Mozilla fiddles while Mozilla burns

[Big Fred]

Today I contacted three people that I had in the past convinced to switch from IE or Chrome to FF. I persuaded them to uninstall FF because of your culture of politically correct bigotry. After reading this list today, I think I'll keep doing that as a hobby. Why? Because after the politically correct witch hunt that resulted in Eich being out and radical gays being appeased, all I see here are what come across as smug attempts to deflect blame and just weather the storm. FF is the new IE, the boorish clod that wants to just dissemble or stomp over any opposition in the style of Gates.

Yes, I've seen the aggravatingly repetitive "Eich wasn't forced out, he quit" replies which only come across as being deliberately misleading. The fact will always remain that he is gone because radical gays wanted him gone over his personal beliefs.

There is also the disingenuous refusal to acknowledge that we live in a era of politically correct witch hunts, which is why people are finally fed up. This episode did not occur in a vacuum. Mozilla is Cracker Barrel part 2.

There are the ever present double-standards of political correctness, such as the calls in the moderation thread that any opposition to gay marriage should be censored from this list. But in another thread, any employees who called for Eich's purging should not suffer any negative consequences, because that is presumably the good kind of intolerance on their part.

Then we have the claims that Mozilla statements didn't mean what they said. The chairwomans' statement that everyone reasonably interprets as "we're so eagerly sorry that we didn't purge the intolerant bigot sooner" didn't really mean that after all. Sure, sure... Since the tidal wave of negative backlash, she makes no statement wanting to communicate on that, much less apologize on that part of the 'community', does she? That makes her original meaning doubly clear.


Some particular examples:

Here's a statement that merges two very wrong approaches: "On the one hand, someone from Engagement should talk to the petitioners and explain that we did not fire Brendan or coerce him to resign. On the other hand, if it's not really affecting usage, is it worth it? -Sheeri Cabral" So much for being principled, huh? It's just a matter of what Mozilla can get away with after all.

Or this:
"If I understand correctly what you write, you are changing browser
because 4 employees of Mozilla have asked for the resignation of
Brendan? Or am I misunderstanding?

Best regards,
David "

which comes across as condescendingly mocking.

Then there are the inevitable "let's move on" exhortations because Mozilla is the supposed great repository of fairness and equality and tolerance of diverse speech. That's entirely laughable, considering that the CEO was just purged to appease radical gays. (Sure, sure... he "volunteered to be purged!")

But wait, Eich was also encouraged to accept a humiliating demotion, so that makes everything all right. Then there's the outright falsehood that he's still an active part of Mozilla.

Through it all, while many, many thousands (and growing) are infuriated over what happened, not one person from Mozilla is. Not from the top to the bottom, none that have overtly said so anyway. Quite a disconnect.

So keep fiddlling, Mozilla. People are coming to believe that you are even less trustworthy than the deceptive spies of megacorporation google. You are making enemies and enemies have a way of multiplying. That's the same maxim that Micro$oft arrogantly ignored all those years ago.

[Emma Irwin]

Hi Fred,

Hi, I'm a volunteer with Mozilla. I volunteer teaching children
about the web at my children's school and in my community using tools
and cirriculum Mozilla has designed to make that possible I put my
heart into it, I want my children and their generation to understand
the web is theirs to make, direct and innovate. I want technology to
be something they leverage for good, and the title of your email
breaks my heart because Mozilla has been a leading the way in these
efforts.

My volunteer work is not political, it's not left-wing, it's not
right-wing it's just me trying to improve my community. I give back
to Mozilla, because I see the tremendous value in doing so. I cannot
offer you explanations or justifications for a governing group, I
have no part in that. But I can tell you there is a community that
cares a lot about what's happening, and about everyone impacted. I
want you to understand that 'Mozilla' is made up of thousands of
people just like me. We're nothing like Microsoft was or is.



-Emma

> _______________________________________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance

[Jonas Sicking]

Thank you Emma! As someone that has poured my heart into mozilla for
the past 14 years, your email warmed my heart.

/ Jonas

[David Rajchenbach-Teller]

Big Fred,

I am sorry if you feel that my message was "condescendingly mocking", as
you put it. Since you seem to be reading my messages, you probably
realized that my intention was to try and understand better Tony's
reasoning. Not everybody who comes to voice their concern here have the
same understanding of the situation or the same feeling.

Now, I believe that we do not deserve your description of « the boorish

clod that wants to just dissemble or stomp over any opposition in the

style of Gates. »

Brendan Eich left Mozilla. Nobody is going to pretend that he did this
because he wanted to. However, it is my belief that Brendan left because
he believed at the time that this was the best course of action for both
him and Mozilla.

This is one of several things that happened at Mozilla while both
Mozilla as an organization and Brendan as an individual were being
harassed as part of a media onslaught organized by OKCupid. Many of us
believe that Mozilla took several bad decisions during this period. Many
of us would have preferred if Brendan had stayed, either as CEO or as
CTO (which, in fact if not in name, was his previous position).

I am not going to spend time defending Mitchell's blog post – since it
can be interpreted in two very different manners, one of them
unacceptable, it clearly needs to be amended. I believe that the only
reason why it hasn't been amended yet is that we want to make sure that
we don't make things even worse, but this leaves us with a text that
erodes our credibility.

Do you someone at Mozilla to say that he is very disappointed about what
happened? Here: I am *very* disappointed about what happened.

However, I also believe that Mozilla is not the guilty party. We made
mistakes, for sure, but Mozilla is one the victims here, alongside with
Brendan. We have been the victim of an organized online attack and this
attack leaves us without a CEO, without a CTO, without one of our
co-founders. This attack, and Brendan's resignation, made us appear as
an organization that could be bullied.

The question is: what should we do now? How do we get back up?

If you have ideas, this is the right place to discuss them.

Best regards,
David

On 10/04/14 04:34, Big Fred wrote:
> Today I contacted three people that I had in the past convinced to switch from IE or Chrome to FF. I persuaded them to uninstall FF because of your culture of politically correct bigotry. After reading this list today, I think I'll keep doing that as a hobby. Why? Because after the politically correct witch hunt that resulted in Eich being out and radical gays being appeased, all I see here are what come across as smug attempts to deflect blame and just weather the storm. FF is the new IE, the boorish clod that wants to just dissemble or stomp over any opposition in the style of Gates.
>
> Yes, I've seen the aggravatingly repetitive "Eich wasn't forced out, he quit" replies which only come across as being deliberately misleading. The fact will always remain that he is gone because radical gays wanted him gone over his personal beliefs.
>
> There is also the disingenuous refusal to acknowledge that we live in a era of politically correct witch hunts, which is why people are finally fed up. This episode did not occur in a vacuum. Mozilla is Cracker Barrel part 2.
>
> There are the ever present double-standards of political correctness, such as the calls in the moderation thread that any opposition to gay marriage should be censored from this list. But in another thread, any employees who called for Eich's purging should not suffer any negative consequences, because that is presumably the good kind of intolerance on their part.
>
> Then we have the claims that Mozilla statements didn't mean what they said. The chairwomans' statement that everyone reasonably interprets as "we're so eagerly sorry that we didn't purge the intolerant bigot sooner" didn't really mean that after all. Sure, sure... Since the tidal wave of negative backlash, she makes no statement wanting to communicate on that, much less apologize on that part of the 'community', does she? That makes her original meaning doubly clear.
>
>
> Some particular examples:
>
> Here's a statement that merges two very wrong approaches: "On the one hand, someone from Engagement should talk to the petitioners and explain that we did not fire Brendan or coerce him to resign. On the other hand, if it's not really affecting usage, is it worth it? -Sheeri Cabral" So much for being principled, huh? It's just a matter of what Mozilla can get away with after all.
>
> Or this:
> "If I understand correctly what you write, you are changing browser
> because 4 employees of Mozilla have asked for the resignation of
> Brendan? Or am I misunderstanding?
>
> Best regards,
> David "
>
> which comes across as condescendingly mocking.
>
> Then there are the inevitable "let's move on" exhortations because Mozilla is the supposed great repository of fairness and equality and tolerance of diverse speech. That's entirely laughable, considering that the CEO was just purged to appease radical gays. (Sure, sure... he "volunteered to be purged!")
>
> But wait, Eich was also encouraged to accept a humiliating demotion, so that makes everything all right. Then there's the outright falsehood that he's still an active part of Mozilla.
>
> Through it all, while many, many thousands (and growing) are infuriated over what happened, not one person from Mozilla is. Not from the top to the bottom, none that have overtly said so anyway. Quite a disconnect.
>
> So keep fiddlling, Mozilla. People are coming to believe that you are even less trustworthy than the deceptive spies of megacorporation google. You are making enemies and enemies have a way of multiplying. That's the same maxim that Micro$oft arrogantly ignored all those years ago.
> _______________________________________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
>

--
David Rajchenbach-Teller, PhD
Performance Team, Mozilla

[Adam Porter]

On Thursday, April 10, 2014 8:39:37 AM UTC-5, David Rajchenbach-Teller wrote:

> However, I also believe that Mozilla is not the guilty party. We made
> mistakes, for sure, but Mozilla is one the victims here, alongside with
> Brendan. We have been the victim of an organized online attack and this
> attack leaves us without a CEO, without a CTO, without one of our
> co-founders. This attack, and Brendan's resignation, made us appear as
> an organization that could be bullied.
>
> The question is: what should we do now? How do we get back up?
>
> If you have ideas, this is the right place to discuss them.

This is a difficult question indeed.

Right now, Mozilla could try to decide who it is willing to offend: those that demanded Eich's resignation, or those who are appalled at his resignation--more specifically, those who blame Mozilla for it. Whatever Mozilla does, some people will be offended. If Mozilla does nothing, some people will be offended.

Mozilla could go for numbers and simply try to not offend whichever group is largest--including in the calculation the potential for each group to influence others. This could be effective in the short-term.

But such an approach would not be principled. Such an approach would betray Mozilla's mission. Such an approach would betray Mozilla's community and its users. There is more at stake here than Firefox's market share.

In order to make a principled decision, Mozilla must resolve to withstand the brunt of whatever short-term backlash will come. It also must be willing to revisit past decisions and do what is necessary to right any wrongs that it can. Then it must move boldly and firmly toward what's right.

This is what Mozilla must do if it is to accomplish its long-term goals, which are in the interest of all people. It won't be easy. Enemies will be made. But as Winston Churchill once said, "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

[Robert Kaiser]

Adam Porter schrieb:

> Right now, Mozilla could try to decide who it is willing to offend: those that demanded Eich's resignation, or those who are appalled at his resignation--more specifically, those who blame Mozilla for it. Whatever Mozilla does, some people will be offended. If Mozilla does nothing, some people will be offended.

As we have no political agenda in those regards, at least as a
community, we do not want to offend any of those groups broadly, and
neither support any of them broadly.
What we want instead is to fight for making privacy and users
controlling their online lives themselves one of the cornerstones of the
Internet, creating real freedom and opportunity of choice for people
using the World Wide Web.
That agenda will also offend some people, sure, but then they are
offended by our actual values and our mission, and not by a different
political topic that is not our fight as a community and organization to
fight (even though we have people with opinions on both sides of it
within our community).

Please let use get back to our actual agenda of making freedom and core
value of the Internet and the Open Web a reality for as many people on
this world as possible.

And then we are back to what you said:

> This is what Mozilla must do if it is to accomplish its long-term goals, which are in the interest of all people. It won't be easy. Enemies will be made. But as Winston Churchill once said, "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

KaiRo

[Adam Porter]

Robert,

I'm not sure we disagree. When I said, "Mozilla could," I meant that while Mozilla could do that, it would be better to act based on principles. To pander to a certain demographic or whichever one is currently offended will harm Mozilla in the long run, regardless of which one is pandered to. As you said, Mozilla's long-term goals are important; what Mozilla should avoid offending is its mission.

The problem, of course, is that Mozilla was dragged into this political quagmire; the fight was brought to Mozilla's door. It seems like Mozilla tried to ignore it, to politely explain that it wasn't interested and just go about its business. But in doing so, it effectively allowed its HQ to be raided and pillaged; trying to be neutral was perceived as a sign of weakness, and the fight was pressed even harder. What Mozilla probably needed to do was, perhaps counterintuitively, be vehemently neutral: to vigorously repel the invaders to its borders, asserting its neutrality while defending its sovereignty.

It may be too late to win this battle, but Mozilla needs to resolve to never allow this to happen again. Without a strong defense, remaining truly neutral becomes impossible. And part of building that defense is recognizing and admitting its recent failures, and publicly committing to standing up in the future for its neutrality and its employees' right to their private lives.

Then, secure in that promise, the mission can continue, a mission we can all get behind.

[heyke...@gmail.com]

I couldn't agree more with this eloquent post. I have already taken down FF from my office computers, company smart phones and company tablets. I will NOT be a party to bullying bigots who espouse one particular ideology as being "correct" and all others as being "wrong."

In your culture, Mozilla, do you only accept monies and support from those who agree with your collective mindset? If so, please clarify your stance on your corporate landing page so that the rest of us will be able to look elsewhere for our browser needs. Sic Semper Tyrannus...

[Peter Smith]

Hi: This is the first time I have seen a discussion forum on Firefox, I was just curious about any comments that might be posted about this Eich business. I don't really care about an employee of FF having contributed to some political campaign some years ago.
I do not know a single person who has ever given a thought to the political concerns of a browser CEO, or of a browser company. I got FF because I got an Apple Mac and Safari was having trouble when Yahoo made some improvement. And I got Chrome so I could use 2 Yahoo mail accounts.
2 days ago I had to get a new Java applet and Chrome failed to install it, Java suggested FF because it had 64 bit instead of 32 bit something and so I got it with FF.
I had no idea that FF or Mozilla had put together gradeschool training packages. Sounds great. I have no idea what they are.
It sounds stupid to have fired the guy for contributing to some political campaign that has nothing to do with his job. I gather he was a capable employee. Maybe the marriage activist lobby is a critical market share and he was a public figure, I doubt it.
I say give me a good browser and I will use it and keep the technology current so you can attract people away from Chrome.
And it is funny that this forum is hosted by Google.
P.

[Henri Sivonen]

Hi,

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:05 AM, Peter Smith <peterjs...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It sounds stupid to have fired the guy for contributing to some political campaign that has nothing to do with his job.

He was not fired. He resigned under outside pressure. Please see
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/

> I gather he was a capable employee.

Indeed.

> And it is funny that this forum is hosted by Google.

It looks rather weird these days, sure. This forum originated on
Usenet and was archived by a company called Deja News. Google bought
that company and has been hosting the archive ever since--since way
before Google became a browser competitor of Mozilla. The forum is
also available as a Mozilla-hosted mailing list that's two-way bridged
to the Usenet group. Google additionally provides its own mailing list
bridge for the Usenet group.

--
Henri Sivonen
hsiv...@hsivonen.fi
https://hsivonen.fi/

[David Rajchenbach-Teller]

Hi,

Thanks for reaching out with your concern. I assume that your question
is asked tongue in cheek, but I will answer anyway: of course not. We do
not expect people to agree with Mozilla on anything, although we hope
that they realize that our objective is to defend free speech, privacy
and education through the open web.

Now, if I understand correctly, you believe that Brendan Eich was fired
from Mozilla, and even worse, that he was fired for his political views.
While we are saddened by Brendan's departure, this is fortunately not
what happened. As you are not the only person who came forward on this
topic, we have put together a page that I hope can allay your concerns:

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/

If you have any question, do not hesitate to ask, we will do our best to
answer.

Best regards,
David

On 11/04/14 10:56, heyke...@gmail.com wrote:
> I couldn't agree more with this eloquent post. I have already taken down FF from my office computers, company smart phones and company tablets. I will NOT be a party to bullying bigots who espouse one particular ideology as being "correct" and all others as being "wrong."
>
> In your culture, Mozilla, do you only accept monies and support from those who agree with your collective mindset? If so, please clarify your stance on your corporate landing page so that the rest of us will be able to look elsewhere for our browser needs. Sic Semper Tyrannus...

[Nicholas Nethercote]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 6:56 PM, <heyke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In your culture, Mozilla, do you only accept monies and support from those who agree with your collective mindset? If so, please clarify your stance on your corporate landing page so that the rest of us will be able to look elsewhere for our browser needs. Sic Semper Tyrannus...

The Mozilla community participation guidelines are here:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/.

They were created specifically so that people with different views
about topics such as marriage equality can work constructively
together on the Mozilla mission, which is described here:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Finally, note that "Mozilla" is a word with multiple meanings. There
is the Mozilla corporation, which is what Brendan was the CEO of, and
there is the wider Mozilla project, whose community consists of both
employees of the corporation, as well as thousands of volunteers
spread all over the world.

Thanks.

Nick

[Big Fred]

Hi, David. I am frankly surprised that you publicly state that you wanted Eich to remain. Up until today (sorry for the unavoidable delay in replying), Mozilla to me seemed homogeneously lacking much of internal opposition to what happened - or very weak opposition at best. That lack implies consent.

So here is my suggestion to you: organize loud and unambiguous dissent to what happened, culminating in a well phrased public statement. Merely using words like "regret" and "move on" (and "outsiders") would accomplish nothing, and probably would even be counterproductive, as if being part of a smokescreen.

But using terms like "grave injustice" in a statement would be impressive. However, I think you will find that employees would be skittish to sign such a statement because of fear of being blacklisted by the industry. "You'll never work in this town again" comes to mind. Even at Mozilla, while everyone is supposedly equal, gays are obviously more equal (as in the affirmative action: Ascend Project)

Your sentence "This attack, and Brendan's resignation, made us appear as an organization that could be bullied" is exactly correct - except replace "could be" with "was and can again be".

That brings up an important point: there are claims that Eich received violent threats to himself and his family. Where are the police reports? I would guess there aren't any. Why not? I don't doubt that the claims are true. So the CEO of a very famous corporation is no longer in his position, in large part because of violent threats and nothing is done about that? Mozilla itself should demand that the criminals be identified and prosecuted, even if Eich does not.

Also, where is the self-organized massive effort by internet companies in general, or by individuals with forensic skills from across the net. to root out the criminals? Instead, there is silence - which is, of course, completely expected given the source of the threats.

Contrast this:
CEO of internet company forced out by campaign which included threats from radical gays, everyone says "let's move on"
with this
CEO of internet company forced out by campaign which included threats from white supremacists, everyone says "let's move on"

Yep, some are "more equal", to be sure.



10.04.2014, 17:39, "David Rajchenbach-Teller" <dte...@mozilla.com>:

> However, I also believe that Mozilla is not the guilty party. We made
> mistakes, for sure, but Mozilla is one the victims here, alongside with
> Brendan. We have been the victim of an organized online attack and this
> attack leaves us without a CEO, without a CTO, without one of our
> co-founders. This attack, and Brendan's resignation, made us appear as
> an organization that could be bullied.
>
> The question is: what should we do now? How do we get back up?
>
> If you have ideas, this is the right place to discuss them.
>

> Best regards,
>  David
>
> On 10/04/14 04:34, Big Fred wrote:
>
>>  Today I contacted three people that I had in the past convinced to switch from IE or Chrome to FF. I persuaded them to uninstall FF because of your culture of politically correct bigotry. After reading this list today, I think I'll keep doing that as a hobby. Why? Because after the politically correct witch hunt that resulted in Eich being out and radical gays being appeased, all I see here are what come across as smug attempts to deflect blame and just weather the storm. FF is the new IE, the boorish clod that wants to just dissemble or stomp over any opposition in the style of Gates.
>>
>>  Yes, I've seen the aggravatingly repetitive "Eich wasn't forced out, he quit" replies which only come across as being deliberately misleading. The fact will always remain that he is gone because radical gays wanted him gone over his personal beliefs.
>>
>>  There is also the disingenuous refusal to acknowledge that we live in a era of politically correct witch hunts, which is why people are finally fed up. This episode did not occur in a vacuum. Mozilla is Cracker Barrel part 2.
>>
>>  There are the ever present double-standards of political correctness, such as the calls in the moderation thread that any opposition to gay marriage should be censored from this list. But in another thread, any employees who called for Eich's purging should not suffer any negative consequences, because that is presumably the good kind of intolerance on their part.
>>
>>  Then we have the claims that Mozilla statements didn't mean what they said. The chairwomans' statement that everyone reasonably interprets as "we're so eagerly sorry that we didn't purge the intolerant bigot sooner" didn't really mean that after all. Sure, sure... Since the tidal wave of negative backlash, she makes no statement wanting to communicate on that, much less apologize on that part of the 'community', does she? That makes her original meaning doubly clear.
>>
>>  Some particular examples:
>>
>>  Here's a statement that merges two very wrong approaches: "On the one hand, someone from Engagement should talk to the petitioners and explain that we did not fire Brendan or coerce him to resign. On the other hand, if it's not really affecting usage, is it worth it?  -Sheeri Cabral" So much for being principled, huh? It's just a matter of what Mozilla can get away with after all.
>>
>>  Or this:
>>  "If I understand correctly what you write, you are changing browser
>>  because 4 employees of Mozilla have asked for the resignation of
>>  Brendan? Or am I misunderstanding?
>>
>>  Best regards,
>>   David "
>>
>>  which comes across as condescendingly mocking.
>>
>>  Then there are the inevitable "let's move on" exhortations because Mozilla is the supposed great repository of fairness and equality and tolerance of diverse speech. That's entirely laughable, considering that the CEO was just purged to appease radical gays. (Sure, sure... he "volunteered to be purged!")
>>
>>  But wait, Eich was also encouraged to accept a humiliating demotion, so that makes everything all right. Then there's the outright falsehood that he's still an active part of Mozilla.
>>
>>  Through it all, while many, many thousands (and growing) are infuriated over what happened, not one person from Mozilla is. Not from the top to the bottom, none that have overtly said so anyway. Quite a disconnect.
>>
>>  So keep fiddlling, Mozilla. People are coming to believe that you are even less trustworthy than the deceptive spies of megacorporation google. You are making enemies and enemies have a way of multiplying. That's the same maxim that Micro$oft arrogantly ignored all those years ago.

[Big Fred]

No political agenda? Endorsing gay marriage and engaging in affirmative action for gays (Ascend Project) is as political as you can get. Anyone observing Mozilla now fully expects there to be a gay litmus test for the next CEO and possibly for all new hires as well, then afterward possibly as a condition for staying hired.

Privacy? Aside from the legacy irony of the archives being hosted by the most egregious non-government spies on the planet (oops, our map-mobiles *accidentally* hacked into all open WIFIs and took their IPs and more), I wouldn't be surprised at all if at some point Firefox contains code to assemble lists of anyone who visits so-called "hate" sites, such as conservative or Christian sites. That might be inserted by some radical individual or it might even come as a request from some group. That still sounds preposterous at this point, but not if the current trends continue. After all, Eich's political donation was at one time considered to be a matter of privacy, right?

Fighting for freedom? I can tell you that those opposed to what happened to Eich strongly consider that Mozilla is most definitely not the right candidate for the job. That's even more true because saying "let's move on" is akin to saying that what happened was not big deal.


11.04.2014, 00:56, "Robert Kaiser" <ka...@kairo.at>:
> Adam Porter schrieb:

>
>>  Right now, Mozilla could try to decide who it is willing to offend: those that demanded Eich's resignation, or those who are appalled at his resignation--more specifically, those who blame Mozilla for it.  Whatever Mozilla does, some people will be offended.  If Mozilla does nothing, some people will be offended.
>

> As we have no political agenda in those regards, at least as a
> community, we do not want to offend any of those groups broadly, and
> neither support any of them broadly.
> What we want instead is to fight for making privacy and users
> controlling their online lives themselves one of the cornerstones of the
> Internet, creating real freedom and opportunity of choice for people
> using the World Wide Web.
> That agenda will also offend some people, sure, but then they are
> offended by our actual values and our mission, and not by a different
> political topic that is not our fight as a community and organization to
> fight (even though we have people with opinions on both sides of it
> within our community).
>
> Please let use get back to our actual agenda of making freedom and core
> value of the Internet and the Open Web a reality for as many people on
> this world as possible.
>
> And then we are back to what you said:
>

>>  This is what Mozilla must do if it is to accomplish its long-term goals, which are in the interest of all people.  It won't be easy.  Enemies will be made.  But as Winston Churchill once said, "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
>

> KaiRo

[Big Fred]

Peter, this is an aside but I'm sending it to the list instead of to you personally so that you will (hopefully) see that I'm not contradicted: it's unsafe as far as hacking goes to use Java on the web, so I'd consider either not using it or else coming up with some procedure to have Java active *only* when absolutely necessary.

11.04.2014, 17:10, "Peter Smith" <peterjs...@gmail.com>:

> And it is funny that this forum is hosted by Google.

> P.

[Big Fred]

Somebody needs to go through all Mozilla sites and burn at the stake any calls to ajax.googleapis, and jquery at google and so on. Why not put out an open request for volunteers to report any instances? That'd be an honorable witch hunt to be proud of. Put up a public statement about doing do. Privacy advocates could point to such a statement. People might start to get the idea that they don't look cool and savvy by saying "google it".

11.04.2014, 17:37, "Henri Sivonen" <hsiv...@hsivonen.fi>:

>>  And it is funny that this forum is hosted by Google.
>

> It looks rather weird these days, sure. This forum originated on
> Usenet and was archived by a company called Deja News. Google bought
> that company and has been hosting the archive ever since--since way
> before Google became a browser competitor of Mozilla. The forum is
> also available as a Mozilla-hosted mailing list that's two-way bridged
> to the Usenet group. Google additionally provides its own mailing list
> bridge for the Usenet group.
>
> --
> Henri Sivonen
> hsiv...@hsivonen.fi
> https://hsivonen.fi/

[Big Fred]

Thank you, Kevin. I'll add that I haven't seen anything yet from Mozillans about righting the wrong, it's only been about not blaming Mozilla.

Also, I hope that Mozilla has considered that a relatively small number of radical gays could have spent a lot of time using various accounts etc to sign petitions, thereby over representing their numbers.

Also if the user agent string from Pale Moon gets counted as being FF, since they only add some text at the end. That would apply to looking at usage stats.


11.04.2014, 17:09, "heyke...@gmail.com" <heyke...@gmail.com>:

> I couldn't agree more with this eloquent post. I have already taken down FF from my office computers, company smart phones and company tablets. I will NOT be a party to bullying bigots who espouse one particular ideology as being "correct" and all others as being "wrong."
>

> In your culture, Mozilla, do you only accept monies and support from those who agree with your collective mindset? If so, please clarify your stance on your corporate landing page so that the rest of us will be able to look elsewhere for our browser needs. Sic Semper Tyrannus...

[Larissa Shapiro]

Oh, that is most definitely the case… many, many of us wished Brendan Eich to remain at Mozilla. Absolutely true. If you read through planet.mozilla.org, our public blog aggregator, you will see quite a few Mozillians saying so. I have said it on my own social media channels before and after his resignation, despite personally disagreeing with him on personal political matters. We are not as loud as the media which wishes I think, to dramatize more than express truth, at times. But many of us feel this way.

Larissa

[Rubén Martín]

El 12/04/14 19:42, Big Fred escribió:

> Privacy? Aside from the legacy irony of the archives being hosted by the most egregious non-government spies on the planet (oops, our map-mobiles *accidentally* hacked into all open WIFIs and took their IPs and more), I wouldn't be surprised at all if at some point Firefox contains code to assemble lists of anyone who visits so-called "hate" sites, such as conservative or Christian sites. That might be inserted by some radical individual or it might even come as a request from some group. That still sounds preposterous at this point, but not if the current trends continue. After all, Eich's political donation was at one time considered to be a matter of privacy, right?

Contrary to our competitors, Firefox is fully open source, if someone
would like to insert this kind of "tracking", we would know and the
reviewer won't allow it:

http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/

What you are describing is completely the opposite to our values, no
Mozillian would allow that:

http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto/

Regards.

--
Rubén Martín [Nukeador]
Mozilla Reps Mentor
http://www.mozilla-hispano.org
http://twitter.com/mozilla_hispano
http://facebook.com/mozillahispano

[Big Fred]

It was just demonstrated a few short days ago that the open source OpenSLL had an included vulnerability (Heartbleed) that made a huge number of websites hackable, including the ability to decrypt all SSL traffic by making the server's private key accessible to hackers. The claim that open source guarantees security was glaringly proven to be untrue.

Now listen to this part: the vulnerable section of code was checked into the repository at 11PM on New Year's Eve, which is probably the single hour in all the year which is most suitable to try and sneak something by. And the bad code did get by all the supposed checks and reviews that were in place.

Maybe that developer at OpenSSL was bribed by the NSA. Maybe everyone there who was supposed to inspect the code was similarly bribed. At Mozilla, the parallel danger would likely come not from bribes but from someone like a radical gay activist who wants to "expose" whoever is seen as the enemy. After reading more about Baker and the culture of political correctness at Mozilla, that is not entirely far fetched.

"What you are describing is completely the opposite to our values, no Mozillian would allow that"

5 Mozilla employees demanded that Eich be excluded because of his religious beliefs, which violates the core value of inclusiveness. They have suffered zero negative consequences, which violates the core value of everyone being treated equally - gays have extra privilege.

13.04.2014, 07:22, "Rubén Martín" <nuke...@mozilla-hispano.org>:

> ,

[Rubén Martín]

El 13/04/14 14:01, Big Fred escribió:

> It was just demonstrated a few short days ago that the open source OpenSLL had an included vulnerability (Heartbleed) that made a huge number of websites hackable, including the ability to decrypt all SSL traffic by making the server's private key accessible to hackers. The claim that open source guarantees security was glaringly proven to be untrue.

You are comparing a vulnerability (intended or not) with Mozilla
allowing someone to introduce a hack to list people who visit Christian
sites.

Yes, someone can try to introduce that malicious code, but not Mozilla
as an organisation.

That rationale can be applied to any kind of malicious code someone
would like to introduce in Firefox, including any national security
agencies. Open source allows anyone to be able to (sooner or later)
detect it.

In any case, talking about hypothetical cases here don't help to stay on
topic with the situation we are trying to clarify.

[David Rajchenbach-Teller]

Hi Fred,

I am not sure why you should be surprised. Most Mozillians, regardless
of our convictions, wanted Brendan to remain. Just take a look at our
blogs before (and after) Brendan's resignation. You can find them all on
http://planet.mozilla.org – and you'll probably have to scroll back a
few days. You will find a few voices against Brendan and many backing him.

Unfortunately, despite our support and wishes, Brendan made a personal
choice, informed the board that he resigned as CEO and declined the
offers to stay in other C-level positions. This choice is
understandable, given the amount of pressure that we witnessed, but at
this stage, there is nothing we or the board can do to get Brendan back.
We can inform him that he is still very much welcome as a member of the
Mozilla Project (as of last week, he was still active in the project).
We can imagine scenarios to better protect our next CEOs (and employees,
and community members) against bullying. But dissent, as you suggest?
This would be pointless, because most of us are in agreement.

No, what we need to do is find a way out of the current mess. And if
this means moving on, that's exactly what we are going to do.

Best regards,
David

P.S.: I don't think anybody knows for sure whether Brendan received
violent threats. However, we know that at least one Mozillian who came
forward to support Brendan publicly was the object of a death threat. It
is therefore possible – but not certain – that this was also Brendan's case.

On 12/04/14 19:22, Big Fred wrote:
> Hi, David. I am frankly surprised that you publicly state that you wanted Eich to remain. Up until today (sorry for the unavoidable delay in replying), Mozilla to me seemed homogeneously lacking much of internal opposition to what happened - or very weak opposition at best. That lack implies consent.
>

> So here is my suggestion to you: organize loud and unambiguous dissent to what happened, culminating in a well phrased public statement. Merely using words like "regret" and "move on" (and "outsiders") would accomplish nothing, and probably would even be counterproductive, as if being part of a smokescreen.
>
> But using terms like "grave injustice" in a statement would be impressive. However, I think you will find that employees would be skittish to sign such a statement because of fear of being blacklisted by the industry. "You'll never work in this town again" comes to mind. Even at Mozilla, while everyone is supposedly equal, gays are obviously more equal (as in the affirmative action: Ascend Project)
>
> Your sentence "This attack, and Brendan's resignation, made us appear as an organization that could be bullied" is exactly correct - except replace "could be" with "was and can again be".
>
> That brings up an important point: there are claims that Eich received violent threats to himself and his family. Where are the police reports? I would guess there aren't any. Why not? I don't doubt that the claims are true. So the CEO of a very famous corporation is no longer in his position, in large part because of violent threats and nothing is done about that? Mozilla itself should demand that the criminals be identified and prosecuted, even if Eich does not.
>
> Also, where is the self-organized massive effort by internet companies in general, or by individuals with forensic skills from across the net. to root out the criminals? Instead, there is silence - which is, of course, completely expected given the source of the threats.
>
> Contrast this:
> CEO of internet company forced out by campaign which included threats from radical gays, everyone says "let's move on"
> with this
> CEO of internet company forced out by campaign which included threats from white supremacists, everyone says "let's move on"
>
> Yep, some are "more equal", to be sure.

[Majken Connor]

"5 Mozilla employees demanded that Eich be excluded because of his
religious beliefs, which violates the core value of inclusiveness."

This was a blindspot in our policy. They weren't asking Brendan to be
excluded from Mozilla, they were saying they didn't support him as a
leader. There are already posts from some of our LGBTQ contributors that
explain why his personal views would affect his leadership as CEO (though
the ones I've read still conclude we should support him).

On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 1:40 PM, David Rajchenbach-Teller <
dte...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> Hi Fred,
>
> I am not sure why you should be surprised. Most Mozillians, regardless
> of our convictions, wanted Brendan to remain. Just take a look at our
> blogs before (and after) Brendan's resignation. You can find them all on

> http://planet.mozilla.org - and you'll probably have to scroll back a

> few days. You will find a few voices against Brendan and many backing him.
>
> Unfortunately, despite our support and wishes, Brendan made a personal
> choice, informed the board that he resigned as CEO and declined the
> offers to stay in other C-level positions. This choice is
> understandable, given the amount of pressure that we witnessed, but at
> this stage, there is nothing we or the board can do to get Brendan back.
> We can inform him that he is still very much welcome as a member of the
> Mozilla Project (as of last week, he was still active in the project).
> We can imagine scenarios to better protect our next CEOs (and employees,
> and community members) against bullying. But dissent, as you suggest?
> This would be pointless, because most of us are in agreement.
>
> No, what we need to do is find a way out of the current mess. And if
> this means moving on, that's exactly what we are going to do.
>
> Best regards,
> David
>
> P.S.: I don't think anybody knows for sure whether Brendan received
> violent threats. However, we know that at least one Mozillian who came
> forward to support Brendan publicly was the object of a death threat. It

> is therefore possible - but not certain - that this was also Brendan's

[Big Fred]

You are mincing words, trying to evade the truth, as if there is some great difference between deliberately introducing a vulnerability that invades allows invasion of privacy and writing code that does it directly. Your central point that open source is always secure is completely wrong and you can't admit that.

But what you say does fit with the style here: evade and always end with "move on". When there is no reasonable defense, just muddy the waters and say "move on".

I now regret having wasted time here over these past few days. It's obvious that the intent here is merely to say empty words and try to ride out the storm.

Time to get back to convincing others, one a at a time, that Mozilla is steeped in politically correct bigotry and has no intention of changing. FF is the new IE. I'll point everyone to this thread as an example of never-ending dissembling, which goes a long way to destroying any sense of trust.

Have fun at Mozilla's "we love love love gays gays gays" festival.

(The hand of censorship will probably come down here soon anyway.)


13.04.2014, 19:18, "Rubén Martín" <nuke...@mozilla-hispano.org>:

> ,