Here is the text (for those who don't use Firefox):
Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.
Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.
Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.
If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.
However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid:
[3 buttons:] Google Chrome Internet Exploder Opera
"Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal"
I don't know much about Eich, but I don't think he was working to make same-sex relationships illegal (like Uganda or nigeria). it does okcupid no credit to infer that he does (using weasel words like "people like Mr eich".)
saying "eich wanted to prevent 8% of our customers from enjoying the fulfillment that marriage can bring to a relationship" would be much more honest.
Marriage is a possibility for a relationship if you're straight. To deny that for gay people is to deny them the full legal potential of their relationship.
Please rephrase that. Whilst I entirely agree with your sentiment about equality, your implication that those of us in a loving relationship who choose not to marry aren't realising the 'full potential of our relationship' is pretty hurtful. It's precisely this kind of attitude that makes me so reluctant to get married myself.
What you get down is really a question about what marriage is about. Is marriage about giving government benefits (property transfer benefits, tax treatment changes, certain treatment under health insurance regulations, adoption miscellaneous other things) to two people who like each other a lot? Or is it about giving government benefits to people who might found a family with children and things (notwithstanding the fact that not every heterosexual couple actually does or plans to do this?)
That's the real question here. This issue isn't about hate and dehumanization -- I mean, there's way too much hate and dehumanization, certainly, but not enough to drive electoral victories we've seen. The question is just an extension of the social upheaval of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The real remarkable thing is that it's been simmering for so long without coming to the forefront yet. Probably many people thought that it was substantially settled, on account of this quiet, but it looks more like the two camps just quietly went their separate ways.
This is also why religious groups outside of Westboro mostly talk about focusing on the family and the social problems associated with single-parent households and divorce. (If you are not a member of these groups or do not have friends and family who are members of these groups, you are probably unaware of what this advocacy looks like. See also: the entire public policy of the Catholic church on this matter.)
FYI: This is how you can have an eminently nice person with nothing but respect for the intrinsic human rights and dignity of homosexuals, but who still votes for Prop 8 or Amendment 1 or a similar measure.
And you know what? What goes on between two people in private of their bedroom is nobody's business. What benefits the government makes available to people, through spending the public purse or giving people tax breaks or mandating certain sorts of treatment... that kind of is peoples' business. It's a public-policy question, and structuring public policy one way or another impacts society in several ways - including, in some jurisdictions, making your ability to operate as a business contingent on you performing some services that you might not want to perform (cf. New Mexico photography etc etc).
(Postscript. No particular stance for or against Proposition 8, or for or against Amendment 1, or any other public policy recommendation, is hereby endorsed. The following ideas are hereby endorsed: Gay people are human beings and deserve a substantially identical set of human rights and dignity as any other human being is entitled to receive. People who treat them otherwise may be some sort or another of monster. The extent to which these rights overlap with public policy in the matter of issuing marriages is controversial. Voters who support Amendment 1 or Prop 8, electorally or fiscally, are not monsters for doing so. Pluralism is good and it would be great if we all had some way to get along. Maybe we can start with more understanding.)
(Post-postscript. Added adoption to the list of misc. benefits as it is of special relevance as a way for a married gay couple to raise children.)
> FYI: This is how you can have an eminently nice person with nothing but respect for the intrinsic human rights and dignity of homosexuals, but who still votes for Prop 8 or Amendment 1 or a similar measure.
I think this is where the problem crops up. Many of the people commenting here see things as strictly black-and-white. Opposition to gay marriage is bigotry, support for gay marriage is sunshine and roses.
The problem is that it's impossible to reason with anyone who takes such a stance, because many of the arguments raised here are suggestive that any form of opposition to gay marriage is illustrative of hatred and bigotry against gays. There is absolutely no middle ground. Which is rather ironic, because the other arguments raised accuse the opponents of gay marriage of doing precisely the same thing and accepting no middle ground!
In another thread last week, I recall a particular discussion that implicitly suggested that those who believe the state shouldn't recognize any form of marriage are closet bigots, so I'm not entirely sure what to take away from this. It seems to me that there's far too much emotional investment to enjoy rational discourse. I can certainly understand why such emotions are raging uncontrollably, but as someone who is neither married nor really believes the state should have involvement in marriage (or at least, it should strictly be up to the state to be aware of certain long term relationships under contract law--not what those relationships are), it's a bit beyond me as to why there's so much disgust. I don't feel so compelled to hate someone based on their beliefs, much less stop using a specific browser for reasons other than technical merits.
Side note: I admit that I had to do some digging around to figure out why OkCupid was urging users to stay away from Firefox since I visited the site with Chromium. I had completely forgotten about the tempest in a teapot that occurred when Eich was appointed to CEO. I can't help but think this is something that's intensely fascinating and of interest to a relatively small but vocal minority of people, although going by my small sample size of one is probably disingenuous. Still, there are more important issues IMO, and using/supporting an open and standards compliant browser (and open source) is of far greater importance to me than someone's political stance who now happens to be CEO.
It'd be humorous to suggest a conspiracy at work here: Information about Eich's donation was dug up and clandestinely released by someone paid for by Microsoft in effort to undermine Mozilla should he ever be appointed CEO!
"but I don't think he was working to make same-sex relationships illegal"
No, just marriage. His $1000 annulled existing gay marriages, and the situation didn't recover until 2013. You can't seriously expect that there won't be LOTS of people REALLY PISSED OFF ABOUT THAT. You can think they're wrong ... but those people are your prospective customers too.
Okcupid may have worded that badly, but the problem doesn't go away because it changed from "illegal" to "refusal to recognize/allow". It's still fundamentally terrible.
And yes, I recognize the difference between the two - I'm fully aware this country made interracial marriages like mine straight out illegal and not just unrecognized up until 50 years ago, and it's only been a week since I got married and I've already had to deal with thinly veiled racism.
I don't know much about Eich, but I don't think he was working to make same-sex relationships illegal
He's on record as having made a fairly substantial donation to the Prop 8 campaign. That may not be "Fred Phelps" — let alone "Uganda" — levels of anti-marriage-equality, but it's close enough for my purposes.
"The "not as bad as" argument, or the fallacy of relative privation, is a form of the moral equivalence fallacy that takes note of the existence of things that are worse than what is actually under discussion - for different purposes, as outlined below. It's popular with people who know perfectly well they're doing something wrong; being fully aware that they're doing something wrong, they feel compelled to attempt to justify it and do so by pointing to other, usually worse, actions."
I said the situation in Uganda can't be considered "close" by any stretch of imagination to the situation in California until recently, before gay marriage was legalized. I also implied reaction should be proportionate to the degree of wrong. How the heck did you infer "opposing gay marriage is positive" from that?
> How the heck did you infer "opposing gay marriage is positive" from that?
You're a random person on the internet, I personally wouldn't rely on any implication to be clearly communicated. When in doubt, be explicit. This is even more important in threads (like these) where people run around with their heads on fire.
It seems to be saying "you can't prove the conclusion of the argument is false", not "you can't prove anything". You can still prove the argument is invalid.
Topic is an incorrect statement made in the article. This statement implied that Eich's actions were promoting outlawing homosexual relationships. There are countries where such laws still exist. Mentioning them and noting that there's a difference between facing prison for being in a homosexual relationship (which the article implied was something Eich was trying to achieve) and not being able to marry a same-sex partner is absolutely relevant. That's not a "logical fallacy". Calling it a logical fallacy on the other hand is.
No one is making that argument. The GP comment said "it's close enough" to the situation in Uganda for his purposes. Goscarsno just claimed that that's not true at all (which I believe is correct - the situation in Uganda is objectively far worse.)
No one is making the argument that you are objecting to or using a worse situation to justify anything.
OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.
There is an irony that an entity that declares it is for creating love is going around declaring enemies, and wishing them failure. This clearly undermines their own message, and shows them to be of a similar us vs them hateship. There are Sides to be taken, and you don't want to be on the wrong one.
What they should have said is "we are disappointed, and would like to see Eich publicly change his opinion and make some form of recompense; we would like Eich to join us in our view"... instead of "FUCK THAT GUY".
Remember the people that picketed Fred Phelps' funeral with the sign "Sorry for your loss"? That is how you fight hate, not with more hate.
That's not really irony. It's generally okay to have a self-referential asterisk in rules like; Tolerance, except for intolerance. Free will, except where it impedes that of another. Peace & good will, except where you're about to punch me in the face. Etc. When people argue inconsistency in those cases, it's usually sophistry.
That's not to defend okcupid's tactics in this case. I'm just saying that it's not really an example of hypocrisy.
It's definitely an example of hypocrisy. To put it in prison terms, OKC is pursuing punishment rather than rehabilitation. If you're really about bringing people together and love, then you should be promoting trying to change peoples' minds to make them more inclusive, not blocking them altogether. Being hateful back at them simply reinforces their beliefs, and gives them a martyrdom story to pass on to like-minded people: "they say they're for love, but declared me an enemy and wished me failure". Making enemies of demographic groups divides people, pretty much by definition.
What about "we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together"? How do you hand-wave away that comment of OKC's in a manner that still allows them to be divisive?
You got me. OkCupid's hypocrisy in this matter is clearly the most divisive issue in our society today. You should devote your website's front page to calling them out on it.
This is petulant and abrasive. Eich's personal politic's is only tangentially related to OkCupid business and not at all related to Mozilla's business. Also it should be obvious that Eich != Mozilla. It is very off-putting to have a company bludgeon it's user with the personal politics of it's runners.
Politics aside, this is brilliant from OKC's perspective. No effort, they show their users, many of whom are gay, they care. And, here we are talking about OKC on HN. Going to be the same in many other sites, social portals.
The takeaway is that businesses and non-profits don't operate in a vacuum, and there are real consequences for having a bigot as the head of your operation.
I find it highly disingenuous to call supporting equal rights "petulant and abrasive".
My interpretation of what honksillet said was that OKCupid asking users not to use Firefox is petulant and abrasive. If I am incorrect, I'll retract my statement [honksillet: reply to me if this is the case].
OKCupid's business revolves around personal relationships. Some of those relationships are same sex relationships. To OKC, this issue is important to them. Let's not confuse meaningful concern with rhetoric.
A mode of expression can be petulant and abrasive even if the underlying message is good. Social justice advocacy is full of abrasive and petulant people who do a poor job of representing good causes.
edit: Can you stop with the downvotes? I'm not arguing that OKCupid's message is petulant and abrasive. I was trying to make sense of what honksillet was saying.
There's not much more frustrating than an "ally" who acts like a fool and gives bigots something to point to, forcing me to answer for them before I can make my own arguments.
There are plenty of ways to support equal rights that aren't abrasive. OKCupid's actions in this case are abrasive--clearly abrasive enough to bother some people who strongly support marriage equality (such as myself).
> I find it highly disingenuous to call supporting equal rights "petulant and abrasive".
It is "highly disingenuous" for you to state that I made such a claim because clearly I did not. The point I was making is that we don't want to live in a world where every time a company hires an executive with a divisive political opinion, executives from another company feel the need to denounce that individual/company publicly as a means to enforce an ideological orthodoxy. Those kind of societies become rather scary places to live in very quickly. I believe we should push back against politics intruding into parts of our daily lives where it doesn't belong. That's what I object to with OKCupid's statement.
This is how people outside Mozilla feel about the issue. If you want to call serious concern about human rights "petulant and abrasive", then it is possible your own business may suffer.
Actually, Mr. Eich's “silent” support of legislation that discriminates against individuals is precisely the type of societal friction that Foucault hinted at.
It is everyone's business. The sooner the culture makes an othered minority issue socially repugnant and less some sort of innocuous personal political belief as you hint, the greater the chance for longer term change.
Conversely, hurting Mozilla is not just hurting Eich, but hurting all the other people who work there, including the very people that OKC is defending.
So despite Eich's personal politics, Mozilla is a place where healthcare is extended to transexuals, and staffers have come out in support of Mozilla org's friendliness to non-straight sexualities, even though they don't support Eich's personal view.
As an international viewer, this is difficult to understand.
Employment discrimination on the grounds of sexuality is illegal here. By saying that they offer healthcare equally to gay employees[0], Mozilla seem to be doing what would here be considered a minimum.
Is that really considered good in the US? To me personally, this comes across as a very weak statement that actually makes me more concerned. It sort of reads like: gay employees are treated equally here, but we were aware that this is not legally required, so we had to think about it and now we're make a big deal out of our decision. It reads like a homophobic CEO approved the message.
Furthermore, there is a body of employees reporting discomfort and distress at having Eich as CEO, e.g. [1],[2], and you can start a reasonable link chain from those if you're interested to read more.
At the end of your first distress link, one of the distressed employees says: To be clear, @mozilla's culture of openness and inclusion is nothing short of amazing. I just feel that this CEO appt does not match that.
Directly following that is "In a post on his blog, Eich writes, “I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion”. Whatever his current personal beliefs, he has pledged that Mozilla will be that environment. At this point he is actually doing what the detractors are asking of him: making a positive contribution to counter a previous negative one.
Your second link on distress has At every turn, I have been heartened by the degree of passion and care that have been apparent as colleague after colleague steps forward to express nuanced opinions, and by the commitment to equality and fairness that runs through the group like the stitches in the binding of a book. and And as much as I’d rather not see a boycott of everything Mozilla does (which, it seems, most people still think of as “Firefox”) based on the actions of a single person affiliated with the organization, I am completely psyched to see this many people this angry in defense of civil rights.
These are people annoyed with a CEO, but who are very positive about Mozilla's culture. They are nuanced opinions that aren't the oversimplified "crucify the company because the new CEO made a donation half a decade ago". They take pains to separate the private behaviour of the CEO and the culture of Mozilla.
Those links are saying the same thing my link did: Not particularly happy with the personal beliefs of the CEO, but very happy with the environment at Mozilla. It's the knee-jerk politics that talks of the ascendence of the new CEO being matched up with a new culture at Mozilla where gays are oppressed by jackboots. I've worked in places before where the CEO was not looked on kindly by the staff, yet we still did good things.
Regarding healthcare in the US, I'm not too familiar with it, but different workplaces have different levels and coverage of healthcare, and healthcare is a significant perk of a job. When our Australian company first reached out to make an SF office, our recruiters were initially puzzled at the importance that the locals put on healthcare as part of their remuneration package. Healthcare is another fiery topic though, and best left to a different thread :)
> By saying that they offer healthcare equally to gay employees[0], Mozilla seem to be doing what would here be considered a minimum.
That's not what they are saying. Offering healthcare equally to gay employees is, of course, done by virtually every company. Offering healthcare to those employees' domestic partners, rather than just their legally married spouses, is somewhat common, but far from standard.
Agree. They should keep quiet, and just take it. Just sit there and don't say anything. Don't be another MLK Jr. and turn this into some kind of personal political thing.
These fools would turn it into some kind of weird personal political fight if we castrate the next Turing. Hey, it's just a chemical castration. No need to make it personal. It's actually good for you.
Each of the non-Firefox browsers falls short of my needs in its own way. Firefox is more than one bigot at the top. And people will be watching him like a hawk for bad behavior, so I doubt it'll be an issue.
I really think Eich is going to have to step down at some point. The backlash hasn't calmed down and Mozilla is going to risk losing more users over this. At some point you have to ask if it's really worth it. Does Eich bring more value to Mozilla that countless developers and users that are boycotting the software?
actually stepping down might be worse than not, at this point.
besides, people complaining about it are quite dumb: eich has been a major player in firefox since the birth of firefox. so basically, nothing has changed - him being ceo or not.
If anything, this is triggered by people who want to hurt firefox, in any possible way. This includes but isn't limited to, competitors (Google Chrome, IE, etc.), disgruntled volunteers (refused checkings, you didn't fix my bug, etc), disgruntled employees (you don't work well you're fired, etc), people gaining from any advertising (okcupid, news, etc)
"besides, people complaining about it are quite dumb: eich has been a major player in firefox since the birth of firefox. so basically, nothing has changed - him being ceo or not."
Except he's CEO now. The leader of the company. The public face that the company puts forward. The person that all the other employees are supposed to look up to.
Never understood this "face of company" stuff Americans are so obsessed with... if he wouldn't have took that job, but kept working on a similarly influential position as he did up till date, no one would be making these "boycott Mozilla" self-advertisements, just as they didn't do anything alike before, right?
Does all this mean that people care more about someone's three titular letters instead of his behaviour and actions in his position?
if anything, mitchell is the face of the company, not the CEO. The CEO is the executive officer. Before that, he was CTO. Not exactly a nobody.
The board has final say on everything, and mitchell seems to be the most active board member. I also tend to personally align with her opinions, I think she's great.
I would not doubt for a second that new browsers without javascript, but using other languages, will start popping up in the future simply because of this.
It would definitely be hard. I actually love JavaScript. But I could easily imagine someone who has something against Brendan Eich start their own browser without javascript. And I can imagine it becoming viral, too.
The JVM, the CLR, Flash, NaCL -- all of these already exist with browser implementations yet are having traction issues.
On top of that, it is unlikely Eich controls JS to the same level as FF, so it'd be a mostly pointless gesture. It'd be like finding out John McCarthy was a vile person, and abandoning all LISP-like languages.
I think it would be like finding out if the CEO of Microsoft didn't want blacks to be able to get married. Would you expect blacks to continue using Windows?
Imagine you were gay. Would you want to use Firefox and JavaScript? I'm a big fan of JS. I'm straight and it's somewhat distasteful to me now. If I were gay, I think that feeling would be very strong.
I think it would be like blacks not using Windows because the CEO of Microsoft said that blacks should not be allowed to get married.
I believe users can boycott a product and start a movement and have a huge effect in today's world. It's happened before and I think it's possible it can happen again.
I think most people realize that it was socially acceptable for people to hold certain beliefs in another era and would not fault them for holding those beliefs.
If the car was invented by a homophobe, it's not like people would ditch it, given that cars are essential to many people and also given the time period the inventor lived in. But is Mozilla or javascript essential? Maybe. You could certainly be correct that it won't happen. But I can see it being replaced. I can see a group of people choosing alternatives.
OK, so are they going to make a shitstorm out of this single issue, or apply principles equally?
IOW: Are we (they) going to dig up ALL of the CEOs of all the products they use and find out who else donated money to anti-gay-marriage organizations and boycott all of them?
It's a dot-org, so people expect them to have principles. No-one would expect Larry Ellison to be other than a shitweasel, but they expect Mozilla to have actual principles.
If you sincerely don't understand this, it is possible that you do not understand the Internet customer base sufficiently.
Well, if you're going to do it right, there should be Congressional hearings on the matter, where private citizens are asked if they are or ever have been a member or supporter of an organization that is against same-sex marriage.
Yes! Let's destroy a man in the name of equality and social justice! Let's educate everyone about our high and mighty (selectively applied) morals at any cost!
It'll be totally worth it for that sweet, sweet sense of smugness we'll feel when we look in the mirror.
I donated both money and time to Mozilla in the pre-Google days when they were really struggling. I'm also gay and a resident of California. When proposition 8 passed it really hurt. Finding out that an organization I've supported now has chosen a leader who explicitly acted to take away my rights, that really hurts too. It's a betrayal. I would hope that you can understand why or at least have the empathy not to belittle those who do feel strongly about it.
Why doesn't OkCupid take a bolder stance and remove all JavaScript from their site? Brendan invented it. I guess that wouldn't be convenient. Better to ask users to inconvenience themselves. This really isn't fair to all of the people who have worked so hard to make Firefox what it is today.
So boycotting something thousands of developers have worked on (including add-ons) because you don't like something the new CEO of a company did once that has nothing to do with the product you're boycotting is not silly.
But boycotting something that same person invented is.
So you're saying that even someone who once made a morally wrong decision can still be competent enough to produce a technology that could serve to become a foundational component to the web as we know it?
Last time I used OkCupid, I can't remember anything that would actually require JS to work. Real time updates (for instance, in IM) wouldn't be possible, but exchanging messages, looking at profiles and answering quiz questions is perfectly doable without JS.
(I know I always sound like someone who hates JavaScript, but at least for the stuff OkC had two years ago, it's not really crucial. IIRC, you could browse user profiles with JS off, but IM didn't work with JS off.)
The IM case can be done without JS, actually, using chunked encoding [1]. This is similar to the MIME multipart/x-mixed-replace technique [2] that was used for "streaming" webcams in the late 90s.
Heh. Just the other day at work I joked that people might get so upset at this that they organize and deploy a better JavaScript substitute for every possible use case.
Why doesn't OKCupid take a bolder stance and give a button to all their users when they sign in, asking, "Do you support marriage equality?" If they click "no", it deletes your account.
I mean, as long as you've decided this is the sort of thing your business ought to be concerning itself with...
Although that situation you outline might seem pretty extreme, spare a thought for those who suffer far worse discrimination in real life, where it actually matters. Cf. the bed and breakfast owner who asks "Are you gay?" and if the answer's "yes", shuts their door on you.
I was specifically referring to this case [1]. The status has gone back and forth several times on appeal, but it's most definitely an example of horrible bigotry.
I will spare a thought! However, I will request that we could consider whether this marginalization and inconvenience is in fact effectively remedied by seeking systematic vengeance upon all people who oppose government recognition of these marriages...
No, fair point. Although I would like to think that a) those "seeking systematic vengeance" (which I agree is an overreaction) are in the minority of those raising this issue b) most people's concern isn't with the very narrow issue of "government recognition of these marriages" but the much wider issue of homophobic discrimination which the former is but a small part.
Somebody should cook up some javascript (yes, grumble grumble) and start a campaign to embed this on every major site.
As clicking YES is too easy for bigots to get around, another version might require signing in to Facebook, Google or Twitter and upon clicking YES, posting a public message that you support marriage equality.
Obviously any website which does not take part in this campaign is not gay friendly and should be immediately boycotted.
Probably because while he may have invented Javascript, many people have contributed to it, so that's not really the same issue. We should assume there might be racists/biggots/etc working at Google on Chrome, at Apple on Safari and at Microsoft on Internet Explorer, too. That's not the point.
The issue is with Mozilla placing him as their executive leader; the endorsement that makes and the message that sends to the technical community & the wider world.
I obviously wasn't clear enough - it's not about the contribution it's about leadership.
Brendan was an employee of Mozilla when he made his Prop 8 contribution - that's fine, that's his right and as you point out people are entitled to their own personal beliefs.
The issue is who a company/foundation/organization decides to be it's leader and the values that leader will exert upon the company/foundation/organization and the products it produces.
To be clear, my beef isn't with Brendan Eich (although I'd disagree with him if I met him), it's with Mozilla for selecting him to become CEO.
>people are entitled to their own personal beliefs //
You say that but the rest of the post makes it clear you don't believe that Mr Eich is entitled to his beliefs and that he shouldn't be employed [in this role] only because of those beliefs.
If he's entitled to hold those beliefs then he's entitle to be treated without prejudice for them, otherwise what do you mean by "entitled to"?
Hah, wider world. For most people, a browser is "the internet". They don't even care that it is made by a company. They certainly don't care about the CEO of this company who gave some money to some thing sometime in the past.
I think that is not how this is working out. Go to Google News, enter "eich" and see how much coverage this is getting in the international mainstream press.
> how much coverage this is getting in the international mainstream press.
Almost none. US based tech sites are reporting on it. I saw an article in the Guardian and HufPo as well. That's it. It's definitely not taking the world by storm.
There are plenty of companies I boycot and avoid patronizing based on concerns I have with their owners, executive leadership or company's position on issues important to me.
So, I'm guessing you don't watch movies made by 20th century fox, you don't read the Wall Street Journal, you don't shop at Kohl's, you don't eat any fruit from Dole, you don't eat at a Dairy Queen etc.
And if you take into account the whole wage-fixing cartel of Apple and co. you don't buy Apple products, you don't visit pages that display ads from Google etc. etc.
Javascript is not solely the product of Mozilla. It exists by itself, is standardized as ECMAScript, and provides no royalties to Brendan Eich. Firefox is a product of Mozilla. Mozilla, and by extension Eich, benefits from people using Firefox to browse the internet, particularly from searching Google through Mozilla's start page.
Whatever you think of Eich, of Mozilla, or of the entire situation, Firefox and Javascript are not the same thing here. If anyone means to make their displeasure felt in Mozilla's revenue, banning Javascript wouldn't make sense.
This is ridiculous. If we started boycotting every company based on our disagreements with their CEOs beliefs, we'd have to eventually boycott everyone.
Without stated context I of course jumped on this link like "oh jeez what's Mozilla done, broken some click-to-flirt functionality on OkCupid"!?
But alas, it is not a technical reason. Nor even a product oriented one. It is a political statement regarding the head of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. So he made a mistake. Once. Maybe many times. That's his personal dealings, and while one may dislike Eich personally for this, and one may be inclined to not vote for Eich in, say, a public election, I find it absurd to protest a product that has but a tenuous connection to the man.
Firefox is, has been, and probably will be for a long time into the future (we hope) a product of many hardworking people, perhaps the least of which is the CEO, so far removed from the product we all know and (some) love. The speed, the engineering... Has nothing to do with Eich. He drives the overall vision of the foundation, naturally, as CEOs do. Does his personal preference/mistake mean he's going to destroy Firefox? No. Does it even mean he will destroy Mozilla with his personal viewpoint on social issues? Probably not. Does it mean he a "bad" guy? Well, on the whole one is inclined to say no, although it will and is argued he has a character flaw, this may be true.
The philosophy of dropping one of the most widely use browsers (outside of corporate environments) simply due to one man's one-time view... Seem absurd.
(I've tried my best to avoid putting my own opinion on his viewpoint in here, but perhaps he's made a mistake or two in the past. Given the amount of criticism recently, this much is clear, now.)
If they had ANY clue, they'd have thought of this ahead of time. e.g. Brendan donates $2k or $5k to a gay charity requiring a public record (as the Prop 8 donation did) three months ago, someone notices two months ago, he can then stay as gnomic as he likes. Something like that. But, y’know, literally nobody in the upper echelons of Mozilla thought of this.
That neither Eich or the board thought of this ahead of the time does, actually, suggest they're not up to the job. This is SIMPLE STUFF.
>That neither Eich or the board thought of this ahead of the time does, actually, suggest they're not up to the job. This is SIMPLE STUFF.
Evidence suggests that they've been spending months fighting a battle pertaining to picking an insider as CEO, which ultimately caused three members to resign from the Moz Co. board.
Which explains why they were so unprepared for anything else.
e: Bogus theory by Ars and WSJ, Mozilla issued a statement that the shake-up of board members was planned well in advance amongst themselves for various reasons.
it's EXTREMELY bizarre that they would not have seriously thought of it.
Unless they all share the same opinions as Eich and they feel that being against gay marriage is like being against anchovies on your pizza. Then it would never have hit them that this was a serious problem.
Is it right to not employ someone because of their legally held beliefs with regard to sexual behaviour?
Is HN [amongst others] calling for all people who disagree with legislation on homosexual relationships being called marriage to forfeit their rights to employment; or perhaps all those that consider homosexual sexual activity to be wrong? That seems like the logical conclusion here.
Is this going to be continued with all beliefs - ousting those that disprove of drunkennes or drug taking or polygamy or adultery?
Why should a company pry in to an employee's private beliefs and associations in the way you're suggesting?
This is more of an opinion about what is best for Mozilla's image in the public eye, not about anyone's right to have a job.
You can without a doubt hire a murderer as your CEO. It will always be my opinion that you should at least think very hard about doing so before you make the final decision.
If you run for president and you're a satan worshipper, then it would be my opinion that you will lose. If you own a cookie company and want to hire a murderer as a CEO, it would simply be my opinion that you may lose sales. If you don't care about my opinion, or don't care about sales, and go ahead and hire a murderer as CEO, then that's perfectly fine. At the end of the day, it's really up to you.
But if someone out there wants to organize a boycott because the CEO isn't a vegan, that's also fine.
I know. But, y'know, "I've tried to take away your rights and I refuse to talk about it, but hey! I promise I won't do it again, baby!" isn't playing out too well in practice.
I don't think I believe, for better or worse, people are capable of that extremely segmenting their lives. Strong disapproval of someone for his or her lifestyle is inevitably going to creep into your interactions with that person.
Yes, but Eichs has never said he hates gays - if you can find a single case or interaction where he has, please share it with the community.
(Or possibly don't - I personally think this entire stupid affair is being blown our of proportion. What the guy does in his own time is his own damn business. If and only if he somehow lets it bleed into his work, sure, you can do your whole outrage, let's boycott Firefox dance).
Look, the guy has a traditional view of marriage - the same view the human race had for thousands of years. Sure, some people want to redefine that, and they're well within rights to do that - nothing wrong with that.
However, this silly overbearing PC nonsense is getting old - we already get this faux outrage from the Moral Police every time the gender issue crops up.
Look, I get we want girls in tech - diversity helps, and it sucks they're not encouraged more to go into it.
Personally, I think this whole marriage thing is overblown. E.g.:
The issue I, and I think others, have with this appointment is what the appointment implies: in a world where many hateful people hold power, yet another hateful person should hold power (in, of all places, an organization seemingly rooted in progress).
I disagree. There are actions which should be applied to oppressors and not the oppressed. Publicly embarrassing bigots is necessary to show that such beliefs will not be socially accepted; public embarrassment of minority groups is hatred.
Just a disclaimer: I fully support discrimination against bigots such as refusal of service.
If you're accusing him of "not liking" bigots, you're probably correct.
Why, specifically, is it okay for Eich to fund the oppression of homosexuals and not okay for people to say that they find that upsetting and therefore would prefer not to use or serve products he's associated with? What level would his bigotry have to ascend to before people were no longer obligated to use these products or, at least, not tell anyone they're not using them and why?
"big·ot·ry
ˈbigətrē/Submit
noun
1.
bigoted attitudes; intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself."
Gays who want to oppress anyone for not thinking like them are also being bigots by that definition. Marriage has been between a man and a woman throughout the history of humans. I think Gays should have legal equality. They can not usurp a word that has had such a clear meaning throughout the core existence of humankind.
Tell me more about this English word that "has had such a clear meaning throughout the core existence of humankind".
Retreating to dictionary definitions does not make a point, nor does asserting that prejudice by an oppressive class against an oppressed class is the same as the converse.
>> Retreating to dictionary definitions does not make a point
Well, yea, actually, it made it quite clearly, hence my post.
>> nor does asserting that prejudice by an oppressive class against an oppressed class is the same as the converse.
Oppression is oppression, elegance and articulation do not change that. Your attempt to say that my belief and understanding of the meaning if a single word describing a single legal institution is oppression underestimates what I was stating originally; that we who believe and understand the meaning of the word marriage are being oppressed by a very vocal, sometimes very vocally belligerent and socially irreverent group in context minimally and notwithstanding.
Are you being beaten to death for your sexual orientation? Are you having your fostered children of many years removed from your family? Are you being denied the right to be with your spouse in the hospital or on their deathbed?
You are in no sense "being oppressed". This is the way in which your "oppression" is not oppression, and one of many reasons why retreating to dictionary definitions of words is a cowardly, useless way to argue.
Marriage has been between a man and a woman throughout the history of humans.
I see this repeated often in these discussions, and it's a breathtakingly arrogant assertion. How the hell do you know? Have you spent years studying anthropology?
In fact, sexual mores have varied quite substantially throughout the thousands of years of human history and the hundreds of civilizations that have come and gone in that time. I think if you actually look into the matter, you'll discover this "fact" you keep repeating is anything but.
Action against those in positions of power who cause harm to others is meaningfully different to action against those who are already victimised. The first is a movement for social change that increases the net good in the world, the second is simple oppression.
In the same sense, one might say that overthrowing a fascist dictator is more morally justified than overthrowing a peaceful democracy to install said dictatorship. Both are violence against a government, but they exist in different moral contexts.
That's how it works for the vast majority of people, who believe that moral truths exist as real attributes of humans or the Universe. Their own morals are right, and all other morals are wrong.
But then you wind up feeding the narrative, which we've heard so much, that gay marriage opponents are the ones actually being oppressed here. I think that's mostly crap... except, perhaps, for cases like this one.
I'm not even sure what I think about it, but I can't reject silverstorm's point out of hand.
Michael Walzer asks "Should we tolerate the intolerant?" He notes that most minority religious groups who are the beneficiaries of tolerance are themselves intolerant, at least in some respects. In a tolerant regime, such people may learn to tolerate, or at least to behave "as if they possessed this virtue". Philosopher Karl Popper asserted, in The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1, that we are warranted in refusing to tolerate intolerance. Philosopher John Rawls concludes in A Theory of Justice that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls also insists, like Popper, that society has a reasonable right of self-preservation that supersedes the principle of tolerance: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."
This political-correctness frenzy is beyond ridiculous. A browser company should not have to give statements about political issues that have absolutely nothing to do with their business. What's next, regular declerations concerning basic income, marijuana legalization and the Crimea?
This is mostly faux outrage. Brendan is one man, an easy target to scream and shout at.
Notice how nobody is protesting outside mosques and embassies where under Islam, the penalty for simply being gay, let alone getting married, is DEATH.
That's a ridiculous generalisation; the status of homosexuality and Islamic law is far more nuanced than that. Not only is there not a single death penalty for being gay across the entire Muslim world, the legal status of homosexuality differs greatly. Of course, that is not to say that many of those countries don't exhibit abhorrent views, but the same goes for many Christian communities too.
I would warrant that a larger proportion of HN's audience feels some kind of connection with the technology world than they do with that of Islam, and it feels more reasonable to clear your own back yard out first before complaining about the state of your neighbour's.
As of 1999 in Iran, more than 4,000 lesbians and gays had been executed since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
...
As of 2009, homosexual relationships, acts or behavior are illegal in 36 Islamic countries. 10 impose the death penalty.
The Qur'an is pretty clear about what the punishment for being an atheist or homosexual is.
I'm not saying that Jewish and Christian religious texts don't also contain similar punishments, however, it's quite clear that anyone who believes in all the things the Qur'an says would have to believe that it's acceptable to put atheists and homosexuals to death for no other reason.
Similarly in most judeo-christian religions you see similar opposition to homosexuality being treated on an equal footing to heterosexuality, not to mention the rest of the sexual repression commonly found in those religions.
The notion that gender issues can exist outside of technology or culture is ridiculous, and an undercurrent that haunts many HN posts.
Silence, via shaming or suppression by a privileged status quo, perpetuates the prevailing stigmas and only serves to reinforce the very ignorance that birthed the attitudes.
While it might be uncomfortable for a privileged majority, we could all do well to at least be more open to dissenting opinions.
In this case, 8% of OKCupid’s “business” is directly related to the issue, so it seems precisely appropriate.
The problem I've seen (and continue to see) from Eich and Mozilla is that the apology is denial: "I'm not a bad person! See -- I'm doing all of these good things!"
Apologies don't work that way. The right apology is something like: "I try to be a good person, but sometimes I don't get it right. 5 years ago, I did something hurtful to many of you. I did it because of ... What I didn't realize then and do realize now is that ... Thank you for helping me, and to those of you who I made the world a worse place for in the past, I'm sorry, and I'll do what I can to make things better in the future."
I'm not convinced that Eich believes that he did the wrong thing in 2008 - that as far as I can tell, if he were to wind the clock back, the only reason he wouldn't write that check is the trouble that it's causing him now, and not because he's gained some understanding of things.
I don't think it was ever really about that. Mozilla is a great organization, partly because of Brendan's involvement over the years. Still it's perplexing that he feels so strongly about this. He's being criticized from every corner and bringing lots of negative attention to Mozilla and yet and he's sticking to his guns.
This isn't going to go away. At best he's going to be seen as the guy who doesn't support gay marriage in a world where this sort of view is becoming more and more untenable.
Well, wouldn't you respect him less, if he simply changed his views for political expediency?
And last time I checked, when Prop8 went through, wasn't he with a majority of Californians...lol.
I don't get how the supporters of gay marriage something think (or try to claim) that their view is automatically right, arguments be damned.
Marriage has been defined as a man and woman for thousands of years.
Yes, that can be changed, and they're well within rights to do so - maybe the human race is changing.
But to claim that, we don't need to stinking arguments, and just say, we must be right seems a bit stupid.
Surely, if you're going to redefine something that important, you'd want to lead with your arguments, and not, oh, it's just natural we're right, and your position is untenable.
Dear Gays, we hate Mozilla, so please use a browser that spies on you like Google Chrome, or deinstall your Linux and switch to Windows Explorer, or install a browser that has problems with 80% of the other webpages.
I think it's a shame that this comment has been downvoted to hell, because it's actually quite illuminating: the satire in it, such as it is, revolves around the assumption that FOSS politics is equal to or greater in urgency than any other kind of politics. Human rights violation? GPL violation! Same category.
The reason I think it's so valuable is that a version of it probably informed the board's decision to appoint Eich despite the already controversial Prop 8 donation. "Sure, there's this $1000 he gave and that's terrible, but look at all the great FOSS code he's contributed! The controversy can't last long, we're Mozilla, we're the good guys. Everybody knows that."
Lots of people out there do not think like this.
Lots of people care about social justice and see no problem using IE.
You have a history of general reprehensibility on this site, so I probably shouldn't bother to give you the attention you crave. Because we all know that your beef isn't with them doing this, but with people not tolerating hatred of gays. And women, but, you know, one at a time.
That said, I want to stand up for a couple of my friends who work at OKCupid. They're excellent people and I don't believe the culture at OKC would be okay with using this as a vector for advertising. I'm confident they believe what they're saying and I wish more companies would take a stand against the bigots you like.
history wah?
half my friends are gay. Many are women. One is my best friend.
I think that using the excuse of being a minority to enforce ridicule arguments is stupid - that's different.
Accusing people at random seems just as wrong.
--
In fact, this is an interesting point. I noticed that any "negative" comment towards reactions to this story generates very strong reactions from some people (including death messages). This doesn't happen with other topics.
What makes you entitled to think this is ok? (this is an honest question)
Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.
Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.
Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.
If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.
However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid:
Google Chrome / Internet Exploder / Opera / Safari
Thank you,
OkCupid
Background on Mr. Eich and Mozilla
In 2008, Mr. Eich supported the passage of California’s Prop 8, a statewide initiative to ban gay marriage, with a $1000 donation. Granted, his contribution is now six years in the past, and people can change. But Mr. Eich’s boilerplate statements in the time since make it seem like he has the same views now as he did then. Mozilla recently promoted him to CEO, hence the issue only now coming to our attention. His donation was known to Mozilla at the time of his promotion, and, furthermore, CEOs are rewarded based on their company’s performance. The CEO is the visionary for a company and its products. We are sad to think that any OkCupid page loads would even indirectly contribute towards the success of an individual who supported Prop 8—and who for all we know would support it again. We wish Mozilla’s institutional commitment to freedom and openness were better reflected by their choice of leadership.
yep, there is no good working browser around that i can trust. Chrome is just like the "Exploder" only from another, new generation, MS.
edit: i fully support the equal rights (among others the right to file joint return with object of your sexual desire) and kind of surprised to learn that a supposedly smart techie would actively support the opposite. I'm surprised at Mozilla too - would they hire an open segregationist or a anti-women-election-right proponent?
This article's assertion that "half of Mozilla's six-person board resigned over the Proposition 8 donation" is incorrect. If you follow the link to The Verge's own article about the Mozilla board, that article has been amended with Mozilla's response:
We don't need more than one story about this on the front page, so I'm killing the others.
Commenters: To state the obvious, this is an inflammatory topic. If you post a comment, make sure that it is a thoughtful one.
Readers: If you see a comment that is not thoughtful, please downvote it. Most comments in this thread so far have not been, so you have your work cut out for you.
In extreme cases, flag the comment. To flag a comment, click on "link" to go to the item page, then look for the "flag" link at the top. As a calibration hint, I haven't seen any comments in this thread that deserve flagging. But I can't read them all.
As I hope everyone knows by now, we're experimenting with ways to solve the problem of toxic comments on Hacker News. I believe that the community has to solve this problem, rather than us imposing a solution. Consider this our appeal to all fair-minded readers to pitch in.
I'm afraid you may have missed my point. I was deliberately intervening in this submission, because the thread sucked. Edit: it might be a bit better now.
All: Unthoughtful comments should be downvoted. Have at it.
Edit: I've mollified my wording slightly. Please downvote judiciously.
I was talking about the invitation to pitch in how to solve the general problem of hateful comments. Which I think shouldn't be discussed here, because it's not only a problem of this specific submission.
We're entering a period of experimentation where things will be in flux for a while. For now, as one experiment, I'm adding moderation comments to specific posts. I won't keep doing it, because it's tiring and tedious to write (and no doubt to read). But I want to send a clear signal to the community that we're engaged, and also address the low-handing fruit of transparency concerns, if that makes sense.
We don't have a great answer to that yet, so I'm using general terms and asking everyone to apply their own best-faith interpretation to them.
We're going to solve this problem sooner or later, because so many of us are sick of it. But the specific form the solution takes has to evolve in the community. When systems are evolving, overspecification is a mistake. For that reason, I'm going to stick to commenting on particular examples for a while.
"unthoughtful"? "toxic"? Those are what wikipedia would call "weasel words". If you have some rational criticism, spill it out and we'll deal with it like adults. Hiding your censorship under "obvious" labels is bad.
The original was: "This isn't Wikipedia. We prefer to think for ourselves here". My meaning was that we prefer to find solutions that are appropriate for HN rather than copying what another site does. Since my original wording left room for misunderstanding, I changed it. (I do that all the time, incidentally; I am a compulsive, inveterate editor, and always have been.)
If that is what you call "unapologetically abusive", we have nothing further to discuss. I'm going to invest time answering users we have a hope of satisfying.
409 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 310 ms ] threadEdit 2: the Internet Exploder typo is theirs.
Here is the text (for those who don't use Firefox):
Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.
Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.
Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.
If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.
However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid:
[3 buttons:] Google Chrome Internet Exploder Opera
Thank you, OkCupid
I don't know much about Eich, but I don't think he was working to make same-sex relationships illegal (like Uganda or nigeria). it does okcupid no credit to infer that he does (using weasel words like "people like Mr eich".)
saying "eich wanted to prevent 8% of our customers from enjoying the fulfillment that marriage can bring to a relationship" would be much more honest.
edit: added legal before potential
That's the real question here. This issue isn't about hate and dehumanization -- I mean, there's way too much hate and dehumanization, certainly, but not enough to drive electoral victories we've seen. The question is just an extension of the social upheaval of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The real remarkable thing is that it's been simmering for so long without coming to the forefront yet. Probably many people thought that it was substantially settled, on account of this quiet, but it looks more like the two camps just quietly went their separate ways.
This is also why religious groups outside of Westboro mostly talk about focusing on the family and the social problems associated with single-parent households and divorce. (If you are not a member of these groups or do not have friends and family who are members of these groups, you are probably unaware of what this advocacy looks like. See also: the entire public policy of the Catholic church on this matter.)
FYI: This is how you can have an eminently nice person with nothing but respect for the intrinsic human rights and dignity of homosexuals, but who still votes for Prop 8 or Amendment 1 or a similar measure.
And you know what? What goes on between two people in private of their bedroom is nobody's business. What benefits the government makes available to people, through spending the public purse or giving people tax breaks or mandating certain sorts of treatment... that kind of is peoples' business. It's a public-policy question, and structuring public policy one way or another impacts society in several ways - including, in some jurisdictions, making your ability to operate as a business contingent on you performing some services that you might not want to perform (cf. New Mexico photography etc etc).
(Postscript. No particular stance for or against Proposition 8, or for or against Amendment 1, or any other public policy recommendation, is hereby endorsed. The following ideas are hereby endorsed: Gay people are human beings and deserve a substantially identical set of human rights and dignity as any other human being is entitled to receive. People who treat them otherwise may be some sort or another of monster. The extent to which these rights overlap with public policy in the matter of issuing marriages is controversial. Voters who support Amendment 1 or Prop 8, electorally or fiscally, are not monsters for doing so. Pluralism is good and it would be great if we all had some way to get along. Maybe we can start with more understanding.)
(Post-postscript. Added adoption to the list of misc. benefits as it is of special relevance as a way for a married gay couple to raise children.)
I think this is where the problem crops up. Many of the people commenting here see things as strictly black-and-white. Opposition to gay marriage is bigotry, support for gay marriage is sunshine and roses.
The problem is that it's impossible to reason with anyone who takes such a stance, because many of the arguments raised here are suggestive that any form of opposition to gay marriage is illustrative of hatred and bigotry against gays. There is absolutely no middle ground. Which is rather ironic, because the other arguments raised accuse the opponents of gay marriage of doing precisely the same thing and accepting no middle ground!
In another thread last week, I recall a particular discussion that implicitly suggested that those who believe the state shouldn't recognize any form of marriage are closet bigots, so I'm not entirely sure what to take away from this. It seems to me that there's far too much emotional investment to enjoy rational discourse. I can certainly understand why such emotions are raging uncontrollably, but as someone who is neither married nor really believes the state should have involvement in marriage (or at least, it should strictly be up to the state to be aware of certain long term relationships under contract law--not what those relationships are), it's a bit beyond me as to why there's so much disgust. I don't feel so compelled to hate someone based on their beliefs, much less stop using a specific browser for reasons other than technical merits.
Side note: I admit that I had to do some digging around to figure out why OkCupid was urging users to stay away from Firefox since I visited the site with Chromium. I had completely forgotten about the tempest in a teapot that occurred when Eich was appointed to CEO. I can't help but think this is something that's intensely fascinating and of interest to a relatively small but vocal minority of people, although going by my small sample size of one is probably disingenuous. Still, there are more important issues IMO, and using/supporting an open and standards compliant browser (and open source) is of far greater importance to me than someone's political stance who now happens to be CEO.
It'd be humorous to suggest a conspiracy at work here: Information about Eich's donation was dug up and clandestinely released by someone paid for by Microsoft in effort to undermine Mozilla should he ever be appointed CEO!
No, just marriage. His $1000 annulled existing gay marriages, and the situation didn't recover until 2013. You can't seriously expect that there won't be LOTS of people REALLY PISSED OFF ABOUT THAT. You can think they're wrong ... but those people are your prospective customers too.
They just wouldn't be recognized by the state. That is way different than what OKCupid is trying to say.
Well, Prop 8 specifically didn't try to do that, but that isn't unheard of in the US: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/10/indiana...
> They just wouldn't be recognized by the state.
Okcupid may have worded that badly, but the problem doesn't go away because it changed from "illegal" to "refusal to recognize/allow". It's still fundamentally terrible.
And yes, I recognize the difference between the two - I'm fully aware this country made interracial marriages like mine straight out illegal and not just unrecognized up until 50 years ago, and it's only been a week since I got married and I've already had to deal with thinly veiled racism.
He's on record as having made a fairly substantial donation to the Prop 8 campaign. That may not be "Fred Phelps" — let alone "Uganda" — levels of anti-marriage-equality, but it's close enough for my purposes.
"The "not as bad as" argument, or the fallacy of relative privation, is a form of the moral equivalence fallacy that takes note of the existence of things that are worse than what is actually under discussion - for different purposes, as outlined below. It's popular with people who know perfectly well they're doing something wrong; being fully aware that they're doing something wrong, they feel compelled to attempt to justify it and do so by pointing to other, usually worse, actions."
I said the situation in Uganda can't be considered "close" by any stretch of imagination to the situation in California until recently, before gay marriage was legalized. I also implied reaction should be proportionate to the degree of wrong. How the heck did you infer "opposing gay marriage is positive" from that?
You're a random person on the internet, I personally wouldn't rely on any implication to be clearly communicated. When in doubt, be explicit. This is even more important in threads (like these) where people run around with their heads on fire.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy
No one is making the argument that you are objecting to or using a worse situation to justify anything.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Strawman
Not just flippantly saying "They can't get married, but they're still alive, right?"
Maybe thinking that it's ALL tragic is the best point of view in moving this world forward.
That message doesn't work for me. I think you have to be logged in.
Well that kind of bellicose chest-thumping should certainly win people over to the cause.
There is an irony that an entity that declares it is for creating love is going around declaring enemies, and wishing them failure. This clearly undermines their own message, and shows them to be of a similar us vs them hateship. There are Sides to be taken, and you don't want to be on the wrong one.
What they should have said is "we are disappointed, and would like to see Eich publicly change his opinion and make some form of recompense; we would like Eich to join us in our view"... instead of "FUCK THAT GUY".
Remember the people that picketed Fred Phelps' funeral with the sign "Sorry for your loss"? That is how you fight hate, not with more hate.
That's not to defend okcupid's tactics in this case. I'm just saying that it's not really an example of hypocrisy.
This works for everyone http://www.okcupid.com/?mozilla_message=1
I find it highly disingenuous to call supporting equal rights "petulant and abrasive".
OKCupid's business revolves around personal relationships. Some of those relationships are same sex relationships. To OKC, this issue is important to them. Let's not confuse meaningful concern with rhetoric.
How is this any different then when same sex couples boycotted businesses in California where the owner donated to Prop 8 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)]?
edit: Can you stop with the downvotes? I'm not arguing that OKCupid's message is petulant and abrasive. I was trying to make sense of what honksillet was saying.
It is everyone's business. The sooner the culture makes an othered minority issue socially repugnant and less some sort of innocuous personal political belief as you hint, the greater the chance for longer term change.
So despite Eich's personal politics, Mozilla is a place where healthcare is extended to transexuals, and staffers have come out in support of Mozilla org's friendliness to non-straight sexualities, even though they don't support Eich's personal view.
http://subfictional.com/2014/03/24/on-brendan-eich-as-ceo-of...
I would be interested to hear from the LGTB community within Mozilla as to where the consensus is on this move.
Employment discrimination on the grounds of sexuality is illegal here. By saying that they offer healthcare equally to gay employees[0], Mozilla seem to be doing what would here be considered a minimum.
Is that really considered good in the US? To me personally, this comes across as a very weak statement that actually makes me more concerned. It sort of reads like: gay employees are treated equally here, but we were aware that this is not legally required, so we had to think about it and now we're make a big deal out of our decision. It reads like a homophobic CEO approved the message.
Furthermore, there is a body of employees reporting discomfort and distress at having Eich as CEO, e.g. [1],[2], and you can start a reasonable link chain from those if you're interested to read more.
[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/03/mozilla-statement-on-...
[1] http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/03/28/Mozilla-employees-...
[2] http://incisive.nu/2014/thinking-about-mozilla/
Directly following that is "In a post on his blog, Eich writes, “I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion”. Whatever his current personal beliefs, he has pledged that Mozilla will be that environment. At this point he is actually doing what the detractors are asking of him: making a positive contribution to counter a previous negative one.
Your second link on distress has At every turn, I have been heartened by the degree of passion and care that have been apparent as colleague after colleague steps forward to express nuanced opinions, and by the commitment to equality and fairness that runs through the group like the stitches in the binding of a book. and And as much as I’d rather not see a boycott of everything Mozilla does (which, it seems, most people still think of as “Firefox”) based on the actions of a single person affiliated with the organization, I am completely psyched to see this many people this angry in defense of civil rights.
These are people annoyed with a CEO, but who are very positive about Mozilla's culture. They are nuanced opinions that aren't the oversimplified "crucify the company because the new CEO made a donation half a decade ago". They take pains to separate the private behaviour of the CEO and the culture of Mozilla.
Those links are saying the same thing my link did: Not particularly happy with the personal beliefs of the CEO, but very happy with the environment at Mozilla. It's the knee-jerk politics that talks of the ascendence of the new CEO being matched up with a new culture at Mozilla where gays are oppressed by jackboots. I've worked in places before where the CEO was not looked on kindly by the staff, yet we still did good things.
Regarding healthcare in the US, I'm not too familiar with it, but different workplaces have different levels and coverage of healthcare, and healthcare is a significant perk of a job. When our Australian company first reached out to make an SF office, our recruiters were initially puzzled at the importance that the locals put on healthcare as part of their remuneration package. Healthcare is another fiery topic though, and best left to a different thread :)
That's not what they are saying. Offering healthcare equally to gay employees is, of course, done by virtually every company. Offering healthcare to those employees' domestic partners, rather than just their legally married spouses, is somewhat common, but far from standard.
These fools would turn it into some kind of weird personal political fight if we castrate the next Turing. Hey, it's just a chemical castration. No need to make it personal. It's actually good for you.
See also, from the other side of the world: http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/victoria/vac-gmhc-to-boyco... That's a significant gay charity issuing a press release to say they're boycotting.
besides, people complaining about it are quite dumb: eich has been a major player in firefox since the birth of firefox. so basically, nothing has changed - him being ceo or not.
If anything, this is triggered by people who want to hurt firefox, in any possible way. This includes but isn't limited to, competitors (Google Chrome, IE, etc.), disgruntled volunteers (refused checkings, you didn't fix my bug, etc), disgruntled employees (you don't work well you're fired, etc), people gaining from any advertising (okcupid, news, etc)
Except he's CEO now. The leader of the company. The public face that the company puts forward. The person that all the other employees are supposed to look up to.
Other than that, nothing's changed.
The board has final say on everything, and mitchell seems to be the most active board member. I also tend to personally align with her opinions, I think she's great.
I meant that I could easily see it happening.
It would definitely be hard. I actually love JavaScript. But I could easily imagine someone who has something against Brendan Eich start their own browser without javascript. And I can imagine it becoming viral, too.
On top of that, it is unlikely Eich controls JS to the same level as FF, so it'd be a mostly pointless gesture. It'd be like finding out John McCarthy was a vile person, and abandoning all LISP-like languages.
I think it would be like finding out if the CEO of Microsoft didn't want blacks to be able to get married. Would you expect blacks to continue using Windows?
Imagine you were gay. Would you want to use Firefox and JavaScript? I'm a big fan of JS. I'm straight and it's somewhat distasteful to me now. If I were gay, I think that feeling would be very strong.
Darwin thought blacks were quite inferior and not as evolved. No one is discounting the theory of evolution.
It'd be like ditching XMLHttpRequest because someone at MS was racist - it's simply not going to happen.
I believe users can boycott a product and start a movement and have a huge effect in today's world. It's happened before and I think it's possible it can happen again.
I think most people realize that it was socially acceptable for people to hold certain beliefs in another era and would not fault them for holding those beliefs.
If the car was invented by a homophobe, it's not like people would ditch it, given that cars are essential to many people and also given the time period the inventor lived in. But is Mozilla or javascript essential? Maybe. You could certainly be correct that it won't happen. But I can see it being replaced. I can see a group of people choosing alternatives.
IOW: Are we (they) going to dig up ALL of the CEOs of all the products they use and find out who else donated money to anti-gay-marriage organizations and boycott all of them?
Here's a partial list:
http://www.phillymag.com/news/2012/08/01/boycott-chick-fil-a...
If you sincerely don't understand this, it is possible that you do not understand the Internet customer base sufficiently.
After all, isn't that where all this is heading?
It'll be totally worth it for that sweet, sweet sense of smugness we'll feel when we look in the mirror.
Do you mean it's not fair because it hurts these people, even though they haven't done anything objectionable?
You're just giving people more of a reason to hate him.
But boycotting something that same person invented is.
I don't see the logic here. Really.
(I know I always sound like someone who hates JavaScript, but at least for the stuff OkC had two years ago, it's not really crucial. IIRC, you could browse user profiles with JS off, but IM didn't work with JS off.)
If we're going back in time, you can get this via Flash.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunked_transfer_encoding [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Mixed-Replace
One can hope ...
I mean, as long as you've decided this is the sort of thing your business ought to be concerning itself with...
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/christian-bb-...
Somebody should cook up some javascript (yes, grumble grumble) and start a campaign to embed this on every major site.
As clicking YES is too easy for bigots to get around, another version might require signing in to Facebook, Google or Twitter and upon clicking YES, posting a public message that you support marriage equality.
Obviously any website which does not take part in this campaign is not gay friendly and should be immediately boycotted.
The issue is with Mozilla placing him as their executive leader; the endorsement that makes and the message that sends to the technical community & the wider world.
People can have their own personal beliefs and as long as that doesn't effect the organization's open and inclusive policies.
Brendan was an employee of Mozilla when he made his Prop 8 contribution - that's fine, that's his right and as you point out people are entitled to their own personal beliefs.
The issue is who a company/foundation/organization decides to be it's leader and the values that leader will exert upon the company/foundation/organization and the products it produces.
To be clear, my beef isn't with Brendan Eich (although I'd disagree with him if I met him), it's with Mozilla for selecting him to become CEO.
You say that but the rest of the post makes it clear you don't believe that Mr Eich is entitled to his beliefs and that he shouldn't be employed [in this role] only because of those beliefs.
If he's entitled to hold those beliefs then he's entitle to be treated without prejudice for them, otherwise what do you mean by "entitled to"?
Hah, wider world. For most people, a browser is "the internet". They don't even care that it is made by a company. They certainly don't care about the CEO of this company who gave some money to some thing sometime in the past.
Almost none. US based tech sites are reporting on it. I saw an article in the Guardian and HufPo as well. That's it. It's definitely not taking the world by storm.
I don't think that is that uncommon, actually.
And if you take into account the whole wage-fixing cartel of Apple and co. you don't buy Apple products, you don't visit pages that display ads from Google etc. etc.
Whatever you think of Eich, of Mozilla, or of the entire situation, Firefox and Javascript are not the same thing here. If anyone means to make their displeasure felt in Mozilla's revenue, banning Javascript wouldn't make sense.
But he is the CEO of the company, and what the company does going forward does depend on him a lot.
I think this is the key difference between boycotting the browser and boycotting the language.
But alas, it is not a technical reason. Nor even a product oriented one. It is a political statement regarding the head of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. So he made a mistake. Once. Maybe many times. That's his personal dealings, and while one may dislike Eich personally for this, and one may be inclined to not vote for Eich in, say, a public election, I find it absurd to protest a product that has but a tenuous connection to the man.
Firefox is, has been, and probably will be for a long time into the future (we hope) a product of many hardworking people, perhaps the least of which is the CEO, so far removed from the product we all know and (some) love. The speed, the engineering... Has nothing to do with Eich. He drives the overall vision of the foundation, naturally, as CEOs do. Does his personal preference/mistake mean he's going to destroy Firefox? No. Does it even mean he will destroy Mozilla with his personal viewpoint on social issues? Probably not. Does it mean he a "bad" guy? Well, on the whole one is inclined to say no, although it will and is argued he has a character flaw, this may be true.
The philosophy of dropping one of the most widely use browsers (outside of corporate environments) simply due to one man's one-time view... Seem absurd.
(I've tried my best to avoid putting my own opinion on his viewpoint in here, but perhaps he's made a mistake or two in the past. Given the amount of criticism recently, this much is clear, now.)
> Mozilla supports equality for all, including marriage equality for LGBT couples.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/29/mozilla-supports-lg...
There's no evidence that Brendan Eich will bring any of his political views to the workplace; this continued backlash feels unwarranted.
If they had ANY clue, they'd have thought of this ahead of time. e.g. Brendan donates $2k or $5k to a gay charity requiring a public record (as the Prop 8 donation did) three months ago, someone notices two months ago, he can then stay as gnomic as he likes. Something like that. But, y’know, literally nobody in the upper echelons of Mozilla thought of this.
That neither Eich or the board thought of this ahead of the time does, actually, suggest they're not up to the job. This is SIMPLE STUFF.
Evidence suggests that they've been spending months fighting a battle pertaining to picking an insider as CEO, which ultimately caused three members to resign from the Moz Co. board.
Which explains why they were so unprepared for anything else.
e: Bogus theory by Ars and WSJ, Mozilla issued a statement that the shake-up of board members was planned well in advance amongst themselves for various reasons.
Unless they all share the same opinions as Eich and they feel that being against gay marriage is like being against anchovies on your pizza. Then it would never have hit them that this was a serious problem.
"I'm envisioning the board standing around with glassy stares, 'I have no idea how this could have happened. We totally vetted his geek cred.'" - rone
To me, it's like watching someone kick a puppy and then considering him for CEO.
"hey, how about this guy? He kicked a puppy."
"Is there anything about him that we need to be aware of?"
"no, not that I know of."
Is HN [amongst others] calling for all people who disagree with legislation on homosexual relationships being called marriage to forfeit their rights to employment; or perhaps all those that consider homosexual sexual activity to be wrong? That seems like the logical conclusion here.
Is this going to be continued with all beliefs - ousting those that disprove of drunkennes or drug taking or polygamy or adultery?
Why should a company pry in to an employee's private beliefs and associations in the way you're suggesting?
You can without a doubt hire a murderer as your CEO. It will always be my opinion that you should at least think very hard about doing so before you make the final decision.
If you run for president and you're a satan worshipper, then it would be my opinion that you will lose. If you own a cookie company and want to hire a murderer as a CEO, it would simply be my opinion that you may lose sales. If you don't care about my opinion, or don't care about sales, and go ahead and hire a murderer as CEO, then that's perfectly fine. At the end of the day, it's really up to you.
But if someone out there wants to organize a boycott because the CEO isn't a vegan, that's also fine.
Calls for boycott are happening AFTER it was released. I think it's the content (or lack thereof) of that letter that makes it ineffective.
> If they had ANY clue, they'd have thought of this ahead of time. e.g. Brendan donates $2k or $5k to a gay charity requiring a public record
So now we prefer lying bigots to honest bigots? That reeks so much of hypocrisy, it is disgusting.
Maybe they were occupied finding a man with the necessary technical and leading capabilities, plus the experience and whatever else I may have forgot?
(Or possibly don't - I personally think this entire stupid affair is being blown our of proportion. What the guy does in his own time is his own damn business. If and only if he somehow lets it bleed into his work, sure, you can do your whole outrage, let's boycott Firefox dance).
Look, the guy has a traditional view of marriage - the same view the human race had for thousands of years. Sure, some people want to redefine that, and they're well within rights to do that - nothing wrong with that.
However, this silly overbearing PC nonsense is getting old - we already get this faux outrage from the Moral Police every time the gender issue crops up.
Look, I get we want girls in tech - diversity helps, and it sucks they're not encouraged more to go into it.
Personally, I think this whole marriage thing is overblown. E.g.:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10729717/Brian-Sewe...
(If his personal beliefs do pollute his work then do as you will, run the guy out of town on a rail if you must)
Just a disclaimer: I fully support discrimination against bigots such as refusal of service.
Why, specifically, is it okay for Eich to fund the oppression of homosexuals and not okay for people to say that they find that upsetting and therefore would prefer not to use or serve products he's associated with? What level would his bigotry have to ascend to before people were no longer obligated to use these products or, at least, not tell anyone they're not using them and why?
"big·ot·ry ˈbigətrē/Submit noun 1. bigoted attitudes; intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself."
Gays who want to oppress anyone for not thinking like them are also being bigots by that definition. Marriage has been between a man and a woman throughout the history of humans. I think Gays should have legal equality. They can not usurp a word that has had such a clear meaning throughout the core existence of humankind.
Retreating to dictionary definitions does not make a point, nor does asserting that prejudice by an oppressive class against an oppressed class is the same as the converse.
Well, yea, actually, it made it quite clearly, hence my post.
>> nor does asserting that prejudice by an oppressive class against an oppressed class is the same as the converse.
Oppression is oppression, elegance and articulation do not change that. Your attempt to say that my belief and understanding of the meaning if a single word describing a single legal institution is oppression underestimates what I was stating originally; that we who believe and understand the meaning of the word marriage are being oppressed by a very vocal, sometimes very vocally belligerent and socially irreverent group in context minimally and notwithstanding.
Are you being beaten to death for your sexual orientation? Are you having your fostered children of many years removed from your family? Are you being denied the right to be with your spouse in the hospital or on their deathbed?
You are in no sense "being oppressed". This is the way in which your "oppression" is not oppression, and one of many reasons why retreating to dictionary definitions of words is a cowardly, useless way to argue.
I see this repeated often in these discussions, and it's a breathtakingly arrogant assertion. How the hell do you know? Have you spent years studying anthropology?
In fact, sexual mores have varied quite substantially throughout the thousands of years of human history and the hundreds of civilizations that have come and gone in that time. I think if you actually look into the matter, you'll discover this "fact" you keep repeating is anything but.
In the same sense, one might say that overthrowing a fascist dictator is more morally justified than overthrowing a peaceful democracy to install said dictatorship. Both are violence against a government, but they exist in different moral contexts.
I'm not even sure what I think about it, but I can't reject silverstorm's point out of hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Michael Walzer asks "Should we tolerate the intolerant?" He notes that most minority religious groups who are the beneficiaries of tolerance are themselves intolerant, at least in some respects. In a tolerant regime, such people may learn to tolerate, or at least to behave "as if they possessed this virtue". Philosopher Karl Popper asserted, in The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1, that we are warranted in refusing to tolerate intolerance. Philosopher John Rawls concludes in A Theory of Justice that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls also insists, like Popper, that society has a reasonable right of self-preservation that supersedes the principle of tolerance: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."
Pretty much every law in the common law system, including the constitution, is a law that denies rights to subsets of the population.
The only question is whether you are in favor of such regulation. I'm personally not in favor of regulating homosexuality or marriage.
This is mostly faux outrage. Brendan is one man, an easy target to scream and shout at.
Notice how nobody is protesting outside mosques and embassies where under Islam, the penalty for simply being gay, let alone getting married, is DEATH.
I would warrant that a larger proportion of HN's audience feels some kind of connection with the technology world than they do with that of Islam, and it feels more reasonable to clear your own back yard out first before complaining about the state of your neighbour's.
As of 1999 in Iran, more than 4,000 lesbians and gays had been executed since the 1979 Islamic revolution. ... As of 2009, homosexual relationships, acts or behavior are illegal in 36 Islamic countries. 10 impose the death penalty.
I'm not saying that Jewish and Christian religious texts don't also contain similar punishments, however, it's quite clear that anyone who believes in all the things the Qur'an says would have to believe that it's acceptable to put atheists and homosexuals to death for no other reason.
Similarly in most judeo-christian religions you see similar opposition to homosexuality being treated on an equal footing to heterosexuality, not to mention the rest of the sexual repression commonly found in those religions.
Silence, via shaming or suppression by a privileged status quo, perpetuates the prevailing stigmas and only serves to reinforce the very ignorance that birthed the attitudes.
While it might be uncomfortable for a privileged majority, we could all do well to at least be more open to dissenting opinions.
In this case, 8% of OKCupid’s “business” is directly related to the issue, so it seems precisely appropriate.
Apologies don't work that way. The right apology is something like: "I try to be a good person, but sometimes I don't get it right. 5 years ago, I did something hurtful to many of you. I did it because of ... What I didn't realize then and do realize now is that ... Thank you for helping me, and to those of you who I made the world a worse place for in the past, I'm sorry, and I'll do what I can to make things better in the future."
I'm not convinced that Eich believes that he did the wrong thing in 2008 - that as far as I can tell, if he were to wind the clock back, the only reason he wouldn't write that check is the trouble that it's causing him now, and not because he's gained some understanding of things.
This isn't going to go away. At best he's going to be seen as the guy who doesn't support gay marriage in a world where this sort of view is becoming more and more untenable.
And last time I checked, when Prop8 went through, wasn't he with a majority of Californians...lol.
I don't get how the supporters of gay marriage something think (or try to claim) that their view is automatically right, arguments be damned.
Marriage has been defined as a man and woman for thousands of years.
Yes, that can be changed, and they're well within rights to do so - maybe the human race is changing.
But to claim that, we don't need to stinking arguments, and just say, we must be right seems a bit stupid.
Surely, if you're going to redefine something that important, you'd want to lead with your arguments, and not, oh, it's just natural we're right, and your position is untenable.
Mozilla supports equality for all, including marriage equality for LGBT couples, but his new CEO does not? I'm sorry, but it just does not compute.
The reason I think it's so valuable is that a version of it probably informed the board's decision to appoint Eich despite the already controversial Prop 8 donation. "Sure, there's this $1000 he gave and that's terrible, but look at all the great FOSS code he's contributed! The controversy can't last long, we're Mozilla, we're the good guys. Everybody knows that."
Lots of people out there do not think like this.
Lots of people care about social justice and see no problem using IE.
i think such stuff despises more than eich's support for prop 8.
That said, I want to stand up for a couple of my friends who work at OKCupid. They're excellent people and I don't believe the culture at OKC would be okay with using this as a vector for advertising. I'm confident they believe what they're saying and I wish more companies would take a stand against the bigots you like.
I think that using the excuse of being a minority to enforce ridicule arguments is stupid - that's different.
Accusing people at random seems just as wrong.
--
In fact, this is an interesting point. I noticed that any "negative" comment towards reactions to this story generates very strong reactions from some people (including death messages). This doesn't happen with other topics.
What makes you entitled to think this is ok? (this is an honest question)
Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.
Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.
Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.
If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.
However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid:
Google Chrome / Internet Exploder / Opera / Safari
Thank you, OkCupid
Background on Mr. Eich and Mozilla
In 2008, Mr. Eich supported the passage of California’s Prop 8, a statewide initiative to ban gay marriage, with a $1000 donation. Granted, his contribution is now six years in the past, and people can change. But Mr. Eich’s boilerplate statements in the time since make it seem like he has the same views now as he did then. Mozilla recently promoted him to CEO, hence the issue only now coming to our attention. His donation was known to Mozilla at the time of his promotion, and, furthermore, CEOs are rewarded based on their company’s performance. The CEO is the visionary for a company and its products. We are sad to think that any OkCupid page loads would even indirectly contribute towards the success of an individual who supported Prop 8—and who for all we know would support it again. We wish Mozilla’s institutional commitment to freedom and openness were better reflected by their choice of leadership.
Continue to OkCupid
yep, there is no good working browser around that i can trust. Chrome is just like the "Exploder" only from another, new generation, MS.
edit: i fully support the equal rights (among others the right to file joint return with object of your sexual desire) and kind of surprised to learn that a supposedly smart techie would actively support the opposite. I'm surprised at Mozilla too - would they hire an open segregationist or a anti-women-election-right proponent?
http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/28/5559284/half-of-mozillas-b...
Commenters: To state the obvious, this is an inflammatory topic. If you post a comment, make sure that it is a thoughtful one.
Readers: If you see a comment that is not thoughtful, please downvote it. Most comments in this thread so far have not been, so you have your work cut out for you.
In extreme cases, flag the comment. To flag a comment, click on "link" to go to the item page, then look for the "flag" link at the top. As a calibration hint, I haven't seen any comments in this thread that deserve flagging. But I can't read them all.
As I hope everyone knows by now, we're experimenting with ways to solve the problem of toxic comments on Hacker News. I believe that the community has to solve this problem, rather than us imposing a solution. Consider this our appeal to all fair-minded readers to pitch in.
Hmm, yeah I guess I just accused the mods of derailing.
All: Unthoughtful comments should be downvoted. Have at it.
Edit: I've mollified my wording slightly. Please downvote judiciously.
I was talking about the invitation to pitch in how to solve the general problem of hateful comments. Which I think shouldn't be discussed here, because it's not only a problem of this specific submission.
Sorry if I misunderstood this invitation.
We're going to solve this problem sooner or later, because so many of us are sick of it. But the specific form the solution takes has to evolve in the community. When systems are evolving, overspecification is a mistake. For that reason, I'm going to stick to commenting on particular examples for a while.
I notice that this is the second time you've challenged me with personally charged language. If you have more to say, email would be better.
Edited for clarity.
I prefer the original, overtly aggressive and unapologetically abusive version. At least with that we know where we stand.
If that is what you call "unapologetically abusive", we have nothing further to discuss. I'm going to invest time answering users we have a hope of satisfying.