Who had the brilliant idea to hire a goddam homophobe? How can you claim to be so progressive? This person clearly had the support of the hierarchy.
A person with the ideas of a bigot does not get to a position of power without being supported by other people at mozilla. These would be people in high places, not the rank and file. I will boycott firefox and encourage others to do so. You are now trying to blame one man. Until there are more resignations of those responsible for this pathetic idiot, I'm outta here. What's next, a majority share in chik-fil-A? Its less than comforting there are a large number of psychos who are extremely far outside reality and not recognise a total scumbag at the top of their organisation.
alan sheldon, london
All Replies (1)
hello alan, you're a bit late to the party with your call to boycott firefox because in your view it was anti-gay - you don't have to search around long to find various claims by people who say they are uninstalling firefox now that it had become so pro-gay after brendan resigned from his position, so this is slowly drifting into absurdity. i would argue that both sides are incorrect and should fight their culture war over a different battleground, ultimately firefox is just a browser to render websites and has to be neither...
as for mozilla as organization, it has always supported LGBT rights and inclusiveness in their actions, see https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/29/mozilla-supports-lgbt-equality/ for example.
brendan has invented javascript, was a co-founder of mozilla and in leadership positions at mozilla for over 15 years, a brilliant technical mind and you'll probably find few people which had more influence in advancing the the web as open as we know it today - that's the qualities why he has been selected for the job. reducing him to a single donation or belief he might hold, doesn't do him justice (or any other person for that matter), even though his action in 2008 is probably seen critically by most other mozillians.
mozilla has policies in place that explicitly and precisely explain how we deal with conflicts between personal beliefs and community inclusiveness:
The Mozilla Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone. It doesn’t matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact constructively with our community, including, but not limited to people of varied age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views.
Mozilla-based activities should be inclusive and should support such diversity.
Some Mozillians may identify with activities or organizations that do not support the same inclusion and diversity standards as Mozilla. When this is the case:
(a) support for exclusionary practices must not be carried into Mozilla activities.
(b) support for exclusionary practices in non-Mozilla activities should not be expressed in Mozilla spaces.
(c) when if (a) and (b) are met, other Mozillians should treat this as a private matter, not a Mozilla issue.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/
by all available accounts, brendan has always followed these rules.
finally i will also add that this forum is intended to provide technical support for users of mozilla products and not the right place to have such discussions on policy - if you'd like to continue the discussion, please take it to the mozilla governance mailing list at https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance instead!