So Brendan Eich has resigned and has left Mozilla. It was apparently the only reasonable option he had which is a very bad news. (If you don’t know what it is about, look for Brendan Eich Mozilla CEO in your favorite search engine.)
The hatred and bigotry demonstrated in this case is scaring. AFAIK Brendan Eich did nothing wrong and didn’t discriminate anybody. He is just incompatible with certain ideology. I don’t know whether people from Mozilla have joined the attacks or not but Mozilla as a whole has definitely failed to resist the pressure. As a citizen of a country that was under single ideology a few decades ago and anybody incompatible with it was a public enemy I’m especially sensitive to such dealing with people. It’s really scaring.
While I don’t think there is something like same-sex marriage I can understand that some people think otherwise and we can explain our views and arguments to each other and discuss how our society should be organized. There may be bigots on both sides but I believe most people can behave reasonably. I can’t see what such views have to do with the role of Mozilla CEO.
Dear Mozilla, I little care about whether your CEO is for or against same-sex marriage. I’m much more concerned about other facts. You make the only and last big free Web browser which is a very important mission. I’m disgusted that political screening is part of the process. But not only that. I’m also very disappointed that the mobile version of Firefox doesn’t display licensing information about the browser extensions and about the applications at the Firefox market. You mix free and non-free software without helping the users to distinguish. I’m not sure you do enough against making DRM part of official Web standards. I’m afraid you divert from open Web and freedom and you may, directly or indirectly, help the movements opposing them. Then we may lose even the last free Web browser.
The resignation of Brendan Eich was a failure of our society and of the Mozilla project and perhaps a loss for both. Yes, we must do better.
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