Why You Should Uninstall Firefox and do Some Soul Searching | Hacker News Reader

Why You Should Uninstall Firefox and do Some Soul Searching

zdziarski.com

22 pointsjzdziarski16 comments

I wholeheartedly agree. Someone shouldn't be fired because of their views on a subject like gay marriage. Some people are for it, some people are against it and everyone needs to accept that. Just like some people believe in God and others do not.

Mozilla crossed over into a whole new territory. The once humble as as the article put it, politically neutral organisation for the first time I am aware of in its history caved in to popular opinion. Should Brendan Eich have known better than to air his views on a touchy subject like same-sex marriage? As a CEO yes, but it is wrong to vilify someone simply because their views do not align with those of others. Eich made a mistake, and the whole situation quickly got blown out of proportion.

The wrong decision was made in this situation and as a result, I too, uninstalled Firefox.

Err, Eich wasn't fired for his views. He was hired, and chose to step down. How much pressure came from the board, versus how much was it Eich himself deciding to make the decision.

I think it's fair to say he would not have stepped down had this boycott not happened. Furthermore, the Board could have refused his resignation, saying, if you're stepping down because you believe you're a liability to the company, don't. Stay on and we'll work this out.

Perhaps that's actually what happened, and Eich chose to step down anyway. We'll probably never know. What we do know is that current trend of politicizing everything has reached a new milestone (and a new low).

I'd agree with the article if normal citizens actually had the power suggested in the article. That our voices and votes have equal power to evoke change in government. That what corporations do won't outweigh our collective voices. However, the author admits that this isn't the case:

> ...when what was left of the Tillman Act (a law passed in 1907 to restrict corporate campaign contributions), was essentially destroyed, virtually unrestricting the corporate world from holding politicians in their back pocket through financial contributions.

> What corporate America is doing today is robbing Americans’ of their ability to be heard and to count, and replacing those Americans with the echoes of big business and the massive lobbyist machine at work.

> Unfortunately, everyone’s playing that game thanks to our impotent Supreme Court today.

People are trying to find different ways to make their voices heard, and one way is via their power as consumers. In this instance, Eich ended up as a casualty (rightly or wrongly, I don't care) and he probably won't be the last. If that is the cost of swinging the power back to the people, of weakening the corporate stranglehold on government, and forcing the Supreme Court to actually act on the pitiful state of politics today, then I'm not going to complain.

That's an interesting thought. Since the Supreme Court and Congress have sold control of elections to corporations and the super rich, consumer choice may be one of the last ways for the rest of us to express our will. If we only get to vote for whoever money puts on the ballot, then we may have to also or instead avoid or favour products and corporations aligned with our views.

That's a terrible future.

Maybe this now sounds mundane, but I also uninstalled Firefox and not because of gay activism, corporate identities, political influences. I uninstalled it because it's become a bloated, slow as fuck software. Everytime I'm working on Chrome and I have to fire Firefox up to test a site, I insult it for all the time it takes to start up. If something doesn't work, I open up the console and I'm impressed by how unusable it is. Maybe I've been spoiled by WebKit's one, but I find it a pain to work with Firefox.

While I agree with most of what you're saying, aren't you doing exactly what you accuse the opposition of doing; attributing to an organization the decisions of a single person. Mozilla can't force Eich to be CEO. Eich made a private decision to step down and that shouldn't have an impact on how you view the Mozilla corporation.

I feel it's naive of you to think that. It seems apparent that he was forced out, the fact that he was allowed to resign is just because this whole situation is ridiculous.

I'm not going to go into why I feel that way because there's an entire thread elsewhere that hashes out every single possible approach numerous times.

Mozilla claims this is false: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...

Firefox is a very good product and I will continue to use it, unless you tell me some worthwhile branches from the code compatible with its plugins.

Also if we look at its market-share is at pars with Chrome's, and here it can be a spin so I am careful with any kind of boycotts.

That's why I will still use Firefox/(Waterfox)

This "blah blah blah Special Interests" meme so many people people have been posting today is, quite frankly, idiotic and extremely insulting. Marriage equality is a human rights issue, not just a "political issue" or "opinion." Eich was not pressured to resign from Mozilla because he voted against funding a bridge or because he doesn't like spinach. People wanted Eich to step down because he's a bigot and a bigot is unqualified to lead an organization whose mission statement is freedom and openness.

Please don't start this again, if you want to have a flame war go to reddit or 4chan.

Please refrain from posting intellectually dishonest nonsense then. When this kind of thing gets posted it deserves to be called out for what it is.

So where does it stop? There are a whole lot of people like Eich, and not all of them will go away.

I don't really understand this comment. No one was advocating vandalizing Mozilla property or physically assaulting Eich. Political pressure in the form of protest or boycotts are part of the right to free speech and are vital to the functioning of a free society.

Interesting, not what I expected to read judging from the title and recent events.

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