You’ve probably heard of Mozilla – they’re the folks behind the well known and popular Firefox web browser. As you may also know, we develop a leading Room and Resource Scheduling System, MIDAS, which we support in all major browsers. This includes Firefox.
In fact, ever since we first began development of MIDAS back in 2005, the primary browser we do the bulk of our development and debugging in has been Firefox! It’s been our browser of choice for many years. We’ve long been admirers of Mozilla’s open and inclusive approach to the development of Firefox and the web. In fact, their company ethos states that:
“Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality”
However, today Mozilla have demonstrated that this ethos is in fact untrue. Mozilla sadly no longer believe in equality and freedom of speech for ALL.
What happened at Mozilla?
In March 2014, Mozilla appointed a new CEO, Brendan Eich. Eich was the inventor of Javascript (one of the programming languages that our software utilizes!) and co-founder of mozilla.org.
Six years earlier, in 2008, long before he became CEO, Eich made a personal donation to a campaign for “California Proposition 8“. This was a bill which opposed same-sex marriage taking place in the state of California.
Who is Brendan Eich?
Following his appointment to CEO of Mozilla last month, a number of Mozilla employees, board members, and members of the global L.G.B.T community expressed their unhappiness with Eich’s appointment to the role of CEO. They felt that because he’d previously supported a campaign opposing same-sex marriage this made him unsuitable to be CEO of a company that had equality and freedom of speech at the very heart of its core values.
For the past several weeks, since Eich’s appointment, there has been a sustained and vicious campaign targeted against Mozilla, Firefox, and Eich himself, with pressure from all sides for Eich to stand down or be removed from his role as CEO.
Today, following this sustained pressure, Eich has stepped down as CEO.
Brendan Eich bows to pressure
Many are celebrating Eich’s departure, however, regardless of your view of Brendan Eich or your position on same-sex marriage, Mozilla as a company promoted “equality and freedom of speech” for ALL.
By this token, Eich (along with every other Mozilla employee, regardless of position, gender, religion, or sexual orientation) has the same right to express his views without fear of censorship or persecution – whether you agree with his views or not.
No one should be denied the right to express their PERSONAL opinion or view on any subject, and remember, this was only a personal view of Eich, not an official Mozilla/Firefox view/policy/position.
Mozilla’s Contradictory Position
In pressuring and forcing their CEO to step down because of his *personal* view on a subject, Mozilla have denied Eich his right to equality and demonstrated that they no longer stand for true equality and freedom of speech for everyone.
We used to believe that Mozilla were promoting an “open web for all” – we are now struggling to reconcile this ethos with Mozilla’s actions and stance today.
Backlash against Mozilla
Many Firefox users have since taken to Twitter to vent their anger & disappointment at @Mozilla and @Firefox‘s stance on this matter. Many previously loyal users are now uninstalling and boycotting their products in protest.
Our web based Room and Resource Scheduling Software MIDAS is supported in Firefox, but also supported in Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera browsers as well. That’s because we believe in giving you the choice over which browser (and company) you choose.
UPDATE 6th April:
Two days later, and Mozilla’s own customer feedback site (https://input.mozilla.org) now clearly shows a significant amount of negative feeling towards the company as a whole following this episode:
