Mozilla CEO resigns over anti-same-sex-marriage controversy

http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/03/technology/mozilla-ceo/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

4/3/2014 4:29:30 PM

I remember when people were allowed to have opinions

4/3/2014 4:31:29 PM

Yeah, there's got to be more to this story. Somebody hates this guy.

4/3/2014 4:40:02 PM

OMG, this guy donated $1000.00 to an anti gay sex campaign. What will we do!?

4/3/2014 4:45:50 PM

If we want, we can be outraged. Or we can be indifferent. He can state his opinion. And we can state our opinion of his opinion. And if he wants, he can state his opinion of our opinion on his opinion. Whatever.

4/3/2014 4:48:49 PM

in my opinion, after hearing his opinion on our opinion of his opinion, i was glad he was booted.

I still can't figure out why public heads of companies think its a good idea to have anything to do with political issues. It's a lose-lose situation. You either piss off the religious right or you get labelled a bigoted small minded douche. Either way your only reward is alienating a sizable chunk of your market.

4/3/2014 4:55:31 PM

Quote :

"Somebody hates this guy."

probably the Green Lantern, he hates Hector Hammond

4/3/2014 5:14:29 PM

In case of a witch hunt, I just wanna go on record that I am disgusted by this man's views! Our tolerant society has no place for him or the seven million majority voters who agreed with him on Prop 8. I hate bigots!

Also, I'd like to apologize for anything strange I've ever said on here. I'm actually a very normal person who loves reality television, Taylor Swift's music, and all the Dan Brown novels. We're all the same!

4/3/2014 5:37:00 PM

i am more concerned that his browser is starting to suck and become unstable

4/3/2014 5:48:28 PM

obviously due to the increase in the gay

4/3/2014 6:09:05 PM

^^ fuck his (well, guess it's not his anymore) browser. it's sucked for a long time.

4/3/2014 6:33:17 PM

he's not shapeless.

he's honeydew melon-shaped.

4/3/2014 7:12:52 PM

Mr. Potatohead

4/3/2014 10:41:53 PM

I don't read words, so I'll assume that's Glenn Beck

4/3/2014 11:05:02 PM

I'm not sure how hateful Brendan Eich is, but his work on advancing JavaScript (which started with inventing the language during his days at Mozilla predecessor Netscape, and then partly involved co-founding Mozilla and remaining involved in the standardization process) surely had to count for something...like possibly why he was CTO for so long and then picked as CEO.

I'd like to think that as long as it were made clear by him that Mozilla's policy of non-discrimination would not be affected just because he was the new CEO, the backlash would have abated; although it's uncomfortable to work with someone you have good reason to believe is hateful and bigoted, it's only really a problem when such a person seeks to hurt you or fellow employees in furtherance of such bigotry.

I hope Eich finds a position in some other Web-standards org., like ECMA or the W3C, or in some other company like Adobe Systems that has a substantial interest in the development of Javascript and related languages (maybe he could shepherd an ActionScript 4 that is compliant with the upcoming ECMAScript 6).

---

I wonder what Douglas Crockford (inventor of JSON and JSLint, long-time JS evangelist at Yahoo!'s YUI project, currently Senior Javascript Architect at PayPal, and presenter of the best explanations of Javascript ever put to video) has to say...his presentations about Javascript were how I first heard about Eich and I imagine they know each other a bit, because they've both been heavily involved in Javascript (Crockford is even on ECMA's TC-39, having worked on ES5 and currently working on ES6), they've both worked in Silicon Valley for a long time, and they're close in age; I get the impression from how Crockford licenses his software that he's a liberal, and if he does know Eich well enough he might be able to let us know whether he's more generally bigoted or maybe he just approached same-sex marriage the same way Forrest Gump approached racial integration of schools.

I guess, in the end, when I read about the furor surrounding Eich, I had a hard time believing that guy would oppose some measure of equality under the law.
Still, it's not like he's Hans Reiser, and the Web world shouldn't treat Eich like he is.

4/4/2014 1:00:38 AM

http://www.palemoon.org/

4/4/2014 1:05:16 AM

^still relies on a codebase hosted at and bug-tracked by Mozilla, developed generally in a direction determined by a core group at Mozilla

but that's beside the point, I mean if he were like the heads of Hobby Lobby or Chick Fil-A, shoving their atavistic and bigoted ideas down the throats of their employees, that would be something to riot over, but there's no indication that Mozilla's non-discrimination policy was in danger, and the culture of the company was so open that employees knew they wouldn't be fired for calling for the dismissal of the CEO, so I'm not so sure what the big deal was

4/4/2014 1:10:52 AM

it's actually completely autonomous outside the "open source" mozilla code. It doesn't rely on anything other than mozilla honoring the accepted definition of "open source"

4/4/2014 1:14:11 AM

^Maybe there's a reason Pale Moon is still based on Firefox 24 (it could be because it's an ESR, but I think it has chosen non-ESR milestones to branch off of...)
---
so I read Eich's blog (one of the few areas of personal expression he hasn't pulled from the Web), and it turns out he actually did say that Mozilla's non-discrimination policies wouldn't be diminished by his tenure as CEO: https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

SMDH here, this uproar makes the Left, and liberal ideas by extension, look bad

4/4/2014 1:37:20 AM

yeah it's sorta their calling card. "firefox without all that faggy bullshit"

4/4/2014 1:39:49 AM

It's curious that you used the term faggy, considering that the reason the Web community turned against Eich was his brief history of anti-gay donations.

Anyway, the impression I had was that Pale Moon was an optimized build of Firefox with some UI tweaks, and that it was especially good as an x64 build of Firefox, but not that it removed a bunch of features of Firefox that some find disagreeable or superfluous.

4/4/2014 2:06:07 AM

I just found out he actually is on ECMA's TC39, along with Crockford.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXIkTrq3Rgg
Also he sounds like he might be that special kind of homophobe~

4/4/2014 2:37:26 AM

its not curious. but congrats on your acronyms

4/4/2014 4:04:48 AM

ECMA is the European Computer Manufacturers' Association, the organization that issues the Javascript standards; it's well-known among people who work with JS and mostly known for nothing else.

Anyway, NPR just ran a brief story about Eich's resignation, and I have a problem with its use of the phrase "in his private past" because I'm not sure it was so private even in 2008: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/03/298777259/a-week-into-his-new-job-controversy-forces-mozilla-ceo-to-resign

4/4/2014 6:10:10 AM

I support gay marriage, but this is ridiculous. He supported an amendment to California's constitution that was voted into law by 7,000,000 Californians. His support of the bill is not shocking and it has no influence on his ability to run Mozilla as CEO. These types of witch hunts are detrimental IMO and do nothing to evolve society as a whole.

4/4/2014 9:39:49 AM

no one acknowledged my Hector Hammond joke, i thought it was funny

4/4/2014 9:43:03 AM

I, for one, like when stuff like this happens. I wish it would happen to Scientologists, too.

4/4/2014 12:24:45 PM

obama should also be forced to resign because he supported traditional marriage in 2008 of course right?

4/4/2014 12:33:34 PM

which is why im dumping firefox. fuck those fags

4/4/2014 11:49:19 PM

Quote :

"Our tolerant society has no place for him or the seven million majority voters who agreed with him on Prop 8."

Nothing says "tolerant" like saying a guy shouldn't have a job because he has a different political opinion than you

4/4/2014 11:52:24 PM

anyone who thinks people shouldn't have equal rights doesn't deserve to have their opinion respected

4/5/2014 12:07:07 AM

^so they shouldn't have equal rights?

4/5/2014 9:40:55 AM

Some animals are more equal than others.

4/5/2014 11:14:15 AM

I don't know why it's so hard to understand that being intolerant of intolerance is not the same as being intolerant of equal rights.

4/5/2014 11:19:10 AM

I'm comfortable addressing intolerance personally. I'm not respectful of people's shitty opinions.

But I don't think people should lose their jobs for having opinions outside of work.

And, if people are eager for that and on board with it, it kinda scares me.

4/5/2014 11:30:53 AM

They did him a favor, work sucks

4/5/2014 11:38:19 AM

vinylbandit said:

Quote :

"anyone who thinks people shouldn't have equal rights doesn't deserve to have their opinion respected"

roguewarrior responded:

Quote :

"^so they shouldn't have equal rights?"

being respected isn't a right, no one has a right to be respected

4/5/2014 12:26:14 PM

Quote :

"I don't know why it's so hard to understand that being intolerant of intolerance is not the same as being intolerant of equal rights."

Because they are the same thing, that's why.

4/5/2014 8:10:01 PM

Quote :

"I remember when people were allowed to have opinions."

This reminds me of when all the granola recumbent bike riding unwashed folks got all sandy and bent when they found out that the head of whole foods was a conservative.

4/6/2014 4:54:25 PM

hey, remember when all those people were intolerant of those people who thought blacks should have to sit at the back of the bus and drink from separate water fountains and shouldn't be able to vote? or when those intolerant people who thought women should vote, and were totally intolerant towards those who wanted to continue to suppress the female vote? this intolerance will not stand!

4/6/2014 6:05:32 PM

Let's all meet in the middle!

It'll be super fun and sweet.

4/6/2014 6:42:52 PM

Quote :

"But I don't think people should lose their jobs for having opinions outside of work. And, if people are eager for that and on board with it, it kinda scares me."

People shouldn't, but if you're going to be CEO of a major corporation, you should be able to respond competently to questions about a measley $1000 donation.

In my work life thus far, I haven't seen a correlation between politics and work quality. Conservatives have a weird sense of humor and don't get sarcasm, but they otherwise are good people to work with.

4/7/2014 1:18:14 AM

He said on his blog that the non-discrimination policy wouldn't change, what more is there to say?

4/7/2014 1:33:47 AM

Obviously there was more considering people were still upset. Leaders gotta lead, communication is a 2 way street, you can't talk at people and presume you're being understood, that's not communication.

4/7/2014 1:41:43 AM

Can't wait for Google to donate $10 to some "traditional marriage" foundation so Bing can finally take off

[Edited on April 7, 2014 at 3:41 AM. Reason : .]

4/7/2014 3:39:30 AM

Quote :

"hey, remember when all those people were intolerant of those people who thought blacks should have to sit at the back of the bus and drink from separate water fountains and shouldn't be able to vote? or when those intolerant people who thought women should vote, and were totally intolerant towards those who wanted to continue to suppress the female vote? this intolerance will not stand!"

Hey, remember when Eich was pushing anti-homosexual measures throughout mozilla? yeah, me neither.

4/7/2014 7:37:33 PM

People quit their job all the time.

4/7/2014 10:29:46 PM

Not too many are told to quit because of their political donations, though

4/7/2014 10:38:10 PM

Shitting on gays: Good for getting votes, not so good for business.

4/7/2014 10:39:57 PM

set em up -------->

4/7/2014 10:59:19 PM