You’ve probably heard of Mozilla – they’re the folks behind the well known and popular Firefox web browser, and as you may know, we develop a powerful browser-based Room and Resource Scheduling System, MIDAS, which we support in all major browsers, including Firefox.
In fact, ever since we first began development of MIDAS back in 2005, the primary browser we continue to do the bulk of our development and debugging in has been Firefox! It’s been our browser of choice, and we’ve long since been admirers of Mozilla’s open and inclusive approach to the development of Firefox and the web, and their company ethos, 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, and that they no longer believe in equality and freedom of speech for ALL.
Here’s a brief outline of what’s happened:
Last month, 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“, a bill which, rightly or wrongly depending upon your view, opposed same-sex marriage taking place in the state of California.
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 his appointment to the role of CEO, as 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/be removed from his role as CEO.
Today, following this sustained pressure, Eich has stepped down as CEO.
Many are celebrating this, 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.
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.
Many Firefox users have since taken to Twitter to vent their anger & disappointment at @Mozilla and @Firefox‘s stance on this matter, with many previously loyal users 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 – as 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) clearly shows the amount of negative feeling towards the company as a result:
