Hacker News Reader

Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

I visited Mozilla HQ a few years ago (it was very nice, as were the people) and came away with strong vibes of an organization struggling with both an identity crisis and inertia.

Baker is a great operator and Mozilla is still bringing in a solid income, but I think they sorely need/needed some sort of outgoing, proactive tech visionary type to give Mozilla a fresh/enhanced meaning to evolve into rather than continuing to live off the fat of the land. To be fair to Baker, she has blogged about how she thinks about Mozilla's ongoing mission – https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2023/03/31/a-quarter-century... – but I can't help feel a more proactive and public approach might be needed to evolve and grow their market share.

View on HN

Why should I be fair to anyone who believes that $3m/year isn't enough for them? Someone who decided they needed an additional $2m after their incompetence lead to them laying off many of the people who actually produce work.

>fair: impartial and just, without favouritism or discrimination.

We should be fair to everyone. But there's no contradiction - you can be fair to someone, and still judge them very harshly.

Disclaimer: I'm not a native speaker, feel free to correct me if I'm misinterpreting something.

You're not incorrect in your sentiment or definition but fairness is often misused in order to downplay an individual's responsibility or to justify their actions.

An illustrative example where the use of the phrase "to be fair" would be justified:

Person A: "Brian has been very rude to me lately!"

Person B: "To be fair, he's been in a lot of pain since the surgery."

However, in this case originally, GP's request for fairness read to me as a pre-emptive dismissal of concerns regarding the ceo's performance, given that the examples did not address any criticism.

When I say I have no interest in being fair to the ceo of Mozilla, it's not to say that I believe they should be treated unjustly. Rather, it's that I believe their behaviour to be inexcusable given the context. Admittedly, this does veer a little from the dictionary definition.

I'm not saying you should be fair ;-) I wanted to balance my "Mozilla needs to do something" opinion with Baker's blog post that implies that they are.

It doesn't matter where you are, you always want more. You also want more despite having enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com