We see Eich with his own browser vision and executive style over at Brave, where he is unencumbered by legacy bureaucracy or codebases. He wouldn’t have been as free if he were at Mozilla.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If he had shown actual remorse for doing this, he would have been fine. But he didn't.
How many of those that "cancelled" Eich are still going to vote for Biden?
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.
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.
Look up the Popper's paradox of tolerance.
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.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm...
Vivaldi seems like the better Chromium wrapper to me. But my daily driver is Firefox.
Instead of Brave where he's having to build a product, brand & userbase from scratch & try to force a niche unproven VC business model with Brave.