Is there some way to ensure the donation money will actually go to Firefox and not to some sort of "diversity" campaign?
I personally value everything that Mozilla Foundation does (including diversity campaigns) and wouldn't hesitate to donate to it (I've been donating for a few years now), but I would also like to donate to Mozilla Corporation and directly fund its activities, even if it means some money may go to Pocket or Lockwise or anything else. I don't want to micromanage how the company manages my money. It would be defeatist and unfair to ask that, IMO.
Anyway, I can see this being inconvenient for Mozilla. But it is desirable for some users. I don't see how it is defeatist, and it's not unfair either - donors can say, "we want to give money for specific purposes", and Mozilla can accept or refuse. Neither outcome is unfair to anyone; donations are still voluntary transactions.
But it can be made more complicated by that, depending on the organizational policies, levels of transparency, and funding methods. If, for example, they have an internal fund labeled "for Firefox", I'd expect $N in donations to go there, and would be pissed if less money appeared. Alternatively, if they were running a funding model of "$X for Firefox + money from donations", then I'd be pissed if Firefox was getting less than $X + $N (this would be equivalent to the recent "companies are stealing tips" dramas of share economy).
It's worth noting that charities handling multiple causes usually solve this by creating separate accounts for donating to each cause.
This ultimately can get as complex as Mozilla would like, but Mozilla has also a perfectly valid option of not allowing donations for specific purposes at all, and I think it's fine if they do that. Donors have no right to force Mozilla to implement earmarking if they don't want to.
For example: I see that Firefox still hasn't yet made all SVG elements attributes into presentation attributes per the SVG 2 spec. So right now in Firefox you can't do 'rect.style.width = "12px"' but in Chrome you can.
Not sure you could easily get full coverage (e.g., I'd bet css "d" atty would be tricky). But there's probably a fairly workable introductory subset for which one could create a fairly clean patch set.
Or pick a different self-contained, non-controversial feature/bug and fund a dev to attack it.
You've jumped to discussing an imagined general purpose digital payment pooling system that works at scale.
Better yet-- buy a few meals for a dev to write a tool to generate this data for you.
Otherwise, you can recruit and hire someone to write the features you approve of.
Money is fungible but budgets have a nasty habit of being elastic.
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-201...
Wikipedia is a big one for this: the donation campaign is all about 'keeping our servers running', and then huge chunks of the spending goes on community feelgood stuff.
I've nothing against diversity campaigning but if you were to treat donation like any other 'purchase' you'd be pretty miffed if you thought you were ordering a cheeseburger and you got a carrot and the waiter gave himself a bottle of beer.
This interpretation of his comment is... generous. I agree that there's a legitimate point around wanting your donation to go specifically to browser development and not overhead or other side-projects, but it's pretty clear that he was using the word diversity contemptuously.
Edit: rather than trying to read OP's mind or surmise what they may be thinking, I'll give my own experience on this. I have seen companies spend money on diversity as lip-service, or targeting groups that don't really aid diversity much.
As much as I support female/LGBTQ/race rights and diversity, I suspect many companies I have been a part of would have got a better number of "units of diversity per dollar spent" had they spent money on people from lower socio-economic classes, or countries with poorer education/access to facilities (or maybe combined with the previous groups; I suspect the middle+ classes of female/LGBTQ/different ethnic origin groups are far better catered for than their working class counterparts).
But perhaps people don't consider social class or country of origin diversity? Perhaps "we hired lots of underprivileged people" doesn't give as much political capital? I'm not sure.
Sometimes it seems to me that whereas in the past we had Churches in a privileged position, telling us how to behave, that we now have NGOs doing the same thing.
For example there was just last week a report in the UK about how employees in oxfam shops had sign NDAs in settlements so that the organisation would not get negative publicity for not practicing as they preach.
It's very perplexing that you make this conclusion as a legitimate opposition to diversity.
I think diversity is just being used as a proxy for "social do-gooding, rather than tech do-gooding" and the commenter feels the former is not the thing s/he cares to support. Which is fine! I choose not to support all sorts of nominally good things. Lets not witch-hunt people for caring about different things.
Hell, X and Y don't even have to be all that different. Did you know Make-A-Wish doesn't grant wishes for hunting or fishing, while other charities do that exclusively?
Unless they turn out to be deceitful, duplicitous, or otherwise exceptionally wasteful, second guessing and/or judging their decision making process from the outside isn't likely to be a particularly fruitful endeavour for any of the parties involved.
If you want to explicitly target a very narrow case, you need to donate explicitly to that very narrow case. There are NPOs and charities that provide this kind of explicit service[0], for narrow targeted funding where you control exactly where your money goes. If you donate to an organisation with a broader mission, you shouldn't have any specific expectations of where that money is spent.
[0] e.g. https://www.donorschoose.org/
Do you want to make $10k a year for 5 years on something that costs you $2k? Buy a copier on ebay and lease it to a 501(c)3. That's why smart donors restrict funds.
Non-profits hate that because that money cannot be used for G&A, their other pet projects, feel good stuff or say charitable events used for fundraising (you know, the fabulous parties that non-profits throw - spend $300k to raise $303k while important people at the non-profit have a good time being photographed). Make sure to donate to restricted funds. In that case your funds will either be returned to you ( your donation rejected ) or it will be used with the restrictions you put on it.
For the downvoters:
They do have the option to send a check so you could restrict it for only Firefox development but any money that is not restricted is fungible. This means if I donate $100 for Firefox development they can take another $100 (that is not restricted) that they would have used on Firefox on something else. Most people do not mark their donations as restricted so I would still for all intents and purposes be funding something other than Firefox.
A lie is a lie whether it is related to a donation or a purchase.
"The direct work of the Mozilla Foundation focuses on fueling the movement for a healthy internet. We do this by supporting a diverse group of fellows working on key internet issues, connecting open Internet leaders at events like MozFest, publishing critical research in the Internet Health Report, and rallying citizens around advocacy issues that connect the wellbeing of the Internet directly to everyday life."
I think this is the crux of this thread of discussion.
It's inherently a social development in the form of software.
Surely you aren't suggesting that for Google to develop anti-privacy code would require them to have anti-privacy social development?
For example, if you were trying to construct an app to measure diversity, you would need to know what category to measure, how to measure it, how to present it, etc.
And getting requirements right is paramount to the results of the code.
Of course, there are projects where these discussions are probably minimal (such as a kernel for instance), but in most cases, it compromises the majority of software development.
And I entirely disagree that programming code /requires/ any social interaction at all. You can do it purely alone in a basement with no contact with anyone.
Even if you're making your own product, you at least want to get market data and/or customer feedback once you release it. Otherwise, what's the point of selling a product if your customers don't like it?
And I'm not saying that gathering requirements is Mozilla's only social development. I'm saying that you underestimate how much social involvement there is to development, especially on the organization level, where code isn't purely technical.
Because I think that is a core distinction many of the commenters are concerned about here.
If you don't want people telling you what to do, Hacker News ain't a great place to be.
A specific comment on part of this thread seems to indicate it's part of their charter. (or something, not sure what to call it)
> "The direct work of the Mozilla Foundation focuses on fueling the movement for a healthy internet. We do this by supporting a diverse group of fellows working on key internet issues, connecting open Internet leaders at events like MozFest, publishing critical research in the Internet Health Report, and rallying citizens around advocacy issues that connect the wellbeing of the Internet directly to everyday life."
Do you have any documentation on the budget inside Mozilla? Because I think this would solve the issue of transparency for many people here.
If only a tiny fraction of the money went to social programs, maybe more people wouldn't care. But if it's a significant portion, then maybe they are being misleading. Either way, it would end some debate on the matter.
As a foundation (charity/NFP) its records are, by law, very transparent. Any issue of transparency has been invented.
Is anyone here an accountant? Or know of a summary online somewhere by an accountant? The tax paperwork for the company I work at is many hundreds of pages (if not thousands), and I know I could not determine from that paperwork how the money is spent. I'd need actual access to internal books, and even then I'd likely not be able to tell.
It seems some budget clarity is in their annual reports:
>"In addition to building products and technology, Mozilla also invests in people and organizations around the world who share its mission."
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2017/
Who are they supporting?
Some real numbers from this page:
>In 2017, Mozilla spent $966,365 on its agenda-setting work.
>In 2017, Mozilla spent $2,733,016 to support our mobilization work.
>In 2017, Mozilla spent $13,256,720 to support the Mozilla Leadership Program.
This last bit is suspicious, mainly because it's the same technique used by IKEA to avoid millions in taxes and in this circumstances is a bit scam-like. (trademark royalties)
>$10.1M of this revenue came from the proceeds from Firefox, which are transferred from Mozilla Corporation to Mozilla Foundation through a trademark royalty agreement.
So here's a clear statement that $10.1 million dollars is moved away from Firefox development and put into the Mozilla Foundation.
Why this is really odd is because Mozilla Corp is owned by Mozilla Foundation. Why is the parent organization taking funding from the corporation it's supposed to be supporting?
So, it seems that many people are right about Mozilla being clear about where their money is going, but no one seems to be stating they truly understand where that is. This seems like three car monty with donations to Firefox.
But I'd argue you don't know where the money is going. I just found that in 2017 income from Firefox development was syphoned off to pay from Mozilla Corporation to Mozzila Foundation to pay for various programs and re-donated to others.
Please keep in mind that this is not a personal attack as I don't know you and I don't find it particularly constructive to engage in this kind of attacks, so please only focus on my argument:
I cannot understand this way of thinking.
On one hand we have the option to give Mozilla some money to use them however they see fit.
This means that from the sum of the donations they can use whatever percentage they see fit to fund different products/aspects, e.g. the engineering department so that they can keep working on Firefox, the marketing department to increase the awareness and drive adoption, the user researchers to better understand their user needs etc.
On the other hand we have the "default" stance where we don't support what Mozilla is doing.
This means that the development of Firefox, the marketing to raise awareness etc, are depended on Google and on Pocket which is something that we want to get away from.
I think it mostly boils down to some simple questions and how we feel about the answers:
- Do I prefer to know that all my money go to hire more engineers and improve Firefox? Probably (tbh personally I would focus a bit more on user research, it's the everyday people that they should be after, not us)
- Do I prefer to allow Mozilla to be depended on Google? Definitely not.
- Can my donations be used to make the current situation worse (i.e. tie them tighter on Google's business)? No.
So for me, although I don't control where my money goes, I think that they can only be used to improve things.
If you ask me, it’s because most of us work very hard for our money and don’t have a lot to spare.
If we are going to make the sacrifice of donating, we want to make sure the sacrifice is worth it.
If my hard earned money is going to be used for something like the moz://@ nonsense, it’s not worth the sacrifice.
If it’s going to be used to support development of privacy features in the browser, then it is.
What other good can I do with my dollars?
That donating to Mozilla wont make it worse is such a low bar when there are kids that need malaria nets or deworming or whatnot.
If you think about the opportunity cost of donating to an organisation thats doing some things you think are really important as well as some things that you think are only kinda sorta important, when there are organisations that focus 100% on things you think are really important, then that should clear things up for you.
I want Mozilla to build a browser and a mail program. Nothing else. It's easy as that.
And if I have to "fear" that they will use my money to build something else, I will not donate to them.
Think of them as a company with several products. People would buy Firefox, they would buy Thunderbird, but probably nobody would buy the aforementioned "moz://" product or Pocket.
In a traditional company this would lead to a production stop of the later two and to a better focus on the first two products.
With Mozilla, and other donation-based "companies" it will not work that way. There will be other stuff that gets allocated lots of money, because "the money is there" and needs to be used.
Then buy Mozilla, the company, or buy FF/mail server devs to do it. By donating to mozilla you are actually supporting at least one effort Mozilla is participating in. If their revenue goes down after pursuing Pocket, then Mozilla will understand in general their donors don’t approve of pocket. On another coin, by not donating to Mozilla one also is fine with not funding FF/Mail because money just might go to things one doesn’t approve of.
Stupid argumentation. If you don't like the new Apple MBP keyboards, you don't buy Apple itself, but just another notebook from another vendor. Same thing applies here, just that I don't need to "not buy" something but can just decide not to donate.
> On another coin, by not donating to Mozilla one also is fine with not funding FF/Mail because money just might go to things one doesn’t approve of.
No need to make me feel guilty. Simply decouple those projects cleanly from each other and everything is fine. If I could donate for a specific purpose, that would be okay, too. But just like Wikimedia, it's not about keeping the servers running but cross-financing other "projects" (broad term for really anything here) that I do not want to support.
There's no guilt here. It's strictly true. Not donating to Mozilla because they might use the funds in a way the donator doesn't like is also saying the risk of the funds being used for other initiatives is not worth participating in the funding of things they do like.
Donations with conditions lessen the good that the nonprofit could do with them, because then they cannot use those funds to keep the nonprofit alive, much less use those funds to fund the things they do.
So lets say you donated specifically for development of module X. What if a server died and it was in desperate need of repair? What if they need to hire Y person that had good talent for module X? People could construe the funding for interviews for that talent as not being specifically for development.
In short, a lot of people don't understand the bureaucracy of the company enough to make targeted donations for specific use. And it often hampers the organization when you do it.
I guess it's a case if you want Mozilla as an organization to exist as a whole since much of its parts are probably needed to get the product out the door, or caring about one specific piece of code which, in that case, you might as well just fork it and work on it yourself.
Not made up example: nobody wants their donation to go to marketing. It’s not very sexy. But (to a point) money spent on marketing has a non-zero return. Basically every charity pays for their marketing out of their general fund and it’s always strained because it feels like pure overhead but it actually fuels their growth.
Talk to anyone who works in development and they’ll tell you that unrestricted donations have the largest impact.
For Mozilla their diversity campaigns are the same way. They’re banking on bootstrapping a large undervalued talent pool as a long-term growth strategy and social good.
> For Mozilla their diversity campaigns are the same way. They’re banking on bootstrapping a large undervalued talent pool as a long-term growth strategy and social good.
I would prefer not to see tech companies trying to fix our society. We have seen numerous examples where this went really wrong and maybe we should stop that right now.
This is laughable. Nearly every single technological advancement affected society in some manner. Just because you have some narrow view of examples where they did something wrong, doesn't mean you should be militant in your view and try an weasel funding out of an organization that does 95% good. Much better than any private corporation in my opinion.
And restricted funding is based on donor request. You can't say restricted funds are used for X unless donor said for X.
Exactly! Donor in question does not want his or her money to be spent on Mozilla fixing diversity. There's nothing that prevents Mozilla from courting Zuck or Musk or Gates or whoever else that according to their positions think diversity is more important than the ad blocking.
What I mean is that those limitations are made up. You just have to clearly state what you want to do with the money and that will fix those problems. Obviously restricted funds are nothing that is set up in 5 minutes, but I would expect that somebody really thinks about that.
And if you state that up to 10% of the restricted funds might also be used for any other projects of Mozilla, that might be okay.
Something like "your fund will be used for maintaining the infrastructure necessary to provide downloads of the latest binaries" would also be totally fine for me in terms of "buy a new server for this whenever you need it", be it a flooding or just the old server dying. But that obviously does not cover putting money into whatever shiny project is prioritized right now and might die in a year or less.
Otherwise you'll have a cash cow project that finances everything else. While that might be nice for one side, the other side would love to know that their funds are used to improve the already good product.
Otherwise you'll have a cash cow project that finances everything else. While that might be nice for one side, the other side would love to know that their funds are used to improve the already good product.
It's a holistic endeavor. Improving the product includes getting it in the hands of a lot of people, making decisions during conflicting ideas, writing better code, etc.
Restricted funding only hampers this on the perceived notion that the organization is stupid and will waste it all. There's no indication Mozilla will do this.
People who do not think like you should be taught to donate to restricted funds.
Why make people who would like to support development of the privacy first browser support decision of Mozilla to lease class A office space in a slew of expensive cities?
Here's a way to avoid having to deal with restrictions on the funds raised from people: become a regular company that sells a product.
Yeah, have Mozilla become a private company, beholden to shareholders and profit. Look how that turned out for companies that supposedly coined the "Don't be evil" motto.
Plus, there's nothing that prevents others from donating their money without restrictions for the "good of Mozilla"
You donate towards their mission and you are probably not informed enough about the back-stage politics of their foundation.
I like Pocket because it provides features I don’t find in other browsers. I would happily pay for it especially knowing that this is the money that may also be used for the development of the browser engine.
It’s like donating to Wikipedia, but only donating toward articles about Biology. The issue is that you are donating towards infrastructure, not the actual articles written by someone.
> Mozilla is not a democracy.
Obviously not, no. But as a user and a society we can still democratically decide how to handle companies and how they do business. And we can express our opinions just like I did and some people seem to have the same opinion, that's nice.
> You donate towards their mission and you are probably not informed enough about the back-stage politics of their foundation.
What is this? Some kind of "Our savior knows better than you, so keep your mouth shut, sheep!" didactics? From what little I can see from the front, I really don't want to get to know their back-stage politics.
And why back-stage politics after all? What's wrong about a clear "let's build the best, privacy-focused browser and best mail program" as a company mission? Actually that would be a great mission in this day and age. No need for back-stage politics and a more complicated mission.
> It’s like donating to Wikipedia [...] The issue is that you are donating towards infrastructure [...]
Especially this is not correct for Wikipedia/Wikimedia. They are doing _lots of_ stuff with that money that has absolutely nothing to do with keeping Wikipedia up and running. See [0] or [1] for lots of examples.
[0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia... [1] https://www.wikimedia.de/de/themen
So would you think it’s a good idea to allow people to only donate to certain parts of the stuff they do, then?
Many consider it an important work, including myself.
It's short, with several free versions linked to from the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau).
"Chairwoman," Philip Philipovich corrected her.
"Would like to ask you," at this point the woman pulled out of her coat-front a few brightly coloured journals, still damp from the snow, "to take a few journals sold for the benefit of German children. 50 kopecks each."
"No, thank you," replied Philip Philipovich briefly, glancing at the journals.
The four indicated total amazement and the woman went the colour of cranberry juice.
"Why do you refuse?"
"I don't want them."
"You have no sympathy for the children of Germany?"
"On the contrary."
"You grudge fifty copecks?"
"No."
"Why then?"
"I don't want them."
-- "The Heart of a Dog", Mikhail Bulgakov
It turns out people are diverse anyway and that's why not everyone end up in tech.
Slightly off-topic but it is also funny that X would praise diversity, and at the same time imply that we should balance some things out when it is the people themselves who are the cause for the imbalance. They make the assumption that imbalance is bad. Imbalance is not a problem! We do not have to balance/even things out. Examples: construction workers? Mostly males. Nurses? Mostly females, although this has been changing. So what? I do not see these people trying to push women into getting to construction work. Let people decide. We do not have to intervene. If women do not want to get into construction, that is fine! If they do not want to get into IT, that is also fine (but apparently it is not)!
That's true but also ignores the problem that many people drop out of tech due to discrimination or feeling like they don't belong even though they are interested.
"While a majority of the men in the study reported that their internship experiences were positive, women’s experiences were much more of a mixed bag, full of ageism, sexism, and not being taken seriously"
https://www.womenintech.com/mit-study-figures-out-why-so-man...
It seems to me the former can be done without the latter, which makes me suspect anybody who asks for the latter as though it were a prerequisite for doing the former.
It should be abundantly clear that certain groups, especially white women, are actually preferentially selected. There is no discrimination against them. Other groups, like black women, may have a stronger case, but you can't just take an individual's word that they failed due to discrimination. There needs to be evidence far beyond self-reported victimisation.
"It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others." https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
Is your meritocracy measuring merit in the way you think it is?
I'm sure there's reasonable arguments against affirmative diversity in general or Mozilla's diversity projects in specific, but incompatibility with meritocracy is not a strong one.
Say I am a hiring manager at Mozilla and I hire a college graduate from Rwandan not because he is best but because of a diversity quota. What if there is also a Sudanese grad who is looking for a job or a Nepalese transgender MtF? How do I decide at that point?
Is it my call and only my call or should there be regulation and legislation to deal with situations like this? I have one spot and many diverse candidates. How do I choose?
When everyone has an equal opportunity.
You should be able to derive the rest of the answers to your questions from that.
"Equal opportunity" is an unattainable goal, like "utopia". It sounds good in the abstract, but "equal opportunity" is such a subjective concept that it's useless for any practical purpose. Every person's life is as much a product of random chance as innate potential, so there's no objective measure of equal opportunity by which a society that enforces equal opportunity could be judged. (Very much /s, of course.)
The point being that any arguments made against the unattainability of true meritocracy apply just as well to true equal opportunity.
By the way, targets do not need to be attainable in order to produce (also quantifiable) positive effects.
And measuring skills is not?
In short, a "skillocracy" tends to look and act very, very much like an aristocracy, which is kind of the opposite of the idea I think most people try to express with the word "meritocracy".
It's misguided to think that by manually ensuring diversity (eg. By hiring someone for simply being a qualified minority rather than necessarily the best candidate) is pushing for meritocracy.
If diversity programs were interested in maintaining meritocracy while increasing diversity, they'd focus their energy on uplifting poor families through things like training or scholarship programs so their kids have a better shot at life.
E.g. Stanford (used to) vigorously recruited qualified minority candidates to help improve diversity on campus.
My assumption was that not enough qualified minority candidates exist, obviously there are qualified minority candidates, just not enough, thus why they aren't as equally represented in the field in question.
But that's a really big "if". Selections are not completely merit based. They are not blind to race and sex. Minority candidates who use a male western sounding name are much more likely to get invited for interviews than if the have a female or foreign sounding name.
The bias is there. We need to undo it or compensate for it. Extra effort to hire from underrepresented groups makes a lot of sense. Bars should not get lowered for them, but they should be able to get a fair shot.
And maybe the problem is not so much that there are not enough minority candidates, but that there are too many unqualified majority candidates who are taking up space.
Of course one is in service to bigotry, and the other to equality. That makes them pretty different.
If you're driving down the road, and your car pulls slightly to the right, you steer slightly to the left to compensate. Sure, we'd all like a car that steers straight. But it doesn't. So we steer slightly to one side.
It would be great if the people who preach we should not discriminate based on ethnicity, religion, and so forth would actually stop doing that, and start paying more attention to skills, which is actually more relevant to the job. It seems like that they do not wish (or at the very least do not, regardless of intent) to stop discriminating, they just steer to a different side.
The old tired argument that "It's just another sort of bias!" is bankrupt. Its a sort of bias that seeks to repair real problems, not keep them.
Which is completely true - SV companies employee percentages fairly accurately mimic CS graduates percentages. So the majority of bias isn't in hiring... In other words, by the time you're picking the most qualified candidate it's already too late to correct for any cultural/societal bias (you should start in primary school or even earlier).
Here is statements I wish people would honestly try to argue against: A person like to be in a environment where they feel safe (claim 1) and people feel safer being in a majority than in a minority (claim 2).
Why would minority candidates seek to be in an environment at the same rather as majority candidates, if everything else is equal?
I disagree. At least for the majority of cases. It's possible that there are skills or jobs where the talent to excel is extremely rare in certain demographic groups, but I think those cases are extremely rare. For the vast majority of cases, a lack of representation of certain demographic groups would be very strong indication that something is preventing those groups from participating on an equal basis.
> "nor is simply increasing diversity a sign of meritocracy."
That is absolutely true. There are definitely wrong ways to increase diversity that are contrary to meritocracy, but there are also correct ways to do it.
> "uplifting poor families through things like training or scholarship programs so their kids have a better shot at life."
An excellent example of what should be done more.
But even if merely increasing diversity for its own sake does not improve meritocracy, it can actually help meritocracy indirectly: research has shown that people hiring for a job are inclined to hire people who look like the people already in that job. So if a certain industry is dominated by white men, they are inclined to hire more white men for that job. Even if the person hiring for that job is not a white man, and even if they are aware of this issue. So simply increasing diversity can make it easier for talent from minority groups to get recognised for their merit and get hired.
But I think anyone who has any amount of work experience will be under no illusions about the meritocracy in the corporate world. There are plenty of incompetent people getting hired or promoted over more competent people, and that's certainly not a new development. Meritocracy is mostly a fantasy, and I think people who consider diversity a threat to meritocracy are confusing it with aristocracy: the old aristocracy would also claim that they were obviously inherently more suited to rule. They may have claimed to have merit, but the whole point of meritocracy is that it opposed that, and that anyone should be able to rise to the top. Meritocracy and diversity should be going hand in hand. If they're not, you're probably confusing something else for meritocracy.
(Quickly googled example: https://www.nonprofitissues.com/to-the-point/can-earmarked-c... )
https://medium.com/aleria/unconscious-bias-trainings-are-oft...
Unconscious Bias Trainings are (Often) a Waste of Your Money
In my world, that is the complete opposite of diversity.
But on a more serious note, from the little I know he got fired because he supported banning same-sex marriage. Which is not just about 'opinion'. That's about discrimination and he should be called out for it.
Your comment is a prime example of what's wrong with the tech industry in my opinion.
Genuinely curious, how isn't that discrimination? Since when did it being his own money in his free time stop it being a discriminatory stance?
It is not discrimination because there is not any individual being discriminated against. He did not use his position to discriminate against gay people for example.
He outright did the exact opposite and wrote that he was going to push for equality at Mozilla. I do not believe that he would discriminate anyone at Mozilla that was married to someone of the same sex.
I believe that a person can have professional courtesy.
I contacted Mozilla and told them I would never give them another nickle as long as their CEO was evil. I find it hard to believe you were ok with it.
Because that is just, right? You supported the same thing as Brendan.
People should be held accountable for such views. It should be clear to anyone that having "an opinion" which discriminates a whole group of people is not that same as sharing an opinion about Star Wars..
Well, in my country (and I think in the entire EU) what you want is very illegal and is taken very seriously. I think you choose a very fitting username. ;)
Edit: btw with held accountable I don't mean that is should be illegal. I meant that people have a right to react to "injustice"
Same-sex marriage was a very hot topic just a few years ago, should we unperson everyone who was ever against the cause? Even though the entire point of having freedom of speech and association is to allow safe political discourse?
Where would you draw the line? Next do we start firing everyone who supports Trump? Every conservative? Anyone against late-term abortions?
It's a shame that you don't seem to appreciate the value of diversity of thought.
It's to reduce the need for violent revolution against the government by making such discourse that challenges the government safe from retaliation by the government. It is not to make discourse free of consequence more generally. That may in some cases be desirable on its own merits, but it is not part of the “entire point of having freedom of speech”.
Don’t you know Karl Popper’s formulation - a tolerant world cannot tolerate intolerance.
It's like saying you need heavy censorship in order to have free speech. Complete bullshit.
The core point is, if you have a society that accepts anything and everything, that society will not end up with all the things, because it'll also accept people working explicitly to get rid of some of the things. It will instead end up with few things, being run by "dictatorship of small, intolerant minorities"[0]. Therefore, if the society wants to stay accepting, it has to carve an exception - it needs to reject anyone who doesn't also accept anything and everything.
Reasoning behind the "paradox" is sound, but its application to real world varies. In particular, I've recently noticed that the "paradox of tolerance" is primarily being wielded by small, intolerant groups that want to aggressively force their way on everyone else.
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I have never seen any more intolerance than in people who thinks social justice is important. I do not tolerate these peoples intolerance.
I obviously do not accept anything and everything, that is why I am upset at Mozilla and their actions.
> "dictatorship of small, intolerant minorities"
This. This is what a lot of the tech world has become like in my opinion. A lot is dictated by people that think a code of conduct is more important than contributions and actual value.
As soon as you say make a sexual joke, say "there is only two genders" etc you will get banned from that community, be called a nazi, people will try to take your job and income away. Just look at all my posts here, they are all downvoted not because I spam or write something objectively false, but because my opinion is incorrect according to the dictatorship.
And you are probably downvoted constantly because you are spewing beliefs and opinions that scream, "I would prefer to work in a Mad Men era office, than one that values and respects the opinions and beliefs of others."
Fact of the matter, our society is better by saying that beliefs about making a statement like, "there are only two genders", are inappropriate and have no place in modern society.
As always you are more than welcome to exercise your right to free speech, but that doesn't mean others can't exercise their freedoms to remove you from the equation.
I think 'ecmascript was referencing a particularly well-known case of a person making a sexual joke to another in a causal private conversation outside of work, in which some busybody overheard the joke and made so big a ruckus that the joker got fired from his job.
> but that doesn't mean others can't exercise their freedoms to remove you from the equation.
I know you didn't mean it like that, but the way you phrased it kind of reinforces ecmascript's point about social justice being pushed by a group of extremely intolerant people, who are willing to break all the rules of civilized discourse in order to have things their way.
I always say whatever I believe, even if I am at work. If the company would fire me over a joke then fine I wouldn't want to work there anyway. So far I haven't met any issues on that front. Also I don't work in the US so you can't really fire someone where I live because of a joke and it's outright illegal to do it over beliefs.
I do not get the mad men reference, since I haven't seen the show. But so what if I am? No one values or respects everyone's opinions, that is just such a load of horseshit imo. Obviously people here don't value or respect my opinion for example.
> are inappropriate and have no place in modern society
This is very funny, a biological hard fact has no place in modern society? I don't even understand how this is even a controversial thing to believe yet you believe it has no place in a modern society.
I do not wish to live in your definition of a modern society.
While it may seem like that, people aren't valuing your opinion that involves beliefs or views that can inherinitly make groups of people feel discriminated against. A person that identifies as non-binary or gender-fluid would not feel comfortable being around your opinions.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions and beliefs, but when you say whatever you believe you have to understand the potential to be disliked because of that.
People constantly view your dongle jokes or whatever as being insane that you can't make them anymore, but the thing is even before it wasn't socially acceptable, people still were made uncomfortable by it.
It's like a sect that people just seems to buy into for some reason. It doesn't make any sense, it doesn't have any scientific validity what so ever and still that is a touchy subject but calling out other silly stuff people believe aren't? Do you also believe in a flat earth perhaps? If not, why not?
I have a hard time living that hypocrisy, dislike me or not. I do not care if everyone doesn't like me as I expect everyone not to. It is ok if you have another opinion but it is pretty typical since intolerant people usually are like that, can't accept that other people do not share their worldviews. Also I actually am pretty good at making jokes, so it doesn't seem that way to me.
Maybe people like you just lack a sense of humor?
John Finnemore says it better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAMHBlt_CQA
I should've added that I do speak my mind when asked about it or if its a open discussion. I don't go around calling people overweight, but if they ask me if I think they are I will for sure tell them what I think they are ;)
Many philosophers of free speech and first amendment jurisprudence would argue that some restrictions on free speech for the sake of free speech could hypothetically be permitted. The law does this all the time; it restricts action in order to help guarantee the freedom of action of others. The most basic formulation of this is in the harm principle, in which it is recognized that harm should not be permitted because it interferes with others' rights.
Websites started user agent detecting Firefox and putting banners saying to not use Firefox because of their homophobic CEO.
It's pathetic that people like you hide behind censorship arguments and "diversity of thought" when defending the right to attack minorities.
This kind of disingenuous thinking makes me question anyone evangelising Brave as a web browser.
He didn't attack any minority, stop spreading objectively false information. I am defending his right to believe whatever he likes in private. It will be a quick downhill (as we already have seen) as soon as you start listing bad values and try to hate on people that have these values.
You may think I'm pathetic if you wish, I don't care. But remember, I will defend your right to your opinion too. It's kind of obvious you do not believe in the same thing and if more people would be like you we would find ourselves in a dark dystopia. You could move to China, they are well on their way to building the kind of society you seem to strive for. :)
Really? What's the point in arguing stupid semantics.
People are defined by their actions.
He has a right to believe what he wants.
He also has to accept the consequences of those beliefs.
At the end of the day it's just a job. As CEO or an executive you're a figurehead. Your actions are publicly associated with the company you head.
You can decry the evils of "wokeness" or "social justice" but it's also the right of the employees of the company to complain or even campaign against the CEO.
Why is one political campaign acceptable and another not?
Because it really seems like you just don't agree with the politics of one.
Your disingenuousness is what I'm calling pathetic. Like calling up China?
An authoritarian country where the state owns all business whilst discussing the actions of a private company in America.
There are plenty of conservative companies in the USA which would be fine with his political contributions.
The idea of having no social consequences or accountability for your actions isn't a Chinese thing and it isn't an American thing. But it seems to be an effective playbook adopted by conservatives worldwide.
But anyway, it's not like I'm going to change your mind :)
Even if you did donate to development, development is not averse to administration, marketing, hiring, and diversity. And developers are not spending time at Firefox getting the product in the hands of people so it can get better with feedback. Marketing and all the other areas you find "problematic" are trying to do that.
Either way, even if your money doesn't go where you want it, that's a bad reason to not donate considering there's no indication that their product is substantially inferior to competition, they're making hugely poor decisions, etc.
FOSS foundations should (and typically do) accept code contributions that aren't restricted to their leadership's agenda, so why should they not accept financial contributions beyond their agenda?
Financial contributions affect all areas of the organization and the needs/wants of the organization changes daily, some times spontaneously. People simply donating to "writing code" doesn't make an organization function. There has to be some sort of PR. There has to be some sort of administration. There has to be marketing, quality, distribution, etc.