On Monday, April 7, 2014 5:38:49 AM UTC-5, [email protected] wrote: > Adam, I respect your temperance and wanting to look at a bigger picture. > However, I see a different big picture and take issue with some statements:
Froy (that's all I can see for a name :) ), I appreciate your thoughtful response. I'll try to clarify a few things, because I basically agree with you very strongly that this was a disgraceful misuse of free speech that sets a bad precedent for society. As I've said elsewhere, while the letter of the First Amendment protects the right to criticize Eich for his political opinions and Mozilla for appointing him, I believe that the spirit of the First Amendment condemns the way this was done. > "Perhaps Mozilla did fall short of defending him, but that does not mean that > everyone at Mozilla approves of what happened or how it happened, nor does it > mean that Mozilla has become a political organization--that is, one oriented > toward issues other than the freedom and openness of the Internet." > > I vehemently disagree. Baker's words after the resignation, completely > abandoning Eich and throwing him under the bus, reveal that Mozilla cares > more about allowing gays to marry than it does about people being able to > support even mainstream political causes privately without getting hounded > from their jobs. > > It was utterly spineless, nauseating, and insulting. I was very disheartened by her saying that Mozilla had not been true to itself; it was basically apologizing to those who burned Eich at the stake, rather than calling their behavior out for what it really was. It certainly was not standing up for Eich or for the principle of a free and open society in which one may express political opinions and still co-exist and work with one's fellow citizens. However, since I don't know her personally, and since I wasn't privy to the many hours of private conversations I'm sure they all had, I'm trying to avoid being too harsh in my judgment. And as I'll explain in a moment, though I am very disappointed by her statement, I think there are other issues at stake. > This whole thing infuriates me. I uninstalled Firefox, a browser I've used > for many years. I'm typing this on another browser I don't like quite as > much, but at least I know my search revenue (small as it is) won't be > supporting such a blatantly hypocritical, pro-free-speech-phony organization. Maybe I'm being too technically minded, but as a now decade-plus full-time user of Linux and other Free Software, I see Firefox as much more than simply a product made by Mozilla Corp. As an outsider, but one who's used Firefox since Phoenix 0.6 or so and contributed through bug reports and general Firefox evangelism, I would describe it as a project developed by a kind of symbiotic relationship between the official Mozilla organizations and the community at-large. As has been noted elsewhere, though Eich has severed official ties with Mozilla, he may retain technical leadership roles as a member of the community. I also see Firefox as having played a critical role in overcoming the MS/IE monopoly on the browser market, having paved the way for other browsers like Chrome (and even Safari/KHTML/WebKit) to exist and have meaningful market share. I remember what IE 3 and IE 4 were like, when there were no realistic alternatives other than perhaps Netscape itself, which wasn't free. Phoenix was a breath of fresh air, and I've never had the need nor desire to use IE since. It truly helped to liberate the Web. Were it not for Firefox, I could easily imagine a Web dominated by ActiveX and other proprietary stuff. Being Free Software, Firefox is more than Mozilla. Mozilla could close up shop tomorrow, and Firefox would undoubtedly live on through forks (e.g. Iceweasel). Its development would be tremendously slowed from the loss of expertise, but hopefully in such a case, many existing Mozillians would join the new project and it could end up being mostly a name and organizational change (cf. MySQL/MariaDB). I also think that Mozilla is more than Firefox. As Eich said, Mozilla intends to make a strong attempt to increase the freedom of mobile platforms, which are always at risk of becoming more proprietary. You'll have to pry my PCs from my cold dead hands, but undoubtedly the future will see converging classes of devices, and many will fulfill common needs that are now fulfilled by PCs. These new devices will need open and free platforms, or else we'll be looking at a return to the days of proprietary OSes and locked-down hardware--except far worse than before. Mozilla's not the only one working on this, but it's probably one of the most important ones. > "Let us all learn from the mistakes and continue moving forward toward the > goals we share with Mozilla" > > Tell that to Mitchell Baker. Her doublespeak, hypocritical, spineless > apology to the internet mob shows she has learned nothing. I can't just > forgive an organization headed by a woman who uses her official position to, > ultimately, encourage blacklisting. I understand how you feel, and having expressed the caveats earlier, I largely feel the same way. But Mozilla is more than her, just as Mozilla is more than Eich, just as Mozilla is more than the few employees who undermined Eich. And while still trying to avoid condemning too strongly someone I've never even met, I also want to emphasize again that this whole mess was caused by certain people refusing to forgive someone for a perceived slight years in the past. We must not answer this lack of forgiveness with more grudge-holding. Rather than be overcome by evil, we must overcome evil with good. > Mozilla is supposed to be for open internet. Free speech should take > precedence over gay marriage, plain and simple. I absolutely agree here. > You might be surprised to know that I actually DO support gay marriage - to > the extent that I myself have even donated to it in the past. Will that make > me have to lose my job one day? Only if people accept internet mob rule, and > that precedent has been set by Baker's caving and most Mozillans' lack of > support for Eich. > > This whole issue has gone far beyond Eich and Mozilla. To many, like me, it > is about being able to exercise free speech without losing one's job. This > is absolutely critical to a civil, cooperative, and free society. This is indeed the most troubling concern of all. But I just don't think that dumping Firefox will do much for this cause. If per-search revenue from Google is your chief concern, consider that Google's guaranteed a minimum to Mozilla regardless of actual usage. Obviously the agreement will be renegotiated in the future. But perhaps you could accomplish the same effect by changing your search engine (or even the search URL in about:config? I'm not sure if Google simply counts all searches from Firefox or only ones with certain variables in the GET request which indicate the default hasn't changed since installation). Besides that, I still think Firefox is more than Mozilla, and will hopefully live on for many years regardless of where Mozilla goes. Chrome's not a bad browser, but its architecture simply doesn't allow for what Firefox's does in terms of addons. I'm also not personally thrilled with some of the Chrome developers' priorities (e.g. how many years has the HTTP download resuming bug been open, for such a basic feature?). And despite Mozilla's funding coming primarily from Google, if we give up Firefox, what browsers do we have other than those made by large, for-profit-only corporations? Yeah there are a few little ones here and there, but face it: browsers today are probably the most complex userspace software that has ever existed. They *require* full-time developers just to keep up with existing security flaws, not to mention developing new features and keeping up with changing standards. If we lose the only one developed by not-Google/Apple/MS, then we lose a serious tool in the fight for an open Web. > Mozilla is now a de facto gay-rights organization first and foremost. There > is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is represented as such. I disagree with this assessment. It obviously supports them, but I don't think that's the same as them being its primary cause. > As a long-time supporter, I feel betrayed... but nowhere nearly as betrayed > as Eich probably feels. I can only imagine how he must feel, and what kinds of personal emails he's received from the Internet mob at-large. In general I think it's very important to be guided by principles more than feelings or pragmatism--otherwise we wouldn't have the enshrined rights and freedoms we enjoy today. But despite making some serious errors that do set a bad precedent, I don't think that Mozilla is really the enemy against whom we should take a principled stand here. Who knows, but punishing Mozilla further could actually further the chilling effect. _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
