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Mozilla Puts New Money To Use Fighting For 'Internet Health' (cnet.com)
Stephen Shankland, writing for CNET: Mozilla is marshaling public support for political positions, like backing net neutrality, defending encryption and keeping government surveillance from getting out of hand, says Denelle Dixon-Thayer, Mozilla's chief legal and business officer. The organization is funding the efforts with revenue from Firefox searches, which has jumped since 2014 when it switched from a global deal with Google to a set of regional deals. Mozilla brought in $421 million in revenue last year largely through partnerships with Yahoo in the US, Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China, according to tax documents released alongside Mozilla's 2015 annual report on Thursday. Pushing policy work brings new challenges well beyond traditional Mozilla work competing against Google's Chrome browser and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. They include squaring off against the incoming administration of Donald Trump.
It falls under participation in politics. Forcing out CEOs who publicly support policies repugnant to the organizations own membership and supporters is good politics. You have freedom of speech, but we have freedom to decline to be associated with you and your speech.
Bruce Perens.
It's not hypocrisy, nor is it either a safe space nor an echo chamber. That's silly rhetoric.
A CEO is the public face of your company. He or she has to represent your brand. Obviously Mozilla's brand was not to prevent Gay couples from having the right to marry.
Bruce Perens.
When you're the public face of an organization, you don't have that luxury.
Jared Fogle, for example, wasn't using Subway to promote child molestation, but Subway gave him the ax anyway. They dropped him even before there was any trial! Where they wrong to disassociate themselves from Fogle? Would you still say:
I wouldn't have a problem with it either, because as a private citizen, he has the right to do whatever they please.
What if your kid's school teacher openly supported NAMBLA?
Of course, Eich resigned on his own because he believed that was in the best interest of the organization. Mozilla didn't "force him out" like you seem to believe. It was the users who shouted, en masse, that they don't want a hatemonger leading Mozilla.
What continues to surprise me is the number of people that believe that a person should be shamed/punished/etc for what they do as a private citizen.
How, exactly, do you think societies work? Do you think free speech guarantees you freedom from the consequences of that speech?
Required reading for internet skeptics