Gregory's ServerTIL the online dating site OkCupid once (2014) warned Firefox users about the Firefox (then) CEO's stance against same-sex-marriage and offered them download links to other browsers.
That guy, Brendan Eich, now is the Brave Browser CEO.
 36 comments
 @ruhrscholz To be fair, now in the time of Google browser monopoly, that warning seems almost "wrong for right reasons" β a compelling argument against Eich as the CEO of Mozilla, not an argument against Firefox.  @dmbaturin @ruhrscholz It's maybe worth knowing that he was only the CEO at Moz for a couple of months at most. He was the CTO for a long time, and as long as he was _just_ the CTO, most everyone working there was quietly annoyed about his politics but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as far as keeping that out of technical decisions. (This was like 2008-2010, I doubt it would be the same today.) As CEO, he did not get that courtesy.   @ruhrscholz Yup. Technically he's extremely capable but also and overall, an asshole.  @ruhrscholz wow I didn't realize it was the same guy. @ruhrscholz yeah Mozilla really suffered a lot from bad management (and is not nearly done with it, though one would argue it's been improved since these dark times)  @ruhrscholz and now okcupid donates to anti gay marriage bills, truly we have come full circle @skuppr @ruhrscholz Do you have current information on that? Update April 8, 2014, 12:30 p.m. PDT: OkCupid CEO Sam Yagan provided a statement to the SF Chronicle this morning clarifying the intentions behind his donation to Cannon and his stance on gay rights: the full post is here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/okcupid-ceo-donate-anti-gay-firefox/ @ruhrscholz I've used basically every browser ever made but I've never installed Brave. It literally only exists because of homophobia.  In an hypothetical world where I am an authoritarian ruler without discernment or awareness of the world around me, I would probably ban everything that Brendan Eich has created, starting with Javascript. I think encouraging a boycott of Firefox because of Brendan Eich's views was kind of stupid. A boycott of Brave, however, with it being a more closely held project by him personally, that makes more sense. @vruz Before Firefox had taken accountability and removed him from Mozilla, it made sense to boycott as a way of pressuring Mozilla to do the right thing (which they did) @DigitalJacobin That's true. The reason I think it was unnecessary is because I believe Mozilla would have demoted him anyway. But of course, both scenarios are counter-factual now. @DigitalJacobin I mean, if your logic were ethical, consistent, and applicable, all people everywhere should boycott everything by Microsoft, everything by Google, everything by Amazon, and so on... In the great scheme of things, a laser focus on boycotting Firefox in particular is more pro-Google and pro-Microsoft than it is pro-gay rights. Assuming you care about the privacy of gay people who depend on Firefox to exist in countries where such situations are a real concern. Also see, above: "In an hypothetical world where I am an authoritarian ruler without discernment or awareness of the world around me, I would probably ban everything that Brendan Eich has created" But we are not in such world, and boycotting a product of one organisation because one stupid guy is too fucking stupid.  @vruz @ruhrscholz: JavaScript shows every bit of its ten-day initial development; it's a horribly-designed language at its core which has persisted due to a lack of other options and a shit-ton of stubbornness from web developers to try to cobble out something usable out of that fly-tip of a base.    @ruhrscholz The problem is that every time I see a call to boycott something nowdays, the suggested software options have closets full of skeletons if we start to dig. @ruhrscholz I was single then and had experienced this first hand. I complained to them about this because their own CEO wasn't in any way better. They were just using the opportunity to pull an easy marketing stunt, IIRC.  @ruhrscholz I remember when Brendan Eich was CEO of Mozilla for a hot minute. I wrote a blog post about it at the time. astoundingteam.com/wordpress/2β¦
@ruhrscholz And Brave, in spite of all its, "Privacy, Wooooooo!" advertising, has some big issues. The crypto tie-in with a currency they launched. Blocking ads on sites and then serving up their own ads (not in the site, but in the browser), essentially stealing revenue from ad-supported sites. And there was a thing where they started accepting crypto "donations" (in their currency) supposedly on behalf of creators without asking permission to do so first. Just a big ball of bad decisions. @ruhrscholz To be clear, some of these have been reversed or revised. But they thought all of them were good "features" to pursue and release.  @ruhrscholz This was before they started selling users' extremely detailed personality surveys (supposedly collected for matchmaking purposes) to advertisers for targeted advertising then? @ruhrscholz their position is childish. Don't play with that kid in a sandbox because he said I have boring toys. Grow up already. People can have different view on things in life, and what browse you use has nothing to do with that. It's not like Mozilla was blocking their dull website.  @ruhrscholz The witch-hunt of Brendan Eich is one of the most shameful episodes in FLOSS history I remember, and I donβt think it is good to pull that dead corpse from its well deserved grave. But well, you did it already! https://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/tocqueville-on-the-freedom-of-discussion-in-america.html (and yes, I believe that gays and lesbians should have equal rights with heterosexual couples).  |
I learned this through a HN comment worshipping Brendan Eich - as would be expected from the usual HN user