Drop Dropbox

I think we should not forget about this slide: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/PRISM-...

so basically this move, in my opinion, just means that dropbox has been added to that very list and there is no point in using other providers shown as an alternative (e.g. google) or even just hope that dropbox will care more about privacy after she steps down eventually.

As for the "politics" of it, "Are you, or have you ever been part of the surveillance state?" is not a question about one's political views. It is more like the question in Germany "Were you a Stasi officer or informant?"

I am not looking forward to the future where no one shares any opinion they may or may not have due to this type of blacklisting.

If Dropbox board of directors is fine to sit in the same room with the person who was connected with patriot act, iraq war, massive surveillance and torture, I, personally, don't want to have anything in common with such board and such top management and the products they make.

Interfering with the "community" system is such a slippery slope and we are apparently watching another one of these revealing moments.

With this appointment, I have no faith that the Dropbox Board of Directors see their role this way.

Rice has clearly demonstrated that she favors sharing information with the government and law enforcement if they claim that they need that information, by any means necessary. It seems both reasonable and proper that those who would prefer Dropbox to hold a stronger position on the privacy of their customers would see this as an ominous sign.

It's about preventing people to rise to power who are in favour of crimes against humanity such as hate and suppression against certain demographics (gays) or killings of hundreds of thousands thousands of people, just as if they were in favour of other crimes against humanity such as racism, slavery or freedom of speech.

The linked page talks nothing about Rice's views, it talks about the way that she has used her power in this world, and what the outcomes have been.

If you're advocating that the business context should be somehow special, a place where people should be free of the consequences of their actions in other realms, I'm going to have to disagree with you.

This is mildly insulting. You know of course that the problem isn't who Ms Rice voted for in the last election "or some similar matter"; the matter is very dissimilar.

This downplaying of stakes isn't fooling anyone; it's unclear to me why you're even trying.

Sure, the Iraq war was a trillion dollar mistake, but that's just money. Live by the sword die by the sword and all that. A lot of Americans have a Christian upbringing, whether or not they ultimately believe in God. Torture is what Satan does -- that's the Satan, the personification of evil. This is the rock bottom of the moral scale.

"What matters is upholding the abiding principle (precious in a free society) that people can hold divergent views on such topics as politics, religion, and society without being punished for their views in a business context."

In a free society, is business the most important thing?

There's a lot at stake here, which is why people are reacting so forcefully. What kind of values does the SV community have? What kind of values do Y Combinator and HN have? People are coming here because HN and Y Combinator very much helped make Dropbox what it is, and if that creation is now paying and giving prestige to a person who has gravely harmed the world, for bad reasons, a lot of people will object and are objecting to that.

A free society has the right to determine what it values. I hope our community decides to value ethics and humanitarianism. One way we can express those values is to speak out against companies that help criminals launder their reputations.

Of course they do.

Voting with our wallets is almost the only democratic right remaining to us lowly consumers these days. Choosing which companies to support directly impacts the sort of society we build.

>> Do we really want a counterpart agenda now setting rules for who can be a founder, who can be an investor, who can be a director, who can be a CEO, or who can otherwise take a prominent role in the startup world? The answer should be an emphatic no.

Who's setting rules? People are saying 'if you take on this person, whose views I disagree with so very fundamentally, I can no longer have any trust in your organisation meeting my needs'.

There is nothing at all wrong with this.

Nobody is saying there ought to be a law. They are exercising their freedom peacefully and lawfully. You should celebrate that even when you disagree.

Dropbox is free to hire Ms. Rice. Everyone else is free to shun them for it.

Dropbox news is HN fodder. The political nature of Ms. Rice's reputation does not make the topic any less relevant to HN.

Bad ethics should be called out as so, in this case I think hiding behind "politics" is a bit of a cop-out. It's not inherently liberal at all to make a case against Rice, in fact many conservatives would do the same.

Personally, I know I have a lot of political mis-givings about appointing Ms. Rice, but that's not the main reason I would feel uncomfortable working under her direction in a technology company. I would probably be more concerned about her lack of fore-thought and poor decision-making. I would be concerned about my ability to trust her.

I know that I, and quite a few others in the tech community have a political bias, but even looking past that, there are many business-related reasons to feel that this is a wrong choice.

I've been considering moving out to SF from the Midwest, but this very thread has me reconsidering things.

I'm not interesting in being hung from a lamppost if I happen to accidentally blurt out a conservative opinion in a moment of forgetfulness.

As to the rest, people can, should, and do judge leaders in business and politics by their worldviews. That is how democracy and free speech operate. If your customers want to express their opinion about a CEO's views and the potential insecurity of their product or the immorality of things going on behind the scenes, they have every right to boycott and publicly protest. This is especially considering that HN users are a good representative sample of Dropbox users and the technically literate, while the "rest" of America are unlikely to be affected either way. In fact, protest and boycott are the ONLY powers Dropbox customers have to address the problems they see, so denying them this power by shame or nostalgia for an American Flavor is decidedly unAmerican.

To give a less politically-charged example: I refuse to eat at Jimmy-John's Sandwiches because the owner/creator is a known poacher of endangered animals. You're telling me that I should ignore that because his political view is that preserving endangered animals is less important than hunting sport, and that's irrelevant to the business. Well to me a sandwich is less important than making a statement.

On the other hand, no company should be legally prevented from willfully hiring or appointing whomever they can get. But to say that everyone should avert their eyes as long as the decisions appear ethical from the outside is ludicrous.

Technology is not just "business". We are building the very fabric of future civil societies. There is, in my opinion, no other area of human endeavor today that requires greater care and reflection than "technology".

The 'HN party line' that this is just "business" is socially irresponsible.

I think the problem here is that it is more than just holding divergent views. Rice was a major contributor in planning/executing the Iraq War which majority of Americans have opposed in the long run. Not to mention the number of civilian casualty just because we thought they had weapons of mass destruction.

Anyone is free to hold any views they want. But their actions based on those views have consequences.

Everything you've so passionately stated with such deep concern can be summarized as, "Let's not persecute people in the startup world for their political beliefs."

I would agree with that statement, however it is entirely irrelevant in this case-- the first three items in that article were entirely non-political. Inciting a war on false pretenses, aiding the administration in violating the Geneva convention, and violating civil liberties via warrantless wiretap have nothing to do with Democrats vs. Republicans.

These things aren't controversial political stances, they are international crimes. People are outraged at her appointment to Dropbox because there's a large body of evidence suggesting that she's a war criminal, not because she's a Republican.

Domestically, we've somehow decided that the Iraq war is a moot point, something better left in the past. But internationally, where our former president has actually been convicted of war crimes in absentia, you can't just lamely pretend that this is just a matter of "different strokes for different folks."

It's comforting to frame this as a political issue rather than a criminal one, because the alternative is too exhausting and frightening to grapple with. Unfortunately, none of the perpetrators of these war crimes are ever likely to face charges and be tried in court. But at the very least, we can prevent these international suspects and convicted criminals from enjoying high-paying careers in the private sector.

For the record, even though I am staunchly in favor of marriage equality, I did not agree with the witch hunt surrounding Brendan Eich. That was a political issue; it should be easy for you to tell the difference.

Some corporations care only for profit, others are concerned about the responsibilities implied by their success and influence. I want to support the later and not the former. I don't see anything unreasonable about that.

Who a company hires in a leadership role is inevitably a reflection of their values. It hints at what they will prioritize and how they will use the money I am paying them. Putting Rice on the board strongly suggests that they don't care what she believes, they only care about profit. Or, worse still, that they agree with her.

I don't want to support a corporation that is for profit alone, nor one whose values are at odds with basic human rights.

*edited for grammar and wording

Surely you don't believe Eichmann should have been judged solely on his organizational skills? My 'violation' of Godwin's here is entirely intentional. This woman commited crimes against humanity different in no way other than scale from those that were prosecuted at Nuremberg.

This is not about simply holding "different political views". In fact, the article doesn't mention political ideology (except to dismiss it as its rationale). This is about actual actions taken, some of which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, torture, and the destruction of fundamental American principles.

So, your comment, which frames it as some sort of thought-policing or ideological litmus-testing in the startup world, is entirely misleading. Instead, what you are effectively doing is taking exception to the idea that she should face any consequences for her actions.

In fact, there are many who feel that she is guilty of war crimes and should be tried as such. No matter where you come down on that issue, it is difficult to argue that it is completely unreasonable. So, as far as Ms. Rice is concerned, perhaps she should be grateful that the consequences of her actions are so thoroughly muted as to only potentially cost her a board seat.

At the end of the day, asking people to vote with their dollars as to whether they want to support a company that has a relationship with someone whose actions they find deplorable (and possibly illegal) seems completely reasonable.

It means that a bunch of people who once thought they were somehow above or apart from politics find that they are not, and that the things that happen in the world constitute news of real interest to hackers. That's growth.

It's also misleading to talk about this as an issue of ideological purity. People talk about purity when the politics of the public figure in question are not extreme enough. The problem is that she helped start a war that killed rather a lot of people, none of whom are now able to lend their voices to the discussion, and those who wish to remember those people are obliged to speak on their behalf. You don't mind her politics, and that's cool. But no one's forcing me to pay Dropbox anything. So I won't anymore.

We've all been learning that large technology companies cannot escape politics -- whether it's Edward Snowden's revelations or Turkey's ban on Twitter. Seeing this conversation here may have less to do with a changing Hacker News culture and more to do with a realization that technology & politics are intertwined.

I don't know, I guess it's that free citizens voting with their wallets is not at all similar to powerful governmental figures conducting an oppressive inquisition?

Your last paragraph rings true. But this is so far removed from simply allowing a business person to contribute to businesses, in spite of their political, religious, and societal beliefs. This is a person who was instrumental to the patriot act. More than that, Dropbox, which at its core, is a decentralized store of information, now has a member of the board who was instrumental in implementing the capacity for governments to peep into information without warrant.

This goes much further than simply allowing a person to hold different beliefs than ours. This is about a person, who has implemented legislation that has taken away fundamental rights of individuals, and who is now a member of the board of a go-to app for plenty of individuals and businesses.

You seek to unite people, but for what purpose? I have yet to see business interests or _especially_ 'startup culture' tackle the real inequities and tragedies of our time. Startup culture is good at addressing the lifestyle issues of well off technophiles, not at preventing war, or justly distributing food or housing. (I am interested to see if Watsi can do anything better than Doctors Without Borders, or if it is just more focus on individuals rather than statistically significant outcomes). We ought to be looking for ways to transcend the limitations of business practices and reassert moral claims.

Note that people asking for Eich and Rice to get out of their lives aren't asking for government intervention or any formal rules set in place. If dropbox or mozilla want to lose their massive user base and keep profitable amoral corporate clients, that's fine, we'll leave them alone. If the economy eventually bifurcates and passionate progressive people replace large swaths of infrastructure with open, democratic organizations that seek to distance themselves from the corporate tradition I think it would be an enormous boon to the species.

Are we so adrift that we can't create a strong distinction between McCarthyism/Jewish persecution and asking our leaders to be cautious to war/pro-marriage? You actually see these positions as interchangeable and arbitrary? Should we simply abandon any moral or aesthetic position and let capitalism run its course?

Rice was one of the architects of one of the largest human atrocities in the past 50 years.

It stopped being politics around the time that the first concentration camp was built in Iraq after the US invaded.

However, it has to be the other way around from DH. He is going to modify the image and the charisma of his company… and it may have negative consequences in his company (as we can see in the article and in these posts) and he will have to accept them like some people will stop using his service. If you hire someone who is going to make you lose some clients and stain your image… you better hire another one… there are plenty of people able to work in that position with a record as good as Ms Rice without all that suppose cr*p beneath them.

I think big companies shouldn’t mix with politicians with controversial records… even though they do... IMHO!

Board Member 1: Do we really want to business with Bob? Isn't he pro-slavery? Board Member 2: Of course we do! His cotton production is the cheapest in the country!

Yes, indeed, I will hold it against her. Her morality is abhorrent, and it, frankly, is wrong to think that it should not have broader consequences for her living in society.

I think that if we got rid of this idea that "it's only business" or "she did what she had to do" or any of these other little slogans that allow us to dismiss antisocial behavior outside of the context in which it occurred, then we would be revoking some sort of implicit permission that so many seem to be willing to grant to people who wish to do bad things.

These things are not about politics or religion. This is about willfully and intentionally hurting others.

Please stop representing this as being merely about the personal political or religious views of the people involved. This is about people who either have, or had the intention of inflicting very real pain on others.

Others that include our friends, our families, our neighbors. People have every right and reason to protest putting these people in these position, and it has nothing to do with political intolerance.

Or is it just that you personally consider that the past actions of Ms Rice weren't a big deal, and that you don't understand why anyone would feel differently?

But holding people responsible for their questionable political views happens all the time; in 2010 Rick Sánchez was fired for calling Jon Stewart "a bigot". Once. Outside of his regular show. Were you upset then? (Maybe you were, I don't know; but it seems you should have been.)

I'm giving my data to a company to hold. They appoint someone who has no problem spying on my personal data and using it for their own _political_ ends, who has no strong concept of privacy? I dislike their ethical conduct. I'll be taking my data else where, thanks.

I don't inherently disagree with her politics, I disagree with the ethical clash. It's a social contract: I'll give Dropbox my data if you promise to be kind with it, and then they appoint someone who doesn't give a fuck about that concept.

1) Is there any belief or action not directly related to someone's job that should disqualify them from their position?

2) If the answer to #1 is yes, does this specific issue cross that threshold?

3) Does the answer to #1 change based on their position within a company, e.g. a regular employee vs a CEO?

I've seen well-reasoned arguments for many different combinations of those opinions, and I have a lot of respect for most of the combinations I've seen, e.g.

- Even if a white separatist contributed money to a campaign to revive "separate but equal" Jim Crow legislation, we shouldn't oppose their employment if they have a history of working well with all co-workers/employees in a diverse company.

- Some political beliefs/actions would disqualify someone, but gay marriage equality is not (yet) beyond the pale, especially given the high percentage of Americans who hold the same beliefs.

- Gay marriage is indeed an issue that should reasonably factor into employment positions, but only for a select few leadership positions such as CEO due to the disproportionate power within a company held by people in those few positions.

What makes these debates problematic is people talking past each other without realizing they're debating different questions. This gets worse because each of the 3 questions I listed have many sub-categories.

Since grellas' posted about question #1, I hope people recognize that and tailor their responses to the argument he is actually making, in the spirit of "colleagues trying to reason out the truth together". Because he argued for employment to be belief-neutral, I'll summarize the three arguments I'm seeing on these threads which are relevant to that specific question:

1) Past behavior is a signal for future action, and Rice's position on the Board of Directors sends an unacceptable signal about how seriously Dropbox takes privacy. Even a person against boycotts based on political or religious beliefs has strong reason to oppose Rice's appointment to the Board.

2) Rice is a war criminal who happens to have not been prosecuted. Refusing to do business with a company who appointed a criminal who'd committed equivalently-serious-but-non-political crimes and escaped prosecution wouldn't raise any eyebrows, so why should this?

3) All people have a responsibility to discourage behaviors which are provably detrimental to the functioning of a well-ordered society. General litmus-testing of beliefs (or even actions) causes more problems than it solves, but Rice's behavior was so far over the line that we are morally obligated to marginalize her and all of her colleagues who behaved similarly during the Bush administration.

I'm not sure whether I agree with any of the above arguments, but I respect each of them, and I hope that either Hacker News figures out how to debate them civilly or that the moderators pull all stories like this off the frontpage.

*By business-as-usual, I'm referring to your statement -- that someone can freely practice business no matter what acts they've committed, or wrongs they've perpetrated on humanity.

If this was the past CEO of Enron, no one would care about his political, religious, or social believes. He would be unsuitable because what he has done (or said as in the role of Enron CEO).

Techies are trying to figure out how to have an actual impact that affects the people and institutions in power. And are discovering that with a bit of creativity they can upend some of this.

I, personally, think these boycotts are good things. People are voting with their money and that actually gets attention. And, it is also subject to vote; those who disagree can spend their money there and oppose the boycott.

Both capitalism and democracy at work.

Most of the negative comments on this thread are about her actions, not her ideological purity. The criticisms focus on her role in the Iraq War, 9/11, Katrina, not her political affiliation. Critics are outraged that the candidate hired for her decision making ability has a record of making very poor decisions that had severe deleterious effects.

>It is easy enough to whip oneself up into a lather over Ms. Rice’s policies if one disagrees with them but what about the half of America (or whatever significant percentage) that does not. And why should this be relevant to board service?

Ms. Rice has expressed support for warrantless wiretapping and mass surveillance. Many users are concerned that these views are inappropriate for someone working at a company that hosts our data.

>Politics, religion, and social worldviews divide people and have no place as limiting tests in a business environment. Scolding and finger-wagging...

Her support for mass surveillance is very relevant to Dropbox's business.

I disagree strongly with your supercilious characterization of the outrage as an example of close mindedness and bigotry. I believe that you made your post in earnest but it is hard not to see it as malicious. Your fatuous attempts to classify the outrage about the hiring of a supporter of mass surveillance, torture, and the Iraq War as similar to the oppression of minorities and the blacklisting of suspected Communists in the 1950s is so outrageous that it is offensive.

Ms. Rice is not a founder, and she is not being persecuted for her political views. She is disliked because of her actions, not her views, and your failure to distinguish between the two is troubling.

Whether or not you are for or against her other activities, they are irrelevant to her position as director. But taking data without warrants? That is something that is directly relevant to Dropbox's core product.

That's not a matter of 'free opinion', it's a serious warning for clients of the company, that there is a new director that is personally responsible for expanding surveillance and authorising the taking of private data without due process.

    What matters is upholding the abiding principle (precious in a free society) that people can hold divergent views on such topics as politics, religion, and society

Would you like Hitler on board of directors? Sure, he invaded half of Europe, Asia and Africa, then there is holocaust.

On the other hand he will guarantee mad money for your company. We are talking IBM money, Hugo Boss money, VW/Mercedes/Bosch money.

  SCREW the dead, we are rich baby!

Then you don't know American politics.

How different might the country be had Gore been seated as President in 2001 after winning the election?

So as a non-american I am asking - will Ms. Rice work to protect data that we trust Dropbox with or when Dropbox is asked to turn over our data (of non-americans) will she advise Dropbox board to play along and not give a damn about our data.

Knowingly I will not support a company that works with politician who are known to support and subvert privacy of individuals.

Right at the beginning of the page: "This is not an issue of partisanship" and then it launches into detailed points about Rice as an individual.

However even in foreign policy matters, there would have been different results with respect to the Iraq war. The invasion was a quick and massive pivot away from the more justifiable war in Afghanistan. Given that Saddam Hussein tried to have Bush jr.'s father killed, that leaving Hussein in power was possibly some unfinished business of that same father, that Cheney's pet company Haliburton made ridiculous profits on government war contracts, and that it was a Republican sub-faction of neo-cons who were so desperate to invade, I think there's a good case for there being a big difference between the parties. Not to mention the key personal opinions among top Republican admin officials seemed to drive the use of "enhanced interrogation".

To go through a few places the two parties in the US differ substantially - voting rights, civil rights, healthcare, minimum wage, immigration, unemployment benefits, unionization, SNAP.

You know, small stuff.

This sounds a lot like apogolism. These war crimes are VERY far removed from the standards of contemporary western civilized countries.

Obama administration continuing many of the evil policies doesn't make it any more acceptable, taking this as "the new normal" would be apathy bordering on nihilism.

From a broader POV, this line of reasoning exemplifies the syndrome "perfect is the enemy of good" (also known as the Nirvana fallacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy).

Eich didn't torture and murder people.

You make the call.

Given the current climate, I find it incredible that a cloud storage company would be involved with someone who actually wiretapped members of the UN Security Council. It's almost like they're saying "thanks for all the data, oh and f* you".

The issue here isn't just about someone's personal beliefs. Eich and Rice both operate at very high levels within their organizations and that means they both have a leadership role and are representatives of those companies to the larger public. When people have a problem with those people's actions and point of view, they most certainly have a right to voice that disagreement.

It is important to note that a personal belief which is discriminatory (Eich) does not make that belief legitimate. Why exactly should Eich be defended at all? Support of legalized discrimination against groups of people is morally reprehensible, even if you think marriage isn't that big of an issue. In the case of Rice, a track record of getting people tortured and killed is horrifying and this person should not be supported.

When a business selects someone to join a C-level position or its board of directors, they are endorsing that person completely, including the unseemly things they do or endorse that do not directly relate to the company. You can't separate the two, a company is empowering a person to a degree when they get that position and that is a form of direct support of that person.

I'm definitely switching over from Dropbox. I was planning to do it anyway. I know this sounds bad but - the fact that I can't store illegal files just bugs me to no end.

[1]MaidSafe is launching it's token sale (Safecoins) effort in 10 days and I will switch my business over to them completely. I know it's not as slick or developed as Dropbox but it's private, decentralized, anonymous and free(I know it sound ridiculous but that's what you get when you combine the concepts of a distributed systems network and Bitcoin)

Not to mention that I have the chance of participating in something great as the possible birth of a decentralized and anonymous internet with a built in payment network.

[1]https://github.com/maidsafe/Whitepapers

Eich's stance was (and is) personal, and I'm pretty sure it would have stayed that way. I would have kept using Firefox because of the Mozilla position on privacy and openness, and despite its CEO position.

On the other hand, Dropbox is a private company. They don't stand for you, they stand for themselves. They are their own first priority. Having someone as important as Mrs Rice on board is certainly not something that will be beneficial to the public. If she's not there for the public but for Dropbox, then yes, we must fear the worst.

In any event, I think your problem is you took the wrong position on Eich -- first, there was no "lynch mob" -- being denied a high profile, well-paid job as head of a non-profit is not the same as being lynched. Second, no-one forced Eich to donate to prop 8, and the outcome was quite foreseeable. Isn't a bit of judgment an important job skill for the CEO of a non-profit?

People should put more effort into holding their politicians accountable while they are in office- not for settling idealogical scores after they reenter private life.

We the people have no one to blame but ourselves for this. It is the voter's fault that these people are able to flourish. If we don't take our civic responsibilities seriously, then these kinds of campaigns are petty and destructive.

Americans that act in these kind of thought police exercises instead of actually investing in the system should be ASHAMED of themselves. Is what she did illegal? Nominate politicians that will instill FBI leaders who will prosecute crimes. WORK FOR IT. Don't just talk. You need to do more than vote.

I don't know, there's something that feels just wrong about having a political figurehead mixed in with a company that is (arguably) one of the success examples of Silicon Valley. It just... difficult to describe with words.

Rice seems to have gone far far wider than that (beyond democracy). But of course you could argue that she nevertheless remained true to her beliefs or whatever. So at the end of the day, it's a personal decision...

But specifically to this issue, my views and Rice's views on privacy are diametrically opposed. When it comes down to it I simply do not trust her with my data. So it's not so much that I dislike her politics, it's that I think her decisions could have a direct impact on me as a customer.

I know dropbox has terms and conditions on what they will do with my data, but once again, my take is that Rice has a history of weaseling out of those kind of things.

It's another thing to subvert our system of government via deception, surveillance and/or intimidation, either by taking action outside the bounds of legal limits, or working to redefine those limits to suit your own purposes. There's a fair argument that these two situations are not comparable, regardless of how you feel about Eich's donation.

Does anyone in a position to know, by which I mean that they've actually been in politics at the national level, care to tell me whether I'm right?

But there's a separate question to that, which is the moral ethics of a person who would do things (even in good faith) that they know will result in hurting others. Will Rice make decisions at Dropbox that she knows will hurt people, even if it's the right "business" decision?

With regard to the warrantless wiretaps, it's clear that if there was an actual terrorist that she was trying to put in jail, a warrantless wiretap may help accomplish that goal. She would in effect be acting in good faith while trying to accomplish the goals of her job. But at the same time, she's violating someone's privacy and potentially violating the law. If a similar situation came up at Dropbox, where violating someone's privacy could help the business, would you still want that person employed?

But I also think this backlash comes from people being reminded about the fundamental reality of Dropbox. It's always been a centralized technology with a controller that's free to do whatever it pleases with your data, either for their own gain or simply out of expediency - any sane hacker should have been recommending avoiding Dropbox and its ilk this whole time. Appointing someone who's directly associated with facilitating and justifying hostile acts reminds everyone of this inconvenient truth, which makes those in denial uncomfortable.

This is so insanely hyperbolic I don't even know where to begin. We're now using the term "lynch mob" for a situation where people a) boycotted the product and b) wrote a lot of things about how what Brandon did was wrong and how he is the wrong choice for CEO. So, lynch mob, which means, "a mob that kills a person for some presumed offense without legal authority" is used for a situation where there was zero violence, zero murder and everyone was perfectly within their legal rights. Want to reconsider?

Furthermore, your use of "crusade" makes no sense either. The thing you described was you deleting your dropbox account. How is this anything other than a normal rational thing. I'm really worried that people now seem to view "people opposing an idea in a nonviolent way" as a lynch mob and deleting your account for a web service is a crusade. Isn't this just you exercising the same freedom of expression that you believe Brandon deserves but his opponents don't?

Eich had opinions based on mythology. And his impact on people's lives, in terms of health, security and happiness, was orders of magnitude less.

Do I want to drink a beer with Eich? Looking at his donation record - no. Will his contribution improve the Mozilla product? Looking at his history as a technologist with Mozilla and JavaScript - probably yes.

Do I want to drink a beer with Rice? Looking at her career history - no. Will her contribution improve Dropbox? Looking at her career history - can't imagine any positive effect, probably negative, especially in the privacy area.

Definitely going to try some Dropbox alternatives now.

Now put the shoe on the other foot. Think about all those people that feel as strongly about gay marriage as you do about the Iraq War. Their belief that they should protest against Mozilla doesn't feel that much different than your own protest, does it?

If you disagree with the board of a company and you want to stop using them, thats fine. Doesn't matter if it's Eich or Rice. Don't like them, stop using their products/services.

What isn't right is personally attacking either of them. Don't like Rice, that fine, you can post a blog or say whatever you want. Crossing the line is harassing them and sending death threats.

If the whole Eich thing would have stayed with people talking about how they don't like him, I wouldn't have a problem. When people started harassing him and it became popular to harass him it crossed the line. So far I haven't heard of anyone harassing Rice. (Maybe people do and they "disappear", I don't know.)

Politics vs Ethics. "I think marriage equality is politically correct" vs "I think someone who violated their own country's privacy law and had a hand invading a foreign country which resulted in the deaths of thousands shouldn't own my data".

One is inherently a political issue - state-issue marriage licenses. States can say "yes this marriage is valid." The other is non-political, a bigger question of human-kind and what is always correct.

This is because it's a matter of looking at whether there's a conflict between their stated beliefs and the way I'd like their companies to be run.

In Eich's case, he was opposed to marriage equality. While I disagree with him, this does not affect his work because (thankfully) private corporations don't issue marriage licenses.

In Rice's case, she supports warrantless wiretaps. This attitude (that government requests can and should be responded to even if they lack warrants) is directly applicable to the decisions and policies she'll guide for Dropbox. My privacy will be directly compromised.

It's a matter of applicability and impact, not politics.

To fix this we have to find a way to reward tempered opinions. The absolutism in our society is becoming stronger over time and it's further dividing us.

When you're talking about preemptively invading an entire country then it is your moral imperative to do everything possible to 1) ensure your justification is correct and 2) ensure you carry out the decision in the best way possible.

For whatever reason, this did not happen. Decisions were rushed, conclusions were reached with insufficient evidence, alternative possibilities were not considered, dissenting voices were not listened to, etc.

Perhaps they still had good will throughout all of this. But does it even matter? The outcome was terrible and that is directly because they failed to do better when they most certainly could have.

You're also ignoring the other points made by the article. Are you going to make the same excuse about her approval of torture?

>It has become an article of faith that the Bush administration acted in bad faith about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while all that really has ever been shown is that they were tragically, woefully and extraordinarily wrong.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/index.html?...

It has been shown, conclusively, that they lied, that they lied knowingly, and that they lied a lot. Don't white wash history in an attempt to be "even" or see "both sides". There is objective truth here.

Except they weren't talking about available facts to be examined, and their conclusions. What they were doing was presenting a falsehood as a new fact. Without any evidence.

It's one thing to say "because of x,yz, we think they have WMDs".

What they did was: "THEY HAVE WMDs!!!" (evidence to be examined will be provided soon, promise)

People at the CIA were telling the administration that they had it wrong. They just didn't want to hear it since it didn't fit with their narrative, and didn't align with their goal of war. The truth was irrelevant at that point.

I find it very odd that, despite the fact they had access to allegedly better intel than everybody else, they were the only ones who were that substantially and, adding to the oddity, conveniently wrong.

They give 25 GB, and respect your privacy (they are based on France).

Ugh...

Hey actually the word footprint can also be understood as garbage.

> the impact on the environment of human activity in terms of pollution, damage to ecosystems, and the depletion of natural resources.

Then if you read it this way, the sentence sounds actually very appropriate!

[0] http://www.owncloud.org

https://www.mediafire.com/upgrade/

If you want something with strong security and privacy, there's https://spideroak.com/

http://titansgroup.com.br/cloud.php

It's currently aimed at telcos (América Móvil used it in Latin America) but IIRC they rolled out their own product, at least for internal use.

But they have a Linux client! Proprietary, but I can never get grive to work right so I use it (hesitantly). Most of my stuff is synced via owncloud, though.

However! I do welcome the thought of people looking for alternatives to Dropbox. I consider trusting your information with a propriety company based in the US, to be quite foolish these days. Personally I use Owncloud. It's open source. You can run it from your personal server. Owncloud has clients for Linux, Window, MAC, Android and IOS. You can also access your information through any web browser. To put the cherry on top, Owncloud has the capabilities to sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across your all devices. It's a great piece of software and should suit those looking for an alternative.

http://owncloud.org/

http://www.salesforce.com/company/leadership/board-of-direct...

I'd say Wuala, as SpiderOak's mobile application wasn't great last time I checked. It only had read capability.

Similar to ownCloud, has client support for all the major platforms.

For the record, it's written by a Chinese company - not that this should matter, but it's often rejected because all those Chinese are cyber criminals, y'know?

And who let him have those weapons and told him to go ahead and use them against the Iranians? He looks lovely in that photo embracing Donald Rumsfeld... So by this standard, many members of the US government had also shown willingness to use weapons of mass destruction. If this disqualified Hussein as a legitimate world leader, then why was Rumsfeld allowed in government?

It was very clear that he hadn't, the US government (just like the chemical weapons) chose to ignore their own intelligence because it didn't suit their purpose.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_r...

> On March 1, 2002, INR published an intelligence assessment, Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely.

The Senate did an entire hearing on pre-war intelligence, you really should read it:

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=29877...

If you prefer something that you can sit and watch, see BBC Panorama's "The Spies who Fooled the World" - it is both interesting and frightening, especially the part where the single person who was the US source used in Powell's UN brief tells the interviewer he made everything up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3K9twuuU7g

With -- lest it be forgotten -- the full support and backing of the US government while he was actually doing it. Heck, when it first became public knowledge and world outrage started, the US rushed Donald Rumsfeld out to (1) demonstrate to the rest of the world that they should shut up and that the US stood side-by-side with Iraq, and (2) reassure Iraq that US support for their actions would continue.

(A) We know what information was available at the time and they clearly did not make the best decision they could. There was a consistent focus on information that supported the desired outcome and away from information that didn't.

(B) Good intentions and $5 will buy you a coffee at Starbucks. Hitler genuinely wanted to do a good job.

(C) Irrelevant. If our national leaders cannot think rationally years after a tragedy then they are unfit to be leaders and should resign. It's especially irrelevant given that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

(D) No disagreement there.

(E) Nonsense. Nuclear weapons are hard to build. It was blindingly obvious to anyone who was paying the least bit attention that Iraq had made no real progress on obtaining nuclear weapons. There was an outside possibility that, if left unchecked, Iraq might be able to build nuclear weapons a decade or two down the line, but even that was unlikely. It certainly wasn't an urgent problem that required a massive rush to invade the country.

(F) The downside of a false positive on that issue was also considerable. You can't just look at the negatives of one side and say "better safe than sorry" when the negatives on the other side are equally large. The invasion killed a huge number of people and went a good way toward bankrupting this country. Compare that against... what? Even if Iraq had managed to obtain nuclear weapons, they had no way to deliver them anywhere.

(G) It was obvious to a lot of people before the invasion that it was a crock of shit and that it would cost a huge amount of money and lives for no good reason. Those people were all correct. The implication that this is pure hindsight is completely wrong.

Oh! Fun with loaded words.

Between 300 and 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians were killed during the invasion and occupation.

I'm not one fo defend Mr Hussein's record, but that's pretty gentle as invasions go. The Russian bombardments of Grozny killed around 30,000 civilians; in one barrage on one day in October 1999 alone 120 were killed. Now that is brutal.

The tragedy of US politics is that we don't seem to hold people who made the worst foreign policy call in several decades accountable. Unreconsidered support for the Iraq war should just categorically disqualify one for a position either within national politics or as a commentator on them. Yet it doesn't. These people are either cynical liars, easy-to-dupe rubes, cynical spinsters that can't be trusted to say what they think, or vacillating receptacles. Perhaps several categories apply to some. The point is, any of these characteristics should be disqualifying for national leadership.

So invading a completely unrelated country and killing and tourtoring its inhabitants is OK?

You have a very peculiar idea of "anti-war as the next guy".

What do think we do then if we find that a decision-maker in a company is highly partisan and maybe bad for privacy?

Of course, when it comes to their core values you have to hold non-profits to high standards - e.g. Mozilla on the open web.

But when it comes to things unrelated to their mission... Why should they be any more perfect than a for-profit corporation!

I like people holding organizations to high standards, its fantastic. But please, hold all of them to high standards - both for-profits and non-profits.

We live in interesting times!

I feel the opposite. Eich's opinion (which I don't agree with) was unlikely to impact his work. Rice was part of the administration that created PRISM. I don't want her anywhere near a company I'm supposed to trust with all my files.

It would be closer to Mozilla hiring Mike Huckabee or similar as CEO.

The leap from open source to pro-gay sounds like a complete non sequitur to me. What is the reasoning there?

I like the way Torvalds put it.

For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want.

Open source means just that.

Eich's politics weren't all that important. There was a minor issue of whether it would cause trouble for Mozilla's gay employees (or employees who just felt strongly about it) and a big public relations problem, but the technical functioning of the company wouldn't be affected.

With Dropbox and Rice, I think there's a decent chance (not huge, but decent) that she's sitting down and giving everybody pointers for how they can most efficiently and effectively cooperate with the NSA. She's out of the administration but people like this never truly leave.

Same with contributing code to Firefox: of course my small patch for the bug affecting me personally looks like a big deal, but if i look at a big picture, my contribution isn't even comparable to what Brendan Eich did.

I don't say that dropping dropbox is a good thing, but i don't see how one can think logically that harassment of Eich was something for greater good, and this is a non-issue.

Unfortunately emotion is a strong thing, much stronger than logic.

Rice is a former National Security Advisor, and is looped into the political structure. So now, when the three letter agency of your choosing needs to have a frank conversation with someone at Dropbox, Condi will be a trusted conduit.

It's not just about whether someone in the company has an opinion I find despicable, it's about whether my own data is still safe.

On the other hand. It stands to reason Dropbox wants a well connected politician on their board, so they can lobby against the NSA style policies that are negatively affecting their international sales.

>One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.

And this is just disingenious. This was not the case with the Mozilla guy, nor is this the case here. For starters: gays are still being persecuted in many US and international jurisdictions. That war, and it is a war for civil rights, is still ongoing. Secondly, it's not a group that is being targetted but specific individuals because of their complicity in what is essentially a hate-crime they just got away with. That's like arguing we shouldn't perscute/target nazi-collaborators in the middle of WWII. (although one can argue perscuting collaborators after the war, wasn't the moral high ground either)

But, on a more meta level. I think the tech sector is getting more into politics, because the politics are getting more into the tech sector. Consider the NSA, net-neutrality, DMCA or all the twitter powered revolutions. I mean, the internet is essentially fueling a proccess of globalisation and democratisation, that has a lot of political implications.

We can no longer pretend technology isn't a political weapon of change, because the powers that be, are getting more and more aware of this.

That said, I don't agree with the author. She may have made bad decisions in politics, but I don't see the relevance to a tech company.

Seems like it did not work so well with Mozilla recently. And that guy there did not kill anyone either, even indirectly.

Lets not get into that.

However, to your point: This is one of those areas where I'm forced to wonder just how strongly everyone felt. Did I like Eich representing me, as an open source contributor? No, certainly not. Did I feel that strongly about it? No, not really. I wasn't going to boycott anything, I wasn't going to speak out against Mozilla. I'd be mildly disappointed he was their choice, then I would move on.

I sincerely have to wonder how many others would have felt the same if not worked into a lather.

Yes: a large percentage of the politicians in power today are responsible for the heinous crimes against humanity being committed, even yet daily, in the name of the American people - and YES, you SHOULD hold them accountable, since - as an American - you, yourself, are also responsible for the heinous actions of your nation state.

Devil's Advocate: It's not. But they didn't join Dropbox's board, so it's irrelevant. It is possible this isn't about partisanship, just personal history.

Though I have a hard time believing that's actually the case.