Mozilla CTO: Andreas Gal
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
Edit: his own post is at http://andreasgal.com/2014/04/24/technical-leadership-at-moz...
I'm very optimistic about Mozilla's future with him as CTO.
What does it matter if Andreas is technically competent when he has to manage activists rather than programmers?!
There are people working at Mozilla today, many of whom are pulling in a decent salary, who believe they are working for social justice charity rather than a technology non-profit.
Firefox is the golden goose but they might eventually bankrupt themselves by spending resources on non-core missions, like the GNOME foundation who had to whip out the begging bowl because they spent all their money on a women's outreach program rather than developing technology.
Life is just so unfair, isn't it?
The same Gerv who posted an anti-gay-marriage petition to his blog [3] that was syndicated to the public Planet Mozilla forum, publicly calling on Mozilla community members to support the Coalition for Marriage [4], a homophobic hate group [5] that endorsed the legal codification of marriage in the UK as "the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others," [6] by distributing misleading gay marriage leaflets [7]?
The same Gerv whose bigoted post to Mozilla's public forum ignited a controversy about what kinds of content Mozilla tolerates on its Web properties, and triggered an internal discussion examining the nature and desirability of community standards for inclusion [8], which set the stage for the reaction to the revelation of Brendan Eich's $1000 donation in support of Proposition 8 [9], which eventually led to his ignoble resignation as CEO of Mozilla [10], and earned him the humiliating endorsement of support and call to arms from Eric Raymond, who threw down the gauntlet by proclaiming:
"Then I think it is now the duty of every friend of free speech and every enemy of political bullying to pledge not only to donate $1000 to the next anti-gay-marriage initiative to come along, but to say publicly that they have done so as a protest against bullying." [11]
Do you have any problem with giving bullies a taste of their own medicine, by exercising free speech, just like they enjoy?
And in what way were my posts abusive, or not factual, or not backed up by references and citation to prove my points?
I'd certainly characterize many of the responses from anti-gay-marriage bigots as abusive, Godwinesque trolling, inaccurate and completely unsupported by any facts or citations:
"Hey Don: What’s it like being so far up your own ass? John", "See, this is the idiotic propaganda which you people vomit all over the net. What frigging ‘rights’ are you talking about?", "The letter Mozilla should have written. http://t.co/jn2dNNltQY", "The irony of the current situation is the same people who cry because they are “discriminated minority” think and act like Nazis and they aggressively suppress any dissident.", "The gaystapo controls mozilla, it calls the shots. You are now working for this ugly and inhumane movement.", "The character assassination started with employees of Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla should have acted quickly and fired them. Will they still be employed?", "Are you a professional activist? Because, judging by the propagandist bull you sprout here, you sure sound like one. Eich was not ‘campaigning’ to remove any rights, he donated some money to a campaign to abolish special rights.", "Funny how gays demand tolerance from others, yet have no tolerance with those who disagree with their way of life. And pathetic Mozilla fell for it.", "We simply cannot have a civil society when the hyper sensitive and the perpetually aggrieved are allowed their way.", "I hope Mozilla goes bankrupt. I myself already convinced 150 people to stop using Mozilla on all their devices. ... With a bit of luck, I will have convinced at least 2000 people by the end of this year to stop using Mozilla. Maybe more.", "You on the other hand are way out of line and I think your pursuit of Brendan amounts to a hate crime." [12]
So, strafer32, if you think I was being abusive or unreasonable, especially compared to those other people I quoted, you must be nursing quite a persecution complex. Are you the same person who accused me of a hate crime? Since you created your account just two hours ago [13], and since you know my real name, would you please care to share your real name with us? Or are you afraid to stand up for your own beliefs for some reason?
[1] http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/hacking-for-christ
[2] http://www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.org/biblical_evidence/gay_...
[3] http://blog.gerv.net/2012/03/coalition-for-marriage-petition...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_for_Marriage
[5] http://nomaniacs.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/uk-mps-violent-hat...
[6] http://tim.dreamwidth.org/1761874.html
[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/30/coalition-for-mar...
[8] http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.governance/
[9] http://projects.latimes.com/prop8/donation/8930/
[10] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-steps-...
[11] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5651
"Gert (and his supporters), do you also hate women, blacks and jews as much as you hate gays, and do you agree with Brendan Eich’s support of Patrick J. Buchanan and Ron Paul?"
In that entire comment you bring up unrelated issues involving US politicians as if trying to direct supporters of Mozilla and Brendan of being supporters of that view. People discussing with you then have to address points like that or be seen as supporting it. It's a classic trolling technique to do this.
I also find statements like the following abusive [2]:
"Apparently the people who warned me that you had such a thick skull that no outside information could get through and affect your thought processes were correct, and that makes me sad, because I had more faith in you."
In that comment you bring up the Mormon religion which I have no idea what that has to do with Mozilla or the Brendan Eich saga. Again, classic troll misdirection.
[1] http://blog.gerv.net/2014/04/your-ire-is-misdirected/#commen... [2] http://blog.gerv.net/2014/04/your-ire-is-misdirected/#commen...
Don't invest in Apple stock if you're against abortion?
Don't invest in Apple stock if you're against software patents?
Don't invest in Apple stock if you're a member of a socialist party?
If you think what Tim Cook did was right, then you don't understand what a free market is.
Finally, please don't smear people as "deniers" just because they want to have an honest scientific debate. Or do you honestly believe someone like Freeman Dyson is a simple-minded old fool?
The mission to build a free and open web has nothing to do with social issues such as gay marriage.
There was a funny twitter account with his name that has now been removed which was a satire of his way of handling people. I'm not at mozilla corp. but "very nice" sounds like a stretch. I'm sure mozilla needs positive input right now - but psst :)
The @RealAndreasGal twitter account that was recently deleted was so amusing because the things that it said were exactly on point. Same with the 'ShitGalSays' Tumblr account which is still around: http://shitgalsays.com/
Andreas is strongly pro-whatever partners want in Firefox OS. Expect DRM and other forms of lockdown to start appearing under his rule. He has no interest in the Mozilla mission.
Given the age of your account and the contents of your comments I don't think you're one to throw stones.
I'm afraid he may be effectively blacklisted in this industry now.
2) He doesn't have to be CEO; I don't think most people who disliked him as CEO had a problem with him as CTO of Mozilla.
I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to oust him from the CTO position as well. It's not like it took that much effort on their part. Sign a petition here, post blog post there and presto Eich resigned.
Following the precedent of Project GNU's rebranding "FireFox" as "IceCat" for their own political and ethical reasons, they're going to rebrand "FireFox" as "WhistleDog", and develop a web browser aligned with their own political and ethical ideology, which is more inclusive of people who think it's wrong to be intolerant of intolerant people, and less tolerant of communists like RMS, bullies like homosexual activists, and blacks, who Raymond and Nelson describe as "stupid", "violent" and "lazy".
Do you mean the issue of Mozillas restrictions on the "Firefox" name, which the FSF/GNU think are at odds with their notion of "Free Software"? Do you mean you are annoyed with the FSF for their entire purpose in this world?
He's recently been asking me for advice about packaging node.js desktop apps, which I've been discussing with him. Does anyone else have any advice or opinions or corrections to add, please?
RMS> The questions I'm concerned with are very limited: they have to do with how node applications fit into the existing and general framework of GNU/Linux. If I can install them with apt-get, start them with a shell command or from a menu, and use them to operate on ordinary files in my file system with no Internet connection, then they're just as good as C or Python or Lisp programs. So I don't need to know any more -- I can conclude "there's no problem here, everything's ok," and move on to other issues.
RMS> Can you confirm for me whether this is possible?
RMS> If not, then they have a problem and I'd like to know more about the problem.
Don> Yes, I think node will suit your needs quite nicely.
Don> So yes I think you can conclude that there is no problem and it's ok to use it!
Don> Node has its own package manager called "npm" that might be more appropriate to use than apt-get, since it knows a lot more about what is going on with node, and solve the problem of dependencies in a much nicer way than apt-get can.
Don> For example, you can install packages in the system globally to share with other users, or locally in a project to isolate projects from each other and make them independent.
Don> I believe you could still package node software up so it can be installed by apt-get of course, but it would be more monolithic and system wide, and not be able to take advantage of all the things you npm can do because it knows it is dealing with node, instead of trying to solve a much more general problem of linux software installation.
Don> Also, it is a much fresher simpler approach to some of the problems that gnu configure solves, since it abstracts a lot of the system dependencies, so there is no need for the artificial intelligence layer that is implemented by shell scrips, and all the guessing and probing and syntactic backflips to maintain compatibility with old versions of Xenix for ZX80 and AT&T answering machine cassette tape drivers and stuff like that.
Don> So I think using the node/npm ecosystem instead of the older stuff would make installation and configuration about four to five orders of magnitude simpler and more elegant.
Don> Definitely there is no problem using it for what you want the same way as python or whatever scripting language.
Don> Not only is node.js useful for implementing servers of all persuasions, but you can also use it to develop local desktop applications with or without user interfaces,
RMS> Can you tell me more about this possibility? Perhaps tell me the specific URLs I can fetch to read about it? I don't browse sites unrelated to me from my own computer, but I can fetch a specific article by sending mail to a demon.
Don> Here is one alternative that uses built-in WebKit to do the user interface: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit
Don> Here is another alternative, that uses QT instead of WebKit, which is what you should use if for some perverse reason you want to severely limit the scope of people who know how to or are willing to program the user interface, and also severely narrow the scope of what you can do with the user interface and which libraries and frameworks you can use: https://github.com/arturadib/node-qt
Don> And somewhere in-between, but hardly as effective as simply using a real web browser like WebKit to do real web things, and certainly not stable or mature: https://github.com/arturadib/node-five
Don> And of course if you're happy using a separate stand-alone browser as the user interface (and don't need the high bandwidth direct access in-memory single-threaded bi-directional function calling interface between node and the user interface), you can simply run any old web server module in node (there are lots to choose from), and run node in the background on your desktop computer, and talk to it via https and localhost sockets.
Don> Node has full access to your local computer, including accessing local files, calling native code, etc.
Don> I presume that WebKit can run sandboxed JavaScript code, but I don't know how WebKit's JS interpreter relates to node's JS interpreter, if they're different or one and the same, or how they're isolated from each other (or how it's isolated from itself ;).
Don> I'm not familiar with what work has been done on sandboxing JavaScript directly in node.js, but you might start looking here: https://www.npmjs.org/package/sandbox
Don> Once you've installed node and npm, you can get it and look at the source by going "npm install sandbox".
Don> This one looks like it sandboxes JavaScript code in a sub-process, which is probably even safer but terribly non-optimal if you've already got two other JavaScript interpreters hanging around in the same process after linking node and WebKit together. https://www.npmjs.org/package/node-sandbox
RMS> One specific question: can these applications read and write files in the local file system? If so, is it normal for them to do so?
Don> Good question. Yes you can store a certain amount of stuff in the web browser's "local storage", and certainly a remote server or local server. But the JavaScript code would have to be running in some kind of privileged shell or context, such as a Firefox or Chrome extension in a normal web browser, or the desktop equivalent of "PhoneGap" that wraps a web browser in a mobile app and exposes apis to privileged functions like file system access. Or of course the aforementioned node.js + webkit application.
Don> There is a great tool for node/npm called "Browserify", kind of like a linker for JavaScript source code modules, which itself is a nicely factored flexible set of node modules, that lets you take a bunch of node modules and package them together to run in the web browser, substituting shims that implement nice asynchronous node apis by wrapping nasty browser based apis, so you can write portable code that runs in the browser or server without any modification!
RMS> If you "browserify" an application in this way, where and how does it store data? Does it store data in files in the local system? Or does it have to store them somewhere else, such as Local Storage Objects or a remote server?
Don> That enables you to achieve the holy grail of re-using the same code and data without modification, on both the client and the server and embedded devices and whatever!
RMS> My holy grail is that we could install these Javascript packages through the GNU/Linux distro's package system, run them in the same ways we run C programs, and have them operate on local files just like C programs.
Don> I don't see why not! If you don't need a sandbox, then it should be a piece of cake that you can both have and eat too, which is not a lie. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-cake-is-a-lie
RMS> But there's one other thing that would be very useful to help this case:
RMS> * There is a server that sends nonfree JS code to the user's machine and won't run without it.
RMS> * We ask them to fix this.
RMS> * If node.js makes it easy for them to fix it by running their _existing_ JS code on the server side, that would be a big help.
Don> I don't quite understand what you mean or what your motivations are (aside from your usual well known motivations), but it sounds possible.
Don> It's probably somewhere between "it's only an awk script away" (which means it's possible, but at the cost of losing your soul), and "a simple matter of programming" (which mean trivially technically possible except for all the difficult non-technical parts like asking nicely and getting along with people who hold different beliefs, goals, and priorities, and getting users to press the "any" key, stop trying to photocopy CD-ROMS, etc). ;)
Don> So if you're using aptitude to snapshot the binary platform specific results of doing an npm install and compiling native code modules, then users installing the software with apt-get won't need to have npm compile the code, or even need to have compilers installed.
RMS> That is a fine way of doing it. Or, alternatively, running apt-get on that package could do the npm install. How it works is NOT THE ISSUE. The point is to offer users a single uniform UI for installing all the packages in the system.
RMS> When a programming platform comes with its own "convenient" way of installing packages, it is convenient for hackers who develop things in that language, but it's nothing but trouble for users that want to install a package and not have to know what language it is written in.
RMS> And that includes people like me, who know how to program, but don't program in that particular language.
RMS> Thus, I think one thing that every programming platform ought to have is a convenient way to generate a .deb.
Maybe that's just obvious if you're familiar with the governance structure of the Mozilla Project but not clear to people who haven't been involved in it...
In any case I've seen one technical issue escalated to Brendan so far since he resigned, after mailing list wrangling back and forth for a while got nowhere. He made a call on it (a compromise of sorts, as it happens), and people abided by that call from what I can tell.
He clearly has a lot less impact on decisionmaking now than he did before, which is what you see in his comments. I can totally understand why he feels the way he does. But I think he's underselling the importance he still has.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...
"No one tried to convince me to stay as CEO."
"Another C-level position" definitely means not CEO, and probably means CTO.
So Brendan is not disagreeing with the posting, he's just not stating that he was offered a job as CTO or whatever.
I don't know where cpeterso got the idea they asked him to "stay the course as CEO or CTO", but the FAQ makes it pretty clear he was not asked to stay as CEO, and was probably offered his CTO job back. Are there any other "C-level positions [2]" that he is qualified for? Probably not CDO. ;)
Edit: cpeterso may have been quoting yoric from here: [3] So I don't know where yorik got that idea from. But Brendan corrected his incorrect information, without actually openly revealing what the correct information was.
[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_title
[3]: http://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2014/04/07...
Brendan set the record straight and after that the official Mozilla line was clarified. The FAQ was updated to be clearer after Brendan made those comments.
So the board may have tried to convince him to stay as CTO, but not as CEO.
Though this is not a sign of him actually remaining in power I guess, but more of an advisor and active contributor.
And now what? I'm sure this Andreas Gal is very notable and significant person as well, but I'm not really sure I ever heard of him, and I surely heard of Eich, FWIF. Well, I hope he does well and will be good choice for the CTO chair, but all that stuff is sad somehow anyway.
Edit: Just fixed it, I think. Please try again.
To get you inline with the beliefs of "many in the community"?
> It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrime and thought-criminals.
> thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding unspoken beliefs or doubts that oppose or question the ruling party
Note the unspoken part of that definition. Eich took steps, actual steps, not even just speech, to limit the rights of other people. That's why it's not thought police.
Treating people with less dignity than someone else is a _huge_ thing, this isn't just a petty political issue. The Mozilla community, a private group of individuals, raise many concerns that someone willing to limit the dignity afforded to certain groups of people through actual actions that person has taken was not fit to be the head of their organization. How is that thoughtpolice
EDIT: Downvotes without comments do so much to move the conversation forward, thanks!
The "actual steps" were his democratic rights as a citizen in a free country. It was a matter put to vote, and he backed a specific outcome of the vote. Neither the vote was illegal, not he acted on anything outside of that.
Just because you think other people should "obviously have that right" doesn't say anything. I think that people should have the right to consume whatever drug they want freely, and that they should have the right to not be executed by the state.
Are all persons who voted / backed laws against those things oppresive, or it's only your particular pet cause?
And he didn't get sent to jail for doing so. He was told by a private group of individuals that his actions and views were not welcomed by said group. Noöne was jailed or oppressed or dehumanized.
> Are all persons who voted / backed laws against those things oppresive, or it's only your particular pet cause?
Yes, anyone who acts to reduce the dignity of another human is oppressive. Gay marriage is only one such issue.
It's one thing to campaign for the republican party, or donate money to them. That's not a problem. The problem is donating money to oppress a portion of the population based on their beliefs. That is an action, not a belief.
Well, for me the Republican party excludes and oppresses people. If MANY MANY more ways than banning gay marriage ever did. From starting all those wars under false pretexes that resulted to tens of thousands of casualties to everyday issues like health coverage.
Should we fire every CEO/CTO that's donated to it?
Or is it only an "action which excludes and/or opresses people" if you specifically disagree with it?
(Oh, and I don't have than much better an opinion on the Democrats either, just think the Reps are like a few percentage points worse -- plus it would get more people to agree with my statement).
Mozilla (and Eich) decided that this expression from the community was sufficient for Eich to step down as CEO. No one forced them to do it, much like no one forced them to make Eich CEO in the first place.
This is exactly how public dialogue is supposed to work. If you find that a particular executive at a company has taken actions you disagree with and this upsets you to the degree that you wish to stop using their products, you're free to do so. You're also free to talk to others and encourage them to do the same. The company is free to retain that executive or remove them depending on how they feel about the public outcry you've raised.
This is free speech and public dialogue. It's people deciding what products they want to use and talking about it. It's companies deciding what to do based on what's good for them and their objectives. Which one of those things do you object to?
A number, though, arguably violated California Penal Code Section 422 (I say "arguably" because whether they did depends on how seriously the threat recipient took them). Of course they may not be in California, but many other jurisdictions have similar laws.
I did not see any such comments on HN, although admittedly I did not follow the story closely on reddit, tumblr, or twitter.
There were certainly mails or blog comments (I'm not sure which, and the two are equivalent anyway when comments are moderated) with such threats in response to Lars Lohn's blog post (quoted near the bottom of <http://www.twobraids.com/2014/04/back-into-light.html>).
Of course I have no way to prove that to you. An earlier version of Lars' post (before he deleted it in his fit of pique) had an explicit edit mentioning the threats, but even Google's cache now only has <http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eKzKHuO....
I'm told (more second-hand than in Lars' case, but by people I trust) that others received similar threats as well. Again, I have no way to convince you that this is true.
Surely you all are not imaginative enough if you think that the union of the set of behaviors one can form that are within their rights are all desirable behaviors.
I mean, strictly speaking the NSA was well within its legal rights to do what it did. But what was that quote by Jon Stewart, "I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying you broke any laws. We're just saying it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to."
> Surely you all are not imaginative enough if you think that the union of the set of behaviors one can form that are within their rights are all desirable behaviors.
I didn't say that all of behaviors seen were desirable, and upon rereading my comment, I have no idea how you got the impression that I was.
> I mean, strictly speaking the NSA was well within its legal rights to do what it did. But what was that quote by Jon Stewart, "I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying you broke any laws. We're just saying it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to."
Exactly which behaviours seen during that scandal do you think should have been illegal or were borderline illegal? I am getting the feeling that you saw something that I did not.
Bear in mind that I draw a strong distinction between "undesirable" and "should probably be illegal".
I wish you the best of luck with this argumentative approach -- I've been trying it for weeks, and no one on the other side appears to realize that legally or socially preventing what happened with Eich and the Mozilla community would be far, far more destructive to discourse, speech, etc than what happened here. The position itself (that what happened to Eich was somehow wrong, in a sense that can be well-defined) is internally inconsistent.
Does that sound incosistent?
> How about, nobody fucking makes another guy lose his job for what he votes or backs?
So, if it came out that an executive at some company had donated money to the KKK, they should be somehow forced to keep him on? This position isn't inconsistent, it's incoherent.
What if it came out that an executive at some company had donated money to the Republican Party?
But either way, no one is saying Mozilla should have been forced to retain Eich against their will. Rather, Mozilla's Board had decided he was the best guy for the job, despite his thoughtcrime, until enough people and companies started ganging up on them and threatening the viability of the project.
Expressing your speech is one thing, boycotting is one thing (indeed, think of all the people now boycotting Mozilla), but trying to burn down a project a là OkCupid is a whole 'nother bag.
Then... people would be free to boycott them? The company would be free to decide, like Mozilla did, whether it's worth keeping that executive on?
I agree that the OKCupid thing was a little distasteful, but that's mostly because it was so blatantly a ploy to get themselves some of the press surrounding the situation. I still wouldn't want to enact any policy that would ban them from doing so, however.
Not a single one. Now I'm also wondering what you're seeing.
> Bear in mind that I draw a strong distinction between "undesirable" and "should probably be illegal".
Great, because that's what the opposition to the witchhunt has consistently been: Not that the majority of the witchhunt activities have been technically illegal, but that the acts themselves are undesirable in a community of differing views.
The precedence set by what happened to Eich because of his bigoted views (again, legal or not) should be sending panic through the progressive communities. But instead it's the opposite, people claiming that hunting this witch is OK because look, he's actually a witch.
And it's usually the same kind of people who will trot out the quote about "First they came for the Jews, ..." who are hypocritically clawing down the door to catch this particular member of the untermensch.
Actions have consequences.
That's also what KKK said, when lynching someone.
If you think your argument through a bit further, I'm sure you'll see the distinction.
Well, zealot Christians (and organisations like the Inquisition) hated people "for what they did" (e.g extra-marital affairs, being an atheist, not going to church enough, magic spells, etc) not for what they were. I don't see how that's any improvement over hating them for what they are. Hate is hate.
I also have a three digit IQ and I don't believe Eich hates gay people. In fact he has worked closely with lots of them perfectly for ages (by their own admission). He might love marriage too much as a specific, and historically specified, tradition though, which is a different thing.
Sounds like we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
You should research the labor concept of "constructive dismissal".
As it stands it wasn't just an outcry. You had companies like OKCupid hounding Firefox users who had nothing to do with Eich's donation. It was a pitchfork-and-torch expedition through and through, despite the fact that it all falls under the letter of the law regarding freedom of speech.
But as I tried to point out when this was all going on, freedom to speak does not imply that all speech is necessarily right.
What I don't understand is how the same people who will talk about "chilling effects" from government surveillance fail to understand the same exact principle applied elsewhere.
People deciding what products they want to use and talking about it. Companies deciding what to do based on what's good for them and their objectives.
Do you object to? (OKCupid's actions, of course, fall under both categories.) The consequences of any action you could take to prevent this type of behavior would be much more dire, chilling-effect-wise, than the occasional troubling instance such as this one.
As a long-time user of alternative browsers (e.g. Konqueror) I certainly object to companies deciding to take specific actions on their web sites for web browsers for reasons that are not clearly technical. If for no other reason than as a net neutrality issue.
Again, just because people and companies technically have the legal right to do something doesn't make it a good idea.
So I don't see anything better from the state bullying people to a private company doing the same. If anything it's worse, since the state has some democratic controls in place (at least in theory) and the majority elects their policies and representatives. A private company can be the rule and whimses of just one jerk.
Also, on the Republican side search for Dakota 38 and find out why some think very poorly of Abe's character.
It's also searchable here: www.fec.gov
Good luck, Andreas. Thanks, Brendan.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/mozilla-firefox...