Well Ernie,
I'm not so sure that the ire is misdirected. I am no fan of the Gaystapo
either, but one is not going to convince me that Mozilla is a victim
here. This plainly shows that if your politics isn't left, then you
don't deserve a job with Mozilla. Convert or starve, Infidel. This
sounds chillingly similar to the cry of the Cult of Mohammed. Neither is
impressive, both are totalitarian.
And they are pushing an "Open Web???" Don't make me laugh. They seem to
be willing to serve the functions of the Stasi, Gestapo, NSA, or KGB.
I went and read the post that this one was responding to. I think that
the writer of that post needs to have his resume updated and be looking
for another place to land. If they won't spare the CEO, why should they
spare a worker bee?
A few additional articles:
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/04/mozilla-mo-problems
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/04/what-mozilla-means
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godandthemachine/2014/03/new-mozillfirefox-ceo-in-the-crosshairs-for-prop-8-donation/
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/04/10/brendan-eich-refusenik-to-an-idea-cum-idol/
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/04/04/a-gay-ceo-with-balls-needs-to-hire-eich-and-halt-this-crap/
David
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it
costs when it's free
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it
costs when it's free."*---P. J. O'Rourke*
On 4/10/2014 1:16 AM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:
Re: Your Ire Is Misdirected » De Civitate
For David...
http://www.jamesjheaney.com/2014/04/08/re-your-ire-is-misdirected/
Re: Your Ire Is Misdirected
Hi, Gerv <http://blog.gerv.net/2014/04/your-ire-is-misdirected/>,
I'm sure you're inundated, and you sure as heck don't know me, so
there's no need to respond to this. But I really appreciated your
post <http://blog.gerv.net/2014/04/your-ire-is-misdirected/> the other
day, and wanted to share my reaction with you. Perhaps it will be of
some use in figuring out Mozilla recovers from this catastrophe.
As I see it, there are still two big reasons why I and people like me
--- broadly speaking --- are going to have to withhold support Mozilla
for the foreseeable future, even after our current anger
<https://twitter.com/BCSWowbagger> subsides:
(1) In your post
<http://blog.gerv.net/2014/04/your-ire-is-misdirected/>, you give the
public your assurance that Brendan really /did/ leave of his own
accord; that he really /wasn't/ forced out; that the Board actually
/fought/ to retain him as CEO. The problem is that your assurance is
not a very strong authority outside Mozilla's walls, and it has to be
weighed against the evidence. This certainly /looked/, from the
outside, like a standard corporate decapitation, where the Board
decided to fire the CEO and allowed the CEO to "resign" only to retain
his own dignity.
We saw Brendan promising never to resign just a couple days before he
did. We watched Robert George predict
<https://www.facebook.com/robert.p.george.39/posts/10202970162227680>
--- to all appearances accurately --- how this was going to play out.
We heard the dead silence from the principal players. (Why hasn't
Brendan said a word in defense of Mozilla since he left?) We noticed
that all
<https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/>
other accounts <https://medium.com/p/7645a4bf8a2> of his resignation
say the Board tried to retain Brendan as CTO --- but pointedly
/not/ as CEO. Above all, we read Mitchell's (very unfortunate) blog
post
<https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/>
on Resignation Day. In that post, she seemed
<http://www.nationalreview.com/article/375091/new-torquemadas-charles-c-w-cooke>
to concede that Brendan never should have been hired, that "equality"
trumps free speech in this case, and that Mozilla's biggest takeaway
from all this is that, given the chance to do it all again, they'd
have fired Brendan /even faster/.
In this light, your anonymous sources are just not very convincing,
even given your/ bona fides/ as Mozilla's last public marriage
traditionalist. (Perhaps /especially/ given those /bona fides/: what
happened to you two years ago would seem to /support/ the suggestion
that Mozilla's commitment to inclusion is skin-deep at best.)
(2) Even if you are absolutely right, and leaving was entirely
Brendan's idea, it still sends a terrible message to the world:
"Mozilla can be bullied. We cannot protect our leader from a bunch of
petty thought police on the internet. We will leave him on the front
line, alone, to take 100% of the incoming fire, and then we'll thrust
the blame on 'outsiders' when the wounds take him out." If that's the
case, then perhaps Mozillans really do still believe in the radical
inclusion the project was founded on --- but it hardly matters,
because Mozilla is no longer calling the shots. The bullies have
taken control, and Mozilla is impotent to resist their imperious will.
In either case, Mozilla is not something many of us feel we can be a
part of --- or should be --- right now.
You mention forgiveness. If Mozilla wants forgiveness (and I am not
even convinced that it wants to be forgiven as /forgotten /right now),
I think it will have to demonstrate some level of /repentance /and
some level of /autonomy/.
First, repentance: Mozilla must recognize that what happened was not a
causeless tragedy that mysteriously destroyed the co-founder like a
bolt of lightning. This happened because the /entire /community
failed. It wasn't just the few who raised their voices in protest
against Brendan. It was also those who were publicly ambivalent and
conflicted (there were so many!), and even those who supported Brendan
but refused to put their foot down and /demand/ that he be retained.
The community either openly attacked or (more often) simply failed to
defend /either/ the principles of the project /or/ the concrete
policies that give those principles life. The community's reluctance
to close ranks around /the project/ -- not the CEO or his particular
beliefs, but the whole /concept/ of an open-source browser that
/everyone/ can be part of --- was the key fact that made the
subsequent media bonfire successful. It was a sin by the entire
community, and it needs to be acknowledged and addressed by the whole
community, not just in individual "I feel sad we lost Brendan" posts
on Planet Mozilla.
Second, autonomy: social conservatives need to know that Mozilla not
only regrets what happened to Brendan, but that it has the desire /and
ability/ to make sure that nothing like it will ever happen again.
That people who have "offensive" political opinions still have a
place at Mozilla, that our contributions are valued, and that we can
even become leaders within the organization. That Mozilla has
/not/ been conquered by ideological interests at Slate and Salon and
OKCupid, but remains a genuinely global project that embraces
/literally anyone/ who is willing to work toward the (crucial!) goal
of a free and open web.
I don't know how Mozilla might go about doing this, and (unlike those
who waged war last week) I don't presume to dictate terms. I only
know that Mozilla has done absolutely nothing whatsoever since the
resignation to restore our sense that it is a "safe space," and I know
that it cannot /ever/ do that without /positive action/ of some kind.
When a university administration is accused of discriminating against
racial minorities, they will often establish programs and endowments
to ensure that members of those minorities are hired and are able to
contribute to the university project without fear of reprisal or undue
discomfort. Perhaps (/perhaps/) something along the same lines for
/ideological/ minorities would help restore the public trust.
For now, however, I'm afraid I won't be on my favorite browser, and
neither will my clients. This is written from Chrome, which is
gross... but at least I know I could go to Google and have a
productive career there despite my private beliefs... even if they
harvest all the data about my private beliefs and sell it to the NSA.
/I don't know/ where the open web goes from here, but, fundamentally,
a web controlled by the same forces that led to Brendan's resignation
is /not/ an open web at all --- except for those privileged to have
the "right" opinions. That means Mozilla, as it currently looks from
out here, as it currently operates, /cannot/ carry forward the
open-web ideal --- not until this is addressed and corrected.
Maybe this all looks completely different from within the Mozilla
community. I don't know; I'm pretty much just a longtime fan and user
and promoter, not a contributor. And there are my two cents.
--
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