In March 2014, Mozilla -- parent company of Firefox -- hired Brendan Eich as its CEO, only to publicly humiliate him and force him to resign over a $1,000 donation to the Proposition 8 effort, a 2008 ballot initiative a majority of Californians supported. Three board members also resigned.
Now Mozilla is in trouble, because of a boycott (I stopped using Firefox) and the vacuum in leadership left by his departure.
From Wired's "Mozilla Is Flailing When the Internet Needs It the Most" story:
Last week the Mozilla Corp. released its 2014 annual report. In some ways, it was a tough year. After a lengthy search for a new CEO, co-founder and long-time chief technology officer Brendan Eich got the job in March, then resigned from Mozilla just over a week later amid controversy over his support for a 2008 California ballot measure that banned gay marriage. Three board members also resigned.
Despite the turmoil, the company had a great year financially. It increased revenue from $314 million to $329.5 million and had $266.5 million in assets at year’s end. But none of this says much about how the company is doing as 2015 comes to a close with one major change in particular signaling a more uncertain future.Gee, that is too bad. Wonder why that could be. Oh there is this from the story:
What’s more, Firefox’s share of the browser market is declining rapidly, according to multiple measures. W3Counter says Firefox’s share has decreased from 21.3 percent of browser usage in November 2012 to 11.5 percent this month.Any company dumb enough to lose a CEO (and three board members) over demands from political hyenas deserves to fail.
They give the Darwin Award to those who kill themselves stupidly before they procreate. The corporate cup should go to Mozilla, for sacrificing its corporate leadership to liberal pagans.
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I was a big fan of firefox but I was one of those that boycotted. I am not opposed to Gay marriage, although I think the compromise of using the term "Civil Union" could have made everyone happy with the exception of the grievance industry. I boycotted because people have a right to their own beliefs and their job...at the same time! Unless your personal beliefs interfere with the way you do your job, it is no one's business. Did anyone even bother to ask if he would be in favor of a civil union? Did anyone ask him if he viewed "marriage" as a sacrament? No one should have to give up rights to allow others to have their rights. Steamrollers don't compromise, they just crush everything in their path. I thought we were all human.
ReplyDeleteCivil Union is the bigot's way of pretending they are okay with gay people. They deserve the same rights as anyone else.
DeleteCivil Union is the bigot's way of pretending they are okay with gay people. They deserve the same rights as anyone else.
DeleteThe HAD the same rights as anybody else - they could go out and marry a person of the opposite sex (that is what marriage is). Now they have special and extra-constitutional "rights" - and even that isn't enough for the grievance industry.
DeleteCalling someone a "bigot" is a substitute for a rational response used by someone who has no factual basis for his claim.
DeleteI *was* a Firefox user until the Brendan Eich debacle. It's about a lot more than a browser. It's about the American idea that you are free to participate in whatever free activity you wish, and others are free to react in ways that do not violate the rights of others. The lily-livered folks at Mozilla tossed away their best asset (and, I didn't realize it until reading this, 3 board members) because he donated a small amount of money to a cause that *won* the vote? They could stomp on him but in doing so, they stomped on an idea much larger than one man. Having reaped the wind they have sown the whirlwind. Hey Mozilla: it's not a one-way street.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed a huge drop-off of people asking me to fix their FoxFire.
ReplyDeleteIt also didn't help that the software got bloated and inefficient at about the same time. I use Pale Moon now, which is an open-source browser that is like Firefox used to be before they messed it up.
ReplyDeleteIf Pale Moon is available for the Mac, I'll give it a try. A few OS versions ago, Apple broke Safari and hasn't bothered to fix it. I tried Firefox, but it was too unstable and ultimately unusable on a Mac.
Delete"The Mac OSX version of Pale Moon is still very much in development." -- Chas C-Q
DeleteI've been using Pale Moon 64-bit for Windows for a while now. Much better than Firefox.
DeleteIapetus, I just checked, and they provide a Linux version. Not sure if that would work. I know OS X is based in FreeBSD.
Some sites still don't work with Chromium, which is what I use on my Linux desktop (see a pattern here?) so I too use PaleMoon from time to time.
DeleteAfter uninstalling Firefox due to the Brendan Eich fiasco, I was happy to find that Pale Moon provided a seamless transition. I keep a variety of browsers on my computer (Pale Moon, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari) although I mostly use Chrome. Still, there are times when one browser works on a website better than another, so I'm happy to have Pale Moon. And I certainly don't miss Firefox. I'll shed no tear if Mozilla goes under.
DeleteDropped it after the event. Hope they go broke and are reduced to eating their pets for food.
ReplyDeleteThat is sad for the pets.
DeleteFirefox was for the most part a bloated back engineered rip off of the fabulous 'Old Opera Browser'. They developed little, and got credit for features they didn't invent. I watched with interest as Opera introduced such things as tabs, customization and sidebars and myriad of other features, only to see them show up in Firefox in their next update and the Firefox team be heralded as innovative.
ReplyDeleteI still use Opera for most of my browsing, including blogging. Maxthon for other stuff. They meet my needs
DeleteYou're also missing one part of the story. The reason Mozilla's profits were up this year was because they sold out. Firefox is an open-source project where the code is free for everyone to use. But the newest Firefox just added closed-source 3rd party bookingmarking plugins that track your internet usage. I've seriously never heard of an open-source project selling its users up the river for some short term profits, yet here we are. A good portion of their declining usage numbers are because of tricks like this.
ReplyDeleteTheir appeal is becoming more selective. I guess I don't make the cut.
ReplyDeleteFascistFox.
ReplyDeleteI only use Firefox for schoolwork. The online course ware requires it sadly. No other browser I have tried handles everything correctly. I wonder how many others still use it for compatibility reasons. . .
ReplyDeleteTry Pale Moon
DeleteHmm, I wonder if this is why Yahoo is now pushing Firefox? Methinks one troubled company is trying to work with another such, both of whom bought into Progressive mantras; I have my doubts on their survival.
ReplyDeleteYahoo is awful too.
DeleteI'm a former Firefox user who, after this fiasco, dropped them entirely. I am done with them.
ReplyDeleteI'm a former Firefox user who, after this fiasco, dropped them entirely. I am done with them.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much of their remaining usage numbers are due to old PPC machines using TenFourFox? I use my Intel iMac with current El Capitan for some things, and my dual G4 with Tiger and Leopard for other things. I use TenFourFox for some plugins that I can't get for Safari or Chrome on the iMac.
ReplyDeleteI won't reinstall Firefox. I won't support such un-American behavior. When and if they go bankrupt and someone ethical reissues the browser without the bloat I may give it a try. In the meantime I'm going to try to find Opera for OS X.
I hope conservatives learn the right lesson about the Firefox debacle. To start with, don't laugh at them.
ReplyDeleteLeftists have proven over and over again that they'll lose money and sacrifice other people's money and assets to advance their agenda.
Do the leftists who wrecked Mozilla think it was worth it to have gay marriage legalized? IMO, absolutely yes. It was worth it to them.
Put yourself in their shoes. If you worked for Apple or Google and had a chance to fire all the leftists in that company and subsequently wreck the corporation, would you do it? Probably not. Conservatives aren't into wrecking leftist assets to advance the conservative agenda.
Mozilla was already leftist before the Eich fiasco. What that episode proved was that leftists will wreck even leftist organizations to maintain solidarity and move the football further to the left.
At the moment, leftists are more committed to their political goals than conservatives are to theirs.
All we do is laugh at them when they sacrifice something like Mozilla in order to attain a larger goal.
The most conservatives will do is stop using Firefox. A leftist will destroy Mozilla in order to win.
So it's not a surprise that leftists are stomping on conservatives everywhere in the political arena.
BTW, some of you might disagree with that assessment. But I hope you won't.
Gay marriage, suppression of Christians in the US, Christians being massacred in the Middle East and Americans doing nothing to help them, conservatives being forced out of corporations and all but extinct in academia, the Supreme Court being pushed to the left.
To balance those losses, the Republicans have gained control of the Senate and House.
And what did conservatives get from that? A spending bill passed where the Democrats were doing victory dances and the Iran "Agreement" not being voted down, but only because the GOP helped the Democrats craft a bill so that a 2/3 majority was needed to vote down the agreement, instead of a 2/3 majority being needed to pass a treaty.
Conservatives have gotten nothing of significance since the GOP took over the legislative branches. It's been years of losses on every front.
Don't be so naïve to think that one political party is overwhelmingly likely to push an agenda that marginalizes one group to further another they support; you may hear more media reports about the conservative arm of things (which is in small part due to the fact that a lot on the right don't care how others view them for doing what they do (which can be both good and bad), and the left tries to downplay what could be potential pitfalls and long-term snags. The real answer lies in the middle ground, which has slowly become a vast desert in politics as people move more toward the extremes in each direction.
DeleteHaving your own personal beliefs are fine (even if they're dead wrong, they're still YOUR beliefs); however, if you don't allow them to be challenged and stand up to being challenged, then you probably don't have a very strong belief in it. And regardless of what it is, when it starts having a real effect on others' lives, that's where I draw the line. In the gay marriage case, stifling couples' abilities for tax filings, hospital visitation rights, etc. (which are based in law, not religion), which has a large effect on those it would affect, vastly overwhelms the negative emotional reaction some have to the idea (which, arguably, shouldn't effect your life any more so than being angry at the guy who just cut you off on the road).
The terms 'civil union' and 'marriage' are just terms, words we've come up with to define something. These words, and terms like them, have been around long before any modern religion, so them claiming they have some right over its use is a little conceited. I understand how some feel about it, but in the grand scheme of things, it matters very little. Our petty disagreements like that shouldn't cloud us from living a life of kindness and peace, loving our neighbor and respecting the fact that we're all different. (think of what the Bible says about how Jesus treated the Samaritans, who were despised by the Jews at the time - no matter who you were, you still deserved kindness and love from God)
Leviticus (and a few other passages) tell us homosexuality is a sin; however, there are TONS of other things labeled as sins. The 10 Commandments, however, were important enough to etch onto stone, a powerful symbolism. Let's work on our tendencies to lie, steal, kill, covet, etc. before we move to petty squabbles about how we live our private lives.
California had civil unions, in the form of its Domestic Partnership law:
Deletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_California
As amended, D.P. Law conferred the same positive rights as statutory marriage. Prop 8 had no "real effect on others' lives" other than the "negative emotional reaction" felt by those who sought to redefine marriage. Then-A.G. Brown declared in summer 2008 what every legal scholar knows, that Prop 8 could not nullify marriage licenses granted in 2008 to same-sex couples. The federal DOMA act remained in force until 2013 and was not affected by state law (either the CA Supreme Court ruling "In Re Marriage Cases" nor Prop 8). Assertions that Prop 8 "stripped rights" are false, misinformed, and loaded to evoke civil rights emotions that do not apply given different definitions of marriage that are in fundamental conflict.
That conflict continues, with "Bake me a cake!" fines and legal sanctions on grandmother-florists, school curricula culture wars, and general escalation by the "winning side" practicing scorched earth tactics. Prop 8 was never about rights in the legal-positivist sense. It was a counter-action against court and city (Newsom in SF) overreach. Anyone living in California for several decades and paying attention knows this, but the culture warriors think victory in the US Supreme Court by 5-4 means they can rewrite history.
>Don't be so naïve to think that one political party is overwhelmingly likely to push an agenda that marginalizes one group to further another they support; >
DeleteI disagree completely, so much so that I believe that you're willfully blind.
Christian bakers in Oregon are fined $135K because they refused to bake a cake for a gay couple.
Muslim bakers in Michigan face no such penalties.
The list is endless, all you have to do is use Google. I mentioned the deliberate elimination of conservatives from academia and Hollywood. Has any executive been fired from a tech company like Eich? Not that I know of.
>And regardless of what it is, when it starts having a real effect on others' lives, that's where I draw the line. In the gay marriage case, stifling couples' abilities for tax filings, hospital visitation rights, etc. (which are based in law, not religion), which has a large effect on those it would affect, vastly overwhelms the negative emotional reaction some have to the idea (which, arguably, shouldn't effect your life any more so than being angry at the guy who just cut you off on the road).
You have two standards. You do realize that Christians and conservatives are being persecuted because of their beliefs?
For example, the effect on Eich's career at Mozilla was rather dramatic. The effect on the Christians bakers in Oregon and the closure of Christian businesses in many examples of persecution has been terrible.
Yet you worry about the effects of gay marriage on only gay couples and ignore the attacks by LGBT activists on Christians.
Ironically, I used to believe exactly as you did. I was neutral to slightly favourable to gay marriage, until LGBT and leftist activists started attacking conservatives and Christians.
That's when I switched sides. I thought supporting gay marriage meant everyone could live in peace. Gay people could get married, Christians could disapprove if they chose. Live and let live.
But that isn't what is happening. Once modern leftists started attacking everyone and even attacked freedom of speech, I switched to being actively against gay marriage
>Our petty disagreements like that shouldn't cloud us from living a life of kindness and peace, loving our neighbor and respecting the fact that we're all different.
You do realize that Surber's post was about how Eich was subjected to hate attacks by LGBT activists?
Why don't you suggest to leftists that they be more accommodating and tolerant?
Correct on all counts.
ReplyDeleteIf everything has to be this political, I will spend every dollar as a political statement.
ReplyDeleteMy time on line is political now. No to Firefox.
Hurt the MSM. Cut the cable and starve them.
PS Time Warner and Comcast in top ten Hillary contributors
Crony capitalism is in everything.
ReplyDeleteIs it Groundhog day or Christmas? :-) This all happened in 2014, not 2015.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Fired in 2014, still applies this year because the company went into collapse mode.
DeleteI uninstalled it and sent them an email explaining why. Eich was not treated fairly.
ReplyDeleteI uninstalled it and sent them an email explaining why. Eich was not treated fairly.
ReplyDeleteI am vigorously 'pro-gay-marriage', but will boycott Mozilla until they are dead for this nonsense....
ReplyDeleteI am completely indifferent to gay marriage and think if gays wanted only to have their affairs legalized then there are other ways of doing it.
DeleteWhat I object to is when people are fired because of completely legal activities they do on their own time which has nothing whatever to do with their jobs.
"Now Mozilla is in trouble, because of a boycott"
ReplyDeleteThere's apprx. no evidence for the boycott as an explanation of their shrinking browser-usage share. If you have some, please share it, otherwise stop assuming. (I agree about the Eich matter, but that's separate.)
I'm curious what would count as evidence. There's a bunch of people who have said they dropped Firefox because of their treatment of Eich, and there is a corresponding shrinkage in browser usage share. Is the testimony of former Firefox users inadmissible evidence?
ReplyDeleteThe "corresponding" part of "corresponding shrinkage" is the part that lacks evidence. Firefox may be losing relative interest for a multitude of reasons.
Delete"...for a multitude of reasons."
DeleteName them.
I was a Firefox evangel, having adopted it while still known as Firebird in the early 2000s. By 2014, though, Firefox had become a frustrating, bloated resource hog. Eich's firing just made leaving it behind easier.
ReplyDeleteAll for 1.6% of the mentally ill population. Way to go, doofuses.
ReplyDeleteStill so many people are using Firefox. Always remember, make others aware that Mozilla is garbage and uninstall Firefox from all your friend's or families computers, and also make your colleague at work drop it.
ReplyDeleteMozilla is rising in market share numbers again, time for a fresh campaign on Twitter, Facebook, your blogs, whatever. Remember, do your part!
If I make public my support or non-support on a topic, who, but bullies would force me to make any changes in my life. The bullies would be forced to expend more and more energy until, finally, they decry my ignorance and flutter away. It sounds like Eich was a pussy.
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