I like many others was stunned at the news about Mr. Eich's departure. Having been a long time Firefox and Thunderbird user AND as a PR person, the uproar over this came as quite a surprise to me. I sifted through a lot of articles, read the official responses from Mozilla, watched the Twitter reaction and finally came to some conclusions of my own.
1. I uninstalled Firefox and Thunderbird. I did it in part because of what I see as a free speech issue but also because over the past several years, Firefox has just become too bloated, buggy and incompatible with all the neat plugins I used to use. How many rapid fire updates should one have to endure in the name of supposed security when it kills major things that you depend on? And Thunderbird has been stuck in neutral for years when it had every opportunity to be an Outlook killer. Mr. Eich's treatment just made the decision easier for me. 2. I don't for a second think Mr. Eich's resignation was entirely voluntary and "for the good of Mozilla". That almost never happens in corporate America. The public statements by Mitchell Baker make it clear that his presence wasn't good for Mozilla. My guess is the consequences for not resigning would have been a more public trashing of Mr. Eich. 3. The very fact that Mozilla would take the easy way out of this and cave to outside pressure of the very narrowest (and oddly intolerant) sort does not lend confidence to the future of its products or management. I think its odd that when values of openness and diversity come up against intolerance in the name of diversity, intolerance wins. That's what happened. Mozilla could have stood up for its CEO early, in public and in no uncertain terms. That it equivocated instead says volumes. Even Andrew Sullivan finds this trend disturbing. 4. If an outside right-wing Christian pro-life group had organized a highly visible protest against a Mozilla CEO who had donated heavily to Planned Parenthood (and not just $1000 to Prop 8 years ago), would he or she have been nudged out? I seriously doubt it. Free speech, after all, is often just a measure of who agrees with you. I had never heard of OKCupid until AFTER Mr. Eich was shown out. Yet, apparently this small group had the power to derail an entire organization over something very minor. 5. Next up -- are there any people of religious faiths working for Mozilla that don't support women's rights or the right to even be homosexual? Will they be purged? Just askin'. What's your level of consistency? The bottom line is that an organization that is so easily bullied into making a seemingly shortsighted move of convenience (promote the guy then abandon him) is perhaps not one that's also making the greatest decisions about its products or direction. Good luck and thanks for all the fish. _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
