Firefox 120 to Firefox 141 Web Browser Benchmarks

Do you think those opinions would have made it more difficult to work with certain employees at Mozilla based on certain protected traits in the law? If so, I think the donation is a red herring, it's the opinion itself that's the problem.

Firing people for their opinions is actually fine - if you believe that certain types of people don't deserve rights, for example, and your company has those types of people in it, that's a problem. Freedom of opinion is not guaranteed.

Does this approach ultimately lead to the conclusion that people on different sides of the abortion issue can't work in the same company?

I believe somebody who is strongly anti-abortion, even for medical reasons and somebody who needs an abortion to save their life probably shouldn't work in the same company.

There's a difference between a thing that a person does (usually once) and something that a person _is_.

No.

It's easy to keep abortions secret. They're protected by privacy laws, so even HR can't ask about them. Medical issues are secret from the workplace by default.

It's impossible to keep your sexuality secret if you're married. Your marital status at work is public by default. And no one should have to keep the identity of their spouse secret for fear of being treated worse by the CEO.

why would both things every come up for discussion in a workplace environment. sounds like a place I would not want to work at

No, it means that those with unsavory opinions should understand it's in their best interest to keep quiet. It's always been the case that saying something offensive can get you fired. I mean, if I call my boss ugly I'm liable to get fired. And that's not even political.

What do you think about the answers to your question? Have you reflected on them at all?

The principle of the separation of church and state may be cast as a principle that, in conflicts between religious groups, the state must remain neutral. This avoids the situation where, when one group gains control of the state, they get to use it to oppress the other group, and then the other group has a strong motive (and arguably a moral right) to revolt, violently if necessary.

Implementing this meant that people who worked for the state, and other neutral institutions, had to work with others who they honestly believed were heretics that would go to hell. Both they and the institution had to learn to keep their tribal conflicts—nominally religious and doctrinal, but in practice tribal—under control. This was difficult, but very valuable to all sides. The truce enabled mutually beneficial cooperation and the prosperity that entailed.

Centuries later, some tribes find themselves in control of certain institutions. The truce, the principle of neutrality, restricts them, and they see little benefit from it. "Why not violate it, and start a fight over this issue where we have the upper hand? We'll win!" Sometimes this takes the form of arguing tendentiously that the other side violated the truce first, and hence their attacks are in fact justified retaliation. Other times they seem ignorant of the value of having a truce, and are likely ignorant of its history (which is not taught well). So they start trampling on it.

Depending on what we imagine their motives to be, and how narrowly we consider them... On that issue in isolation—gay marriage—it's probably "rational". However, violating the truce makes it easier to do more of that, both for them and their opponents. On this issue they have the upper hand, and they'll win. On abortion, they have the advantage, but less so. On other issues (such as putting biological males in women's sports and women's prisons) they have minority support, and if they keep up their attitude of just fighting because "why not?" (subject to tactical considerations), they will provoke the opposition to fight back more and harder, and eventually they'll lose ground on the issues themselves—to say nothing of the costs of the fighting and the lost value due to the broken truce.

They are short-sighted, ignorant, aggressive little barbarians who start smashing the thing in front of them, unaware that it's a pillar holding up many things we and even they hold dear. They know not what they do. I guess this is where we see the deficiencies of current education.

It means Mozilla is unable to work with people who have other opinions.

I do not have an opinion on abortion, and I’d probably lean towards a yes. But Mozilla being capable of making it a problem out of someone’s history, 10 years earlier, a private donation, shows a major issue of intolerance.

The root cause: Mozilla turned woke, and did look into the past of each employee to fire them. The wokists see no problem with that, but for the rest of us, it’s the darkest time for intolerance.

Well there's multiple problems here, so one by one:

1. Mozilla didn't fire anyone. My understanding is they actually tried to keep him.

2. Public pressure, dollar voting, and boycotts is just the free market at work. The invisible hand is real but it seems to me as soon as the invisible hand starts pushing stuff we all get uncomfortable.

3. Nobody takes anyone seriously who says "woke". That word means absolutely nothing to anyone, it's just a dog whistle. A type of inverse virtue signal that you are not a serious person worth listening to.

#3 is a perfect for the description of Mozilla’s standing. The fact that you decide to use this keyword as a sign that the argument is flawed is proof that the argument is correct with nothing of substance to criticize.

Mozilla decided to #2 appeal to those types of people, with various angles including “renewing the masculinity inside Mozilla”. It’s not public pressure, as the public went on for a backlash against wokism in the 2020 and later. Mozilla is in an ironic situation where it is now driven by those incompetent people, while the public moved on, and its values are not a value proposition anymore.

Especially the “We fire people who do not think like us” part. Let me tell you that the kind of public “We harass people into quitting” answers perfectly to #1 in my books.

Just be good. Just be good people! That’s all we ask!

Donating money to interfere in other people's lives and telling them who they can and can't marry is not being good.

Just let people live! Just be good!

If you want a definition, a "woke" person is one who prioritizes waging identity-group conflict over other priorities. The more woke, the more things they sacrifice and trample upon to that end.