Today I got a nice email from someone inside Mozilla, in response to my angry post elsewhere, explaining Mozilla's actions. He ended his email with:
"Open dialogue is an important part of Mozilla's commitment to open, honest and community-driven communication, and we remain committed to a free, open web." In the spirit of open dialogue, let me share here my response to him. Ze'ev --------- Dear ..., I appreciate your position yet I remain convinced that Mozilla's behavior was despicable. Mozilla caved in to public pressure about one of its employees' personal beliefs. Instead of publicly stepping forward and defending its CEO, Mozilla allowed him to take the fall for the company. That he chose to do so speaks volumes for his personal integrity and his love for Mozilla, yet it does not absolve the board for its cowardice. This is no different from Khomeini issuing a fatwa on Salman Rushdie and the publication houses expecting him to withdraw his book. That the publishers didn't ask him to do it is a tribute to their beliefs in individual rights and human dignity. Contrast that with Mozilla's board cowardly behavior. This is not much different from McCarthyism that expected workplaces to "voluntarily" not employ people associated with communism, or having friends among them, in the 1950s. That McCarthyism is now universally condemned is a tribute to American society. I hope that Mozilla's board will be similarly condemned in the future. Until such condemnation happens, I will not use Mozilla, I will recommend to people to uninstall Mozilla, and I will speak against Mozilla at every opportunity that I have. In fact, if you and your colleagues have any personal dignity left, you will consider resigning from a company behaving in such despicable way. Regards, _______________________________________________ governance mailing list governance@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
