sure.
I haven't weighed in on the Eich thing yet because I couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly was giving me an uncomfortableness about it. I support gay marriage, I'd question why anyone would be insane enough to actually want to get married, but if they want it why not.
What burns about the whole affair is that the relevant parties had their say, the people voted, and that should be that. Instead we've got vengeance seeking from those in favour of gay marriage, making lists, hunting people down and persecuting them by whatever means are available. In other words, McCarthyism.
Fuck that.
We did not "stand by and watch". Many Mozilla staff made public statements supporting Brendan as CEO, including (courageously) many LGBT Mozilla staff. Many more publicly supported Brendan than publicly opposed him. The media of course focused on his opponents because "Mozilla employees call for CEO to step down" gets more clicks than "Mozilla employees support CEO".
Maybe we could have done more. At the time the firestorm was hot enough that it was unclear whether speaking out (and what sort of speaking out) would help. Brendan's resignation came as a great surprise to almost everyone at Mozilla, including me, and up to then I honestly thought simply saying nothing and letting the controversy blow itself out was going to work and was the best course of action.
To all the people who are shouting about "free speech" now: did you speak up to support Mozilla while we were defending Brendan as CEO? If not, why are you more enthusiastic about bashing us now than you were about supporting us back then?
I'm sure a lot of us didn't even know about this until he was ousted. I would have supported you (at least here in posts) then had I known about this at the time.
If what you say is true, it's interesting. I haven't heard that anywhere else.
It's absolutely true. There were a bunch of blog posts by Mozilla employees supporting Brendan as CEO (even though many disagreed with his position on Prop 8), all completely ignored by the media. Looking at the relevant date range on http://planet.mozilla.org/ should find them...
You're still framing this as a prop 8 issue. It's not. This has to do with people's private lives versus their public lives. I don't want my employer invading my life beyond the workplace, and I believe we all have a right to separate our personal lives from our work lives. I also think that anonymity plays an import role in a democracy. If people can't speak or donate or act for fear of their livelihoods, what good is free speech? Even the founders used pseudonyms before the revolution. There may not have been one otherwise.
I'm also concerned about these data breaches. A list of gun owners was leaked, and all hell broke loose. Lists of donors were released, this happened. What next? Planned Parenthood customers? GOP voters? Names of patients with terminal or expensive-to-treat illnesses? Actions and consequences. Is hope and change now accomplished by targeting individuals for destruction? Sounds good until the horde comes for you. And I say that as the non-anonymous party in this back-and-forth.
We should be better than this.
As CTO, co-founder, and linchpin of Mozilla for all 16 years of its existence, not to mention creator of Javascript, Brendan was already as "public face" and "guiding force" as he was going to be as CEO. That's what bugs me about the whole "public face" argument.
Why would it be different if he supported NAMBLA? Our puritan values are such that we believe it is somehow harmless for small children--hell, teens up to 17--to know about sexual activity. Because Jesus. Or something. Maybe in 100 years we'll reverse on that. Remember that in some cultures they still have pornography in the open--in Germany, children play outside of pornography shops with explicit sex images on display in their view. In Japan it was legal for 13 year olds to appear in pornography, but the US put pressure on them to take an official stance against this.
In Florida, they tried--and failed--to pass a bill banning sex with animals. Are we going to do the same with people for/against sex with animals being made illegal? Which side in this is right, and why are they right?
I continue to assert two major considerations for gay marriage laws. First, gay marriage has many societal impacts, from tax implications to the social impacts of exposing children to the greater acceptance of gays and to visible gay behavior, which is deviant (i.e. not of the majority) and automatically draws attention to what is ultimately sexual behavior. Second, some people may not have problems with gays individually, yet may decide that the legitimization of gay marriage would lead to some of the aforementioned implications (real or imaginary) and that these societal changes are harmful to society, and thus may oppose gay marriage directly on the grounds of doing what is morally right for society to prevent harm.
I get all kinds of push back for this, mostly from people skipping most of the reasoning and cherry picking, or asserting that these people are wrong and thus they're simple bigots because they can't believe that a societal change is potentially harmful while bearing no ill will toward certain people who would benefit from, prefer, or otherwise be connected to said societal change. Of course bigotry is irrational hatred toward a person for their beliefs or behavior or physical attributes, not earnest belief that a certain societal change is harmful; but people like to use a different language and pretend it's English when discussing people they hate, as it lets them exercise their own bigotry while claiming they're not bigots.
Support my political activism on Patreon.