Chris Beard Named CEO of Mozilla
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
In short, let's leave politics out of this kind of stuff UNLESS the candidate is demonstrably in one of the outer circles of "unacceptable viewpoints".
But, following this comparison, what if this hypothetical racist had an established work history of not letting his/her racial opinions impact management? Eich founded Mozilla and likely had a great deal of influence on the its culture. Yet he did nothing I've heard of to impede Mozilla's organizations from embracing diversity in all forms.
I would still feel very uncomfortable working at such a company, and I think that's the sort of environment Mozilla wanted to avoid.
"what if this hypothetical racist had an established work history of not letting his/her racial opinions impact management?"
I'm not sure that's possible (bias creeps into just about everything we do-- and this is a pretty strong bias). Is it possible for someone with these views to not have them creep into promotion discussions, pay raises, meeting invites, tone in emails? Even if it is, having an opinion that is abhorrent to a majority of your potential hires, partners, reporters, and customers makes it pretty hard to lead.
I stand by my original statement.
EDITED to add: after all, if you're right that he would have been unable to keep his prejudice out of the office, you wouldn't have had to wait very long before he screwed up in some way, and then he could have been fired with real cause.
Unless you've got an objective outside referee to decide what is acceptable, your proposal is meaningless in practice.
It's deeply unsettling that you refer to beliefs and viewpoints instead of speech or actions, and moreover that a person's political views are only to be scrutinized if they're minority views.
there is essentially no evidence that actions are unaffected by beliefs and viewpoints, and that's precisely what you're asking us to uncritically accept
Mozilla is uniquely vulnerable to political incompetence because it’s not
just some corp, it’s also FOSS. It is still a FOSS project, yes?
Convincing people to donate their highly-technical labor to maintain your
cash cow for you is a delicate political art.
Free-software contributors want, in return: a degree of control and
ownership, an association with a respected brand, warm fuzzy feelings.
In the USA it is routinely assumed that you don’t share the worldview of the
person who signs your paycheck. (Cue: Dolly Parton soundtrack)
But society interprets donations as a form of endorsement. So if your
business relies on donors, you’d better make ‘em proud.
-mechanical_fish0. Are you sure you didn't just misunderstand what was being said?
there is essentially no evidence that actions are unaffected by beliefs and viewpoints
1. I don't know how you got that from what I wrote. I was responding to a post that specifically refers to "unacceptable viewpoints", not unacceptable actions. It's the refusal to make a distinction at all that is unsettling, especially when it's being described as the proper heuristic for determining whether someone is above scrutiny or not.
and that's precisely what you're asking us to uncritically accept
2. I'm not asking you to uncritically accept anything. I'm stating my personal unwillingness to uncritically accept the notion that thinking the wrong thing or having a minority point of view ought to itself a punishable offense. A person's merit is not the sum of the popularity of his beliefs.
Either the HN crowd is finally tired of the political chicanery or they're afraid that fostering further discussion could reveal something about Chris Beard they don't like. This would cause yet another round of political nonsense that winds up in a second Mozilla CEO resigning. That would be extremely embarrassing not just for Mozilla, but Silicon Valley as a whole.
I would assume, though I could be proved wrong, that any of his political/social/religious/other positions that he or anyone else wanted to make public would be well known by now. (Remember that Brendan Eich's Proposition 8 donation was well known two years before he was promoted to CEO.)
My personal views, not necessarily shared by other Mozillians:
Brendan's support of Prop. 8 was part of both public record and common knowledge, including his public response to the 2012 controversy around it. With this knowledge, the MoCo board promoted him to CEO. Both this decision and his decision to step down were controversial because of his public political activity. Now, if a new CEO candidate had taken actions similar to Brendan's, that would reasonably affect their views and the board's (and Mozilla's staff, community, users, partners, etc.) about whether it would best serve the project for the board to name them CEO. Obviously, eyes on Mozilla in this regard. But it does not necessarily follow - as much as some people want it to - that every belief held by the new candidate must be suddenly made public and deemed relevant to their job.
I there's a version of the fundamental attribution error at work here [1]. People have decided that politicization of the CEO role is something intrinsic to Mozilla in particular, rather than something that would happen with any organization that put itself in a similar situation. (And conversely, not happen when the situation is not similar.) It truth, the same situation could repeat itself. But if it does, it's just as likely - probably more likely - to involve a different company and a different individual.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_Attribution_Error
I have a hard time believing there would have been a mass exodus from Mozilla products, and I think after a few months things would have died down.
The board picked him because they felt he was the best man for the job. They knew about his past, including the public records of his political background... yet still thought he was the right guy to lead them into the future. Any CEO in place now is at-best, the second choice.
I think it's a real shame we've let politics govern our business.
However, what does the political background of a CEO matter? Can he do the job? Can he lead them to success? Those are the questions that should be asked about any new big business executive... not rather or not he supported issue X at some point in the past.
Not because of innate analytical/communicative capacity difference in the individual, but just public relations angle and the ability to rally teammates of diverse backgrounds under one banner. It's nothing personal in that case. Just business.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that there is a line somewhere, and it matters. If it's illegal (in my country) to refuse to employ someone based on their sexuality, or race, or religion - can you justify the right to refuse the same thing for supporting the right to gay marriage? And if not, why does the opposite not hold?
1) Don't speak about your political views, keep them to yourself
2) Don't contribute to any political funds, it may be used against you in the future.
3) Don't be controversial in any regard.
Seems like these are actually the opposite of what I would want in a CEO. I would want to know where my CEO stands on certain issues, what their level of political activism is; what do they view as important outside of the company?
This really isn't just about social issues, but any issues including bills like CISPA and PIPA (and reincarnates), since they are very important to my sector today... but if a CEO speaks out against them today, and in 10 years that view is unfavorable... will it be used against him/her?
if you plan to run a business revolving around shooting, better not donate to gun control
if you plan to run a business that is a mission oriented open source company, that therefore hires quite a few people who live their politics, and that draws heavily from a politically liberal city that has a long history of welcoming glbtq people, you need to avoid deliberately offending them and their friends
If a company promotes a bigot as a CEO, then people will question whether the company is being ethical in its business practices, or will be in the future. People will also think that it isn't fair for someone who is a bigot to be successful while trying to deny other people basic rights, and will be upset by that.
If you are referring to the previous Mozilla CEO, he was hardly a "bigot". He (I believe, going from memory here) donated $1,000 to an organization that was against same-sex marriage in CA many years back (the same election that had an overwhelming yes vote that year, more than 60%, -- a yes vote on the prop was to continue outlawing same-sex-marriage).
So, fast forward to today, and this CEO was chastised for a political contribution that sided with the majority at the time. Today, it would likely be a political minority that feel that way... but at the time it was a majority.
Is he not allowed to change his attitude/views about political topics? I know mine has changed in the past few years, and I expect it to change more as the future comes.
No he didn't... he funded an organization (with a one-time $1,000 donation) that was against same-sex marriage. That's a far cry from directly funding adverts.
And, at the time, his view and contribution was in the significant majority here in California. Today, maybe not, but back then, his views were shared by a vast majority (almost 60% in the vote). That's not to say it's right... only to point out we are chastising an individual for past beliefs that were popular at the time, but have gown to be unpopular today.
Horribly untrue and very off-base. I live in California and voted in that election, and remember it well. Let's not exaggerate history.
I find it repulsive how badly you are willing to distort the truth to make this man appear like a monster.
There were none of the advert campaigns you speak of.
The adverts that were run, mostly discussed "keeping the sanctity of marriage".
Please do some homework before stating atrocities that are this inaccurate.
The people of California did not sway their vote because of some advert campaign anyways. This subject has been put to a vote before, and since then, with the same outcome. This is not to say I believe it's right -- only stating the facts.
Regardless, open source has nothing to do with sexuality. Nothing. Who cares!? Do what you do, so long as you contribute something to the project.
"You can have any opinion you want, as long as it's ours."
I need those to prove my superiority when voicing our unanimous opinions.
Chris left Sun to join Mozilla almost ten years ago (October 2004), just before the release of Firefox 1.0, making him one of the first dozen or so employees. He stayed at Mozilla for nine years in a variety of roles. As CIO he founded and led Mozilla Labs, and later was the CMO until leaving last year to work in venture capital and then start another company. He returned to Mozilla as interim CEO after Brendan Eich stepped down several months ago.
[Disclosure: I've been a Mozilla employee for the past 4.5 years.]
In the short term, making sure junk threads like this fall off the front page of the site (or to the bottoms of their threads) quickly is an important goal. That protects the site itself, by preventing it from collapsing in on itself due to pointless hostility. This is the problem the HN mods have been working on for the past year or so.
In the long term, figuring out how we can host relevant discussions about volatile partisan subjects is important, and I imagine something that will become a focus for moderation.
Not having completely solved the first problem, it's probably a bit wishful to hope that we can address the second one.
HN doesn't have to be all things to all topics. If we lose some stories in the service of repairing comity, I think that's a fine tradeoff in the short term.
If you can get past the title, this is actually a very excellent article on moderation requirements for a successful online community: http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assh...
But there are worse things than being an echo chamber, and preventing those worse outcomes takes priority.
The irony about the link you provided is that HN does literally all the things Dash says sites should do. Of course, the problem HN faces is much bigger than the problem Dash is contemplating.
But there are worse things than being an echo chamber, and preventing those worse outcomes takes priority.
I would disagree on this, but I see where you're coming from. HN serves a lot of purposes to a lot of people.
EDIT: Why the downvotes?
You should remove that. Otherwise, you should receive down votes.
Edit: For clarity's sake, you should remove the complaint about downvotes.
No, I don't think that's a justifiable claim. A political donation was the trigger for a public controversy, which was a key event leading to the previous CEO leaving the position. The evidence does not, however, provide anything like clear support that the political donation itself was the sole reason that the CEO left the position.
Do you agree that if he'd never made the donation he'd still be there?
From the very limited information I have, my impression is that he was a poor choice with weak support from the board from the outset and most likely a deficit in either ability or willingess to manage community relations rather than technical issues that would quite likely not have lasted long or been particularly effective as CEO at Mozilla at the time (and with the board in place at that time) he was appointed even if that particular source of controversy hadn't erupted.
Would he still be there now? Maybe. Hard to say.
This conclusion is only justifiable with the assumption that the salience of politics to the community with which the incumbent in the office in question must deal is fixed. This is a fairly counterintuitive claim that requires some justification; salience of issues -- particularly those aside from the ones that define a particular community -- is generally quite fluid.
I understand why people had a hard time with the donation. I did too. The pro-Prop. 8 campaign was a river of vicious lies. My initial reaction was the same as a lot of other people's, and indeed I signed one of the online petitions calling for Eich's ouster, which I now regret.
But eventually it became clear that he really did keep his politics out of the office -- there was not a shred of evidence to the contrary. He should have been allowed to remain CEO.
It's old hat at this point and likely not worth rehashing, but the way I ended up looking at the problem that made the most sense to me was to look at it as a chain of events, and determine if there's any event in that chain that I'd want to prevent. Obviously I don't want to prevent people from choosing which products they use; I don't want to prevent people from discussing their product choices with each other; I don't want to prevent these discussions from happening publicly; I don't want to prevent companies from acting based on public and internal opinion. Eich's departure, for better or worse, was at the end of a chain of reactions that we don't only need to accept, but defend -- an essential consequence of a system that we want to perpetuate.
Eich was CEO for less than 2 weeks (March 24 to April 3rd)...
> He should have been allowed to remain CEO.
Technically he was. The board didn't move against him, Eich resigned.
But he was hardly a newcomer to Mozilla, having been CTO for years. I believe I read that he had also participated in the drafting of Mozilla's diversity policy.
And as far as him being "allowed" to remain CEO, I was really speaking about public opinion, not about the board's actions, though I am extremely unimpressed with the way the board handled the whole thing. He claimed that he had initially been uninterested in the position, and they talked him into taking it. Given that, they should have supported him a lot more than they did, although they might still in the end have felt their hand was forced.
Some people seem to be really mad about some other people voicing their opinion.
On top of that, if they go bad and edit their posts, complaining about down votes, which should then earn them down votes regardless.
There are civil ways to hold a discussion. Many of these comments are not an example of that.
You're right. Never suggested otherwise. However, if the comment and the question are equally short, and your other commentary makes it clear you are just fishing for trouble, you'll get no sympathy.
As for someone fishing for trouble, I think it's fairly easy to be relatively sure that's the case (vs genuinely ignorant), but impossible to be certain, and I tend to prefer giving the benefit of the doubt.
EDIT: Wow. So if he does support the GLBT community, we don't need to know about it? My post that offensive to people? It's an important question to ask.
Edit 2: I just love tolerance ;)
Edit 3: I'm removing the /sarcasm tag because people are really confused by it for some reason.
You might say "requirements for the candidate's personal political opinions", others might say "requirements for the candidate to not hold offensive, discriminatory political opinions".
Or just you know don't give significant amount of money to enshrine your offensive and discriminatory political opinions into law, expect open arms when nominated to head a company generally considered progressive then whine that it's unfair to scrutinise and criticise your actions.
Is that what we're calling $1000 today? That's not even rent money in the bad areas of the Bay Area.
> then whine that it's unfair
Citation please.
I really can't believe HN right now, trying to deny the fact that prop 8 passed. Unbelievable. Let's all rewrite history, getting rid of an inconvenient fact. Oh, and screw political freedom too.
Your sense of offensiveness is offending.
Who is trying to deny that? What relevance does it even have to what we're talking about here?
Not only that, but targeting Mozilla but ignoring JavaScript is the absolute height of hypocrisy and hollowless grandstanding, done by people that have a financial stake in JavaScript, but not Mozilla.
In short, fuck these people.
And he wasn't 'crucified' for having the opinion, it was because he actively contributed to a campaign. Holding a private opinion and financially contributing to a cause are quite different things.
Not only that, but targeting Mozilla but ignoring JavaScript is the absolute height of hypocrisy
It absolutely is not. Does "JavaScript" pay Eich a salary? Is it a money making entity? Does he even have anything to do with the day to day running of it? Of course not.
[1] http://field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/Rls2443.pdf
So?????
You do realize that we're talking about Prop 8, which was 2008 here. Prop 8 passed.
Again, stop this revisionist bullshit.
> Does "JavaScript" pay Eich a salary?
Eich's entire fucking resume could be:
"Created JavaScript"
That's it. He would sail from conference to conference until the end of bloody time, raking in thousands if not millions of dollars here.
OkCupid wanted it both ways. They wanted to keep their skin out of the game when it would hurt their bottom line, but wanted to make political points for that easy PR gain. So they targeted Mozilla.
As for the JS stuff, you're now just throwing out a bunch of coulds, woulds and shoulds. Could he really go from conference to conference until the end of time? The same people calling for him to be fired would likely boycott conferences. So they're just as consistent as you say they aren't.
Yes, $1000 is significant. $5 is not.
> Citation please.
https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/community-and-diversity/
> I really can't believe HN right now, trying to deny the fact that prop 8 passed.
So you're just making shit up as you go now?
> Let's all rewrite history, getting rid of an inconvenient fact.
Given you apparently aren't able to read things written on your screen, that's fucking golden.
> Oh, and screw political freedom too.
You're politically free, you're free to be whatever bigoted asshole you want to be. And others are free to demonstrate their disagreement, which they did with Eich.
Let me guess: you decided this just now? Right? You're quite the asshole yourself.
> And others are free to demonstrate their disagreement, which they did with Eich.
Eich is not the leader of a fucking movement!! He's a private individual, that supported a cause in private. He's not Hitler, and this is not the Night of the Long Knives here.
You are advocating mob rule and mob justice. That is a sin far worse than supporting a movement to prevent gay marriage.
Eich quit, he wasn't let go.
> Because we all know that having no opinion on this matter cannot stand.
Eich didn't have "no opinion", and didn't just have "an opinion", he had acted specifically to enshrine inequality in CA's constitution.
2. Would I prefer bigoted assholes not try to force their vindictive bigotry unto others? Are you really asking that?
2. Begs the question: do you consider that everyone who doesn't support gay marriage is bigoted? Also: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity
Wait, is it a real question or sarcasm? You seem to switch back and forth.
> Does he or does he not support the GLBT community. It was of such consequence to Brendan Eich that he was let go.
I don't think that's an accurate description. Eich's past public participation in a particular attack on equal rights targetting that community triggered a public controversy including publicized boycotts of Mozilla, but I don't think that there is any basis for concluding that he was let go because of his stance on LGBT issues rather than his perceived inability and/or unwillingness as CEO to manage a PR issue that was affecting Mozilla. (And even that may just have been the straw that broke the camel's back -- as I recall, there were reports that he was a controversial choice with split support on the board from the outset for reasons unrelated to the LGBT issue.)
> So it must be that Chris Beard does support this community.
Or that the actual issue around Eich is more complex than the what you are trying to simplify it to.
More complex? So if Chris Beard donated to Focus on the Family (hypothetically) he would be just fine at Mozilla?
Come on, Brendan Eich would still be CEO if he didn't make that one political donation and came out supporting the community.
You need to re-read dragonwriter's comment, because that is not the reason that dragonwriter is suggesting at all.
I think we all know how that would play out.
By implying that the LGBT interests are a campaign to be bought, or convinced by, or tricked into, you are showing a complete lack of understanding of the true reasons why people in the tech industry (who tend to be socially progressive) find the idea of fighting against gay marriage (which is what Brendan Eich did) completely appalling. You are also revealing yourself as an anti-progressive dinosaur who is on the wrong side of history when it comes to LGBT human rights.
Let it be known that in my original post, I did not single out one person, nor attack any one position. It was originally supposed to be a one-off remark/question. I knew exactly how it would ruffle feathers, but it's an honest question, as it was the central catalyst why Brendan decided to go. If that catalyst was so important to Mozilla, than the opposite of fighting against gay marriage, fighting for it, should be an opinion of the new CEO, if tolerance, community, acceptance, and freedom are so important to the organization. We should know about it.
Sure you did, when you wrote this:
> No word on if he supports the GLBT community hook, line and sinker.
"Hook, line, and sinker" has a pretty clear meaning, as demonstrated by these examples from dictionaries of American idioms:
> The public isn't swallowing the administration's policies hook, line, and sinker.
> They made up such a good story that we fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
> She fell for our story hook, line, and sinker.
> They believed every word hook, line, and sinker.
(via http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/hook,+line,+and+sinker)
You suggested that supporting the GLBT community is the same as falling for a lie. That's a straightforward attack on the position of the GLBT community and on people who support it.
It's cool if you want to back down from that attack -- I think it would be the right thing to do. But don't act like we don't know what words mean.
The Mongols wiped out vast numbers of villages and communities in their time. The names and culture of many of their victims were completely erased to history. It seems that they were on the "wrong side of history" even though they did not necessarily deserve their fate.
Consider Nikola Tesla: for the latter half of the 20th Century (and to some degree continues to be today), he was on the "wrong side of history" as opposed to the man who initially exploited and eventually competed with him, Thomas Edison.
Perhaps the phrase should be retired.
This particular one has been used to associate with social civil rights. The implication is that 50 years from now gay and trans acceptance will be such a non-issue, that members of future generations will ask us why it took so long for us to pass such obvious legislation protecting human rights. Exactly the same way that we today look back at segregation and the civil rights movement and shake our heads.
Whatever people's personal or religious beliefs are on gay marriage, it is GOING to be 100% legal in the entire western world whether they like it or not. Desegregation wasn't very popular at the time it was put in either.
So, while it's a bit sad, I don't think there can be discussion of Mozilla's CEO for some time into the future without the related discussion of Brendan Eich.
Edit: after rereading your comment I chose to down vote it after all. It really is the sort of comment that doesn't belong on HN.
By implying that supporting gay marriage (which is the opposite of what Brendan Eich did in his active campaign against it) is a "campaign by the elite" you are revealing yourself as an anti-progressive dinosaur who is on the wrong side of history when it comes to LGBT human rights.
The ex-Mozilla CEO had personal opinions that the Internet masses didn't like and used mob mentality to get him to step down. They actually wanted him fired.
Not everyone is going to agree with you and getting someone fired because they don't agree with you isn't progressive, tolerant, or civil. It's just plain wrong.
What if it had been the reverse? Christians got together and got a ceo to step down because they donated to a pro-gay marriage proposal. Those same people would be outraged.
This is why I know that it has nothing to do with being progressive or free..and everything to do with having power over other people. It's sick.
But as long as the majority of Californians agree(d) with him, does he really deserve down-votes or being called an anti-progressive dinosaur?