The Eich Fiasco
The Eich Fiasco of 2014 is over, but the notional fire it started will burn for a long time because few have the spine to put it out.
You can read about the Eich Fiasco by going to Slashdot, entering eich
in the search box, and thumbing through the first few articles for 2014.
The leftist elite magazine The Atlantic is unhappy at Eich's resignation, because its compulsion is a violation of liberal values:
It isn't difficult to see the wisdom in inculcating the norm that the political and the professional are separate realms, for following it makes so many people and institutions better off in a diverse, pluralistic society. The contrary approach would certainly have a chilling effect on political speech and civic participation, as does Mozilla's behavior toward Eich.
Its implications are particularly worrisome because whatever you think of gay marriage, the general practice of punishing people in business for bygone political donations is most likely to entrench powerful interests and weaken the ability of the powerless to challenge the status quo. There is very likely hypocrisy at work too. Does anyone doubt that had a business fired a CEO six years ago for making a political donation against Prop 8, liberals silent during this controversy (or supportive of the resignation) would've argued that contributions have nothing to do with a CEO's ability to do his job? They'd have called that firing an illiberal outrage, but today they're averse to vocally disagreeing with allies.
Most vexing of all is Mozilla's attempt to present this forced resignation as if it is consistent with an embrace of diversity and openness. Its public statements have been an embarrassment of illogic, as I suspect the authors of those statements well know.
— Conor Friedersdorf,
Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values, The Atlantic, 4 April 2014.
I will spare you Mozilla's narcissistic spiel. I am sure Mozilla will have it somewhere on its Web site.
As for the fire of which I speak:
- Even if the ex-chief suit does not sue, Mozilla violated labor law in California , where its offices are located, and may pay up to $10,000 in fines for what it has done. Where do you think the money to pay that fine when it comes, or the lawyers to keep the State of California at bay, will come from?
- Mozilla's actions will ensure that nobody inside its projects or its hierarchy will dare express any views that identify them as not
one of us
. And that is assuming that they stay. More likely, in such an environment, Mozilla will bleed developers and other workers, and outside developers will shy away from Mozilla and its projects. This is especially true of the kodumularo , who tend to be libertarian and thus wary of the autocratic behavior Mozilla expresses. - It will not be just the rightists (who have denounced Eich's overthrow as
totalitarian
) who will abandon Mozilla products and will call for their boycott. Libertarians and others who value freedom of speech, religion and association will boycott Mozilla products ( Firefox: For Those Of Us™) as a matter of principle — which Mozilla has proved that it lacks.
The fiasco has made me tired of the arrogant hypocrisy of Google/Mozilla suitery.† I am now wary about all things Mozilla. It is now necessary to ditch Mozilla. For this reason, on both my home box and my two Macs I have replaced Firefox with Opera, and Thunderbird with Opera Mail. I also removed the Google custom search from the Caitlin Clarke Page .
Also, the enterprise division of my work unit will no longer support the University Libraries Toolbar, which is available now only on Firefox. Thanks to the Eich fiasco, I will not contest their decision, even though I have worked to keep at least the Firefox version of the Toolbar up-to-date.
†This is especially true of a certain ĵurnalistaĉo wife of one of the Google suits, who led the Eich hunt from behind, outraged that Eich is not one of us
. (La ĵurnalistaĉo, is so one of us
that NPR News did a feature on her on the morning of 7 April.)