Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.]

One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards.

OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at the corporate doublespeak in that press release. Fuck Mozilla, I'm switching to Chrome."

Really? That's what's got you bent out of shape?

Sure, Mozilla has made mistakes. Did we apologize? Did we learn anything? Did we work to prevent it happening again?

People want to continue flogging us for these things while giving other companies (who have made their own mistakes, often much more consequential than ours, would never be as open about it, and often learn nothing) a relatively free pass.

I'm certainly not the first person on the planet whose employer has been on the receiving end of vitriol. And if Mozilla doesn't make it through this next phase, I can always find another job. But what concerns me about this is that Mozilla is such an important voice in shaping the future of the internet. To see it wither away because of people angry with what are, in the grand scheme of things, minor mistakes, is a shame.

EDIT: And lest you think I am embellishing about trivial complaints, there was a rant last week on r/Firefox that Mozilla was allegedly conspiring to hide Gecko's source code because we self-host our primary repo and bug tracking instead of using GitHub, despite the fact that the Mozilla project predates GitHub by a decade.

Only one thing lingers in my mind about Mozilla.

When Brendan Eich was made CEO, Mozilla employees did everything possible to make sure that he wouldn’t stay; all due to a single political donation from six years beforehand.

While I don’t agree with his position, the whole fiasco tarnished Mozilla and the people in it, at least in my mind.

Far from being held to an impossible standard, I feel like it suffered from a form of monoculture.

Firstly, it was _not_ a single political donation.

I'm Jewish. If it came out that the new CEO of my company made white supremacist statements half a decade ago, without any indication they had changed their position since, you better believe I would refuse to continue working for that company until and unless they were no longer CEO.

This isn't a disagreement about the marginal tax rates to apply to millionaires, or a political difference about some minutiae of government regulation. Prop. 8 was directly opposed to the basic human rights of a segment of the population. Why would I, as a gay person, work for someone who seeks to deny me the basic right of an equal-under-the-law domestic partnership? Why would I, as a person with gay friends, overlook something like that, just because the CEO gives vague promises of being "supportive and welcoming" without actually disavowing any of their discriminatory viewpoints?

Human rights are not a political position, and opposing them is not simply a friendly disagreement. No one is obligated to tolerate your attempts to deny people basic human rights in the name of inclusiveness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CE...

This seems like a "my way or the highway" or "black and white" argument, coached in language suggesting that you don't need to make inroads for peace, for the sole reason that your side is inherently right and theirs is inherently wrong. This idea of firing or ostracizing people without attempting to reform them first is a shoot first, ask questions later, knee-jerk sort of morality.

If you end someone's means of making a living or ostracize them from society, purely for moralistic reasons, just because you can, this is moral exclusion, a form of oppression. It's when your opinion of them is so poor that you no longer find the need to act ethically towards them. It's the same principle that enabled the oppression of the the Jews.

Holding this opinion is possible if you refuse to come to terms with the humanity of the person you disagree with. Our only real "obligation" in society is to follow the law. If you only live based on this obligation, you can easily become quite cruel and in some ways immoral. But instead of simply living by obligation, we can do better: we can seek to create more peace than strife. That means making inroads with your enemy, not ostracizing them just because you can.

In addition to everything pseudalopex said below, which I agree with 100%, I'll just add that, yes, some things absolutely are and should be black-and-white, my-way-or-the-highway. Particularly, issues of human- and civil-rights.

The opposition to Eich was not because of some unpopular opinion he held at some vague point in the past. He wanted to ban same-sex marriage in 2008, and all indications are he still wanted that in 2014. Eich had ample chance to easily diffuse the situation by clarifying his beliefs; instead, he provided vague platitudes about inclusiveness and leaving his personal opinions at the door.

I'm sure there's plenty of companies that wouldn't mind having an anti-gay-marriage CEO. Hell, most people could stomach working with someone with those views; remember Eich was chief technologist and a Mozilla board member from the start, and CTO from 2005, which Mozilla's LGBTQ employees obviously tolerated. But I'm sorry, I have very little trust that a company can maintain a certain set of values, when I know for a fact its Chief Executive Officer holds diametrically opposite views. Management shapes every aspect of a company, so the personal opinions of the person holding the highest position in that chain matter.

There is nothing unethical about acting this way. This is not denying Brendan Eich his humanity (unlike what his views do to others). Being CEO of Mozilla is not a basic human right that he is being denied.

If a society is to be tolerant, there has to be a separation between when someone is politically active; and when someone decides to take matters into their own hands (e.g., firing someone because they’re trans).

Maybe you’re right that a CEO is different, but the ordeal left me with an uneasy feeling.

If I’m on the wrong side of the popular-opinion in the future, what’s to stop me from being ostracized and pushed out?

Because if it can happen up high, you better believe that it can happen to the rank and file.

Yea, there’s a tension and it’s almost contradictory to allow this but I think it’s important.

The other consequence of this is that anonymity (voting, for example) seems to be just as relevant today.