Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

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The problem is that we have the person who arguably most understands the domain of web browsers, online privacy, and all the legal and ethical aspect thereof, working on another Chromium-based browser.

I do not need to elaborate on why a diverse browser ecosystem is important, there are enough threads on that already.

Mozilla had this jewel, exactly what it needed to succeed and make the web a better place. He was attacked for his personal beliefs regarding gay marriage, which went against the current popular liberal attitudes, who attack anything they perceive as against them with a fury on the scale of lynch mobs. The web, for better or for worse, gives huge leverage to whoever is willing to make the most noise and be the most unruly.

So Eich was attacked, Firefox market share plummeted, the new CEOs take home four times what Eich was taking home yet add "Pocket" and other misfeatures while funding for Rust and MDN is being cut. Instead of a 95% monoculture of a Microsoft product we now have a 95% monoculture of a Google product. But hey, the guy who doesn't support gay marriage is out of the picture, right? That's a win, right?

Sorry, but you're not going to paint Eich as a victim over what is a totally self inflicted wound.

And there is no argument from utility to be made here either along the lines of 'oh Eich may be a bigot, but look at that nice browser he gave us'. He has to work with the people around him and that scenario would have likely not panned out.

Instead, a large chunk of Mozilla/FireFox' employees may have walked if he had tried to hang on, or maybe he could have come around on the subject in a halfway believable way.

But he chose to walk instead, his loss, and ultimately, possibly our loss too.

>Eich may be a bigot

Eich was perfectly capable of working with others. He had a demonstrated track record of doing so since he co-founded Mozilla.

>a large chunk of Mozilla/FireFox' employees may have walked if he had tried to hang on

A group of people intolerant of a political difference would have left rather than continue working with him. That's the definition of bigot.

Bigot: One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.

https://www.wordnik.com/words/bigot

Out of curiosity, do you know of any companies in your field where the CEO believes you personally don't deserve rights? Would you work for that company? Why or why not? If there is no such company, why do you feel qualified to level this opinion here?

My CEO believes only the people who have a baby should receive a bonus (a stimulus of a kind) for having a baby. Those who don't have a baby a specific year have no rights to that kind of a bonus. No group of childless people formed with the intention to cancel him.

All of the poly people I know work for companies that don't support their right to marry.

I think it's worth pointing out that the ballot prop that Eich supported actually won. It wasn't a niche belief, certainly not at the time. I don't think Eich was the only CEO in America that didn't support gay marriage. What set him apart was that he didn't do a better job hiding his beliefs.

I have no idea what's most CEO's opinions are on political subjects, and prefer to keep it that way. I would certainly work with CEO that has different opinions than I do - in fact, for all I know, I may already be.

It's obscene to paint Eich as the perpetrator of a self inflicted wound for not "coming around on the subject in a halfway believable way", for not trying to appease the mob. "Stop hitting yourself."

> for not trying to appease the mob.

No, I meant as in genuinely doing that. People are typically capable of learning. I'm pretty sure Eich is smart enough to do so.

My understanding is that Mozilla employees protesting his politics were not actually planning to walk and were disappointed and a little embarrassed that he left. They just wanted some sort of apology.

How did you arrive at that understanding? The Mozilla employees I've heard from said the opposite.

Mostly based on comments from Rarebit, as well as a few others.

Rarebit was 2 people who didn't work for Mozilla.

They worked with Mozilla and were prominent critics during that time. At any rate, now you know why I know how developers felt.

It looks like the closest they came to working with Mozilla was porting a simple game to Firefox OS. Getting attention at the time doesn't mean they spoke for anyone else. It sounds like you don't know how Mozilla employees felt.

Perhaps so. Thanks for guiding me through this!

> He has to work with the people around him and that scenario would have likely not panned out.

Or it would, since he worked with the same people before the wokefest with absolutely zero complaints from anybody. If people didn't decide having ideological purity and expelling wrongthink is more important than having a good independent browser. Well, they have their purity now. Hope they are happy. Their usage may be in the drain and their perspectives bleak, but at least nobody dares to form an unapproved opinion!

> Instead, a large chunk of Mozilla/FireFox' employees may have walked if he had tried to hang on

Or, somebody adult would explain to them it's actually ok to disagree on some subject, and that't the thing adults do sometimes. Unfortunately, looks like there's no adults in the industry anymore. Or at least not at those quarters.

I wonder why Eich went with Chromium/Blink and didn't decide to continue to use Firefox/Gecko as the basis for Brave?

Embedding Gecko is harder.

See https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1297577391129128960 among others.

Some comments are worth glancing over from time to time. This is one of them. Thanks for the reality check.

>Linus explained, "It's the fairness. Fairness is good, but fairness is usually bad for performance

Eich voted to deny gay people rights that straight people have. That's not a personal belief, that's a concrete damaging action borne of bigotry.

If he had shown actual remorse for doing this, he would have been fine. But he didn't.

"My gut reaction, is that they [homosexuals] are security risks, but I must admit I haven't given this much thought…I’ll be darned!’” -- Joe Biden, 1973

How many of those that "cancelled" Eich are still going to vote for Biden?

I'm not a Biden fan, but Biden has since been a decent supporter of LGBT rights and pushed Obama on the issue. Eich never showed any kind of contrition like that. People can change. I am friends with a number of formerly homophobic people. However, Eich, at least in 2014, displayed no evidence that he had.

I'm not going to dig into this, but from other comments on this post, it seems he did make statements that walked back the position specifically regarding lgbtqqiaap+

He wouldn't even say he wouldn't do it again.[1]

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm...

Did Eich make any statements at all? I recall he was cancelled out because someone found a donation of his to a political cause. He literally just gave money to a cause.

Imagine if who you supported on Patreon or Ko-fi caused you to be harassed until you quit your job? Imagine if someone says you're a hateful bigot because you openly donated to a podcast. Imagine if a donation to the Trump or Biden campaign caused all your employees to turn against you?

If he was firing homosexuals for being gay, that would be one thing and unacceptable. I grew up around Christians who would say they find x or y morally wrong, but that wouldn't prevent them from working with people who supported x or y, or believing they were human beings who are entitled to their own opinions.

Real tolerance is accepting people who have different beliefs about core issues, and working with them despite those differences.

The cause he donated to was to deny LGBT people fundamental human rights. That makes one a bigot.

Look up the Popper's paradox of tolerance.

A piece of paper promising fidelity is a fundamental human right? At most it is a religious construct, by definition not fundamental and far from universal. At a minimum, it is a government or social formality. And in both cases, it is designed to provide stability for the offspring birthed of such a union in societies unaccepting of bastard births.

A marriage is a legal contract, not a piece of paper promising fidelity. Fidelity has not mattered legally for a while now.

Romantic pairing is a common enough human thing that it makes sense to have legal constructs to protect both parties. If you are affording these protections to opposite-sex couples, then it is blatant discrimination not to do the same for same-sex couples. There is no rational basis for making such a restriction, after all.

Legal marriage, as in a civil arrangement, isn't really a right. However, being treated equally under the law is a right.

I am an atheist and yet I am married. I know other atheists who are married. Marriage can have religious aspects, but it doesn't have to.

  > Romantic pairing is a common enough human thing that it
  > makes sense to have legal constructs to protect both parties.

Why does either party need protection in a romantic pairing? I've been in dozens of romantic pairings but I did the religious ceremony only with the pairing that was expected to produce children.

Wait, "pushed Obama"? So Obama actually needed to be "pushed", because he was of the same opinion as Eich? But it's OK for the President of the United States to be of such opinion, because unlike CEO of Mozilla, he has no authority over the vast giant powers of Federal Government that actually decides what is allowed and not allowed in the country... Priorities!

That was 47 years ago. People are allowed to change. Do you still feel the same way you did about everything 47 years ago?

It's more about the fact that cancel culture doesn't generally accept change our apology, unless you're completely a leftist.

Ignoring the very clear bias/agenda you're trying to present, the lag time of 47 years is huge compared to some other high-profile instances of people being "cancelled". Also you can apologize for something and lack sincerity, which is even more insulting.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of the intense court of public opinion of cancelling, but it's absurd to paint it both as a leftist-specific act, or that if you're a leftist then you're allowed to get away with it.

I believe in people being able to actually talk and treat each other like human beings instead of monsters. The conversation unfortunately is hyper-polarized and many people aren't willing to even engage with someone who doesn't share the same belief set, and to me that is a shame. I don't think it's fair to paint this as a left/right issue. This total lack of engagement occurs on both sides.

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