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The king is dead, long live the king...
Apr. 3rd, 2014 10:36 pmWell, that didn't take long...
Brendan Eich has tendered his resignation today as CEO to the Mozilla Foundation, stating "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader", and they accepted it. See, for example:
Brendan Eich, Mozilla CEO, resigns after protests over anti-gay marriage stance
Sadly, this doesn't really end the crisis because what this really says is the Board of Directors of the Mozilla Foundation are likely not smart enough to run that organization (anywhere but into the ground). Start your stopwatches, the countdown is now running, I wonder what will arise to take over from them? And when?
What needs to be kept in mind is that corporate concerns, like Chrome, by the very nature of their existence, cannot assume the mantle of promoting freedom of information and communications. There is an inherent bias and conflict of interest in these products that cannot be overcome (or to which they will ultimately succumb). Once upon a time, Netscape was the dominant web browser, but lost market share because Microsoft was able to ship Internet Exploder with its operating system which grew to achieve dominance (and ultimately a monopoly at the time) for desktop systems, and therefore of web browsers as well. When Netscape realized it was losing the "browser war", it released its source code to the public and set up the Mozilla Foundation to continue development of it as an Open Source project. What power Netscape had left was squandered through gross incompetence when it was acquired by AOL in 2000, and nothing was left to credibly challenge Microsoft's stranglehold on the ability to view the world wide web... until Firefox finally came into its own through amazing work done under the guidance and nurturing of the Mozilla Foundation. Microsoft was still unassailable until about 2009, and by 2010 Firefox had a 30% share versus IE's 70% share... then Chrome hit and while Firefox use stayed about the same, IE was completely crushed by the combined juggernauts of Chrome and the rise of the smartphone. Last I looked, Firefox, Internet Exploder, and mobile web browsers each had about a 20% share (very -ish) and Chrome is in the 40% share range (again, -ish).
The point of all of that being that Netscape innovated and brought the world wide web to life before having the web usurped by the Microsoft monopoly, and Mozilla was critical in providing an alternative to that monopoly when regulators and the marketplace itself finally started to intervene (the timing was almost ideal for Firefox in that regard). Mozilla's only real advantage at this point is nostalgia... much of the political stance (regarding open source software development and network freedoms) that got them where they were has been eroded in the past few years by numerous commercial deals that impinged on the ideals of those that had supported them in the community so loudly (the deal with Cisco to use proprietary codecs, the adware incursion I have already discussed, various non-free software projects under their umbrella all come to mind). As an outsider, it seems to me that the success of the Firefox browser attracted the usual corporate types to the Foundation who specialize in the monetization of intellectual property and brand names. This is always to "help the long term stability of the organization" but which ultimately seem to only manage to line the pockets of those particular individuals with cash earned through parcelling out the soul of something that was once good... and yes, I did work for Nortel before the same thing happened to it by that same crowd of people... and yes, I quit the moment I saw what was about to happen and didn't get caught there when it finally caved in (so my bitterness there is in the loss of something great and not because it destroyed me as it did so many others that had put their lives into making it the great thing it was)... and yes, I personally know those responsible for driving it into the ground and can see those sorts of people coming at great distances now, thus the reason my "spidey senses" are tingling on this one. But with Google assuming the helm of a new monopoly through the paradigm shift from desktop operating systems to web-based services and the concurrent rise of its Chrome browser platform, Mozilla is in a precarious state and it is not currently in a position to weather this latest "browser war" because it is still running on desktops — it is failing to understand the nature of the evolving web and making its investments correctly for the future. And this is where the Board of Directors of Mozilla comes back into the picture: it is they who have failed the Mozilla Foundation and, in my opinion, the people of the world (again, Firefox was as much a political statement as a technology and those who adopted and promoted it were, for the most part, at least subtly politically motivated). The fact that half the Board of Directors quit when Eich was appointed CEO also speaks of a profound structural dysfunction with the organization as well. The nominal reason they gave for their resignations was not Eich's stand on gay marriage, but the fact that a candidate (I don't know who, does anyone reading this know?) that had a vision and background in mobile platforms was passed over to give Eich the job. Again, this casts a serious gloom over the chances that the Mozilla Foundation will remain relevant for much longer. I suspect that the damage done was instantaneous, irreversible, and will ultimately prove fatal.
And now, perhaps, a word about Brendan Eich is in order. He has done great things, and the current state of the world wide web is in no small part directly traceable back to his work on Javascript. In particular, Javacript was the key ingredient needed for the rise of the AJAX paradigm: Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Sounds a little boring when put that way, but you may have heard of some web-based services that were built using AJAX technologies? Maybe you have heard of Gmail? How about Google Maps? Yeah... thought so. Pretty much any interactive web-based service uses some variation of the AJAX paradigm. Funny that Eich's work at Netscape provided the framework needed by Google for its expansion out of the search engine business into so many aspects of the lives of those who are web-connected (even if you don't use either of those products, you are still affected by it in uncountable ways, on a day-by-day basis due to its ubiquity and its influence on so many other services and products). There was a level of discomfort, certainly, with Eich as a senior member of the management team at Mozilla when his political views about gay marriage became known, but his technical expertise and his well-defined role allowed for him to remain effective and safe within and to the organization. Promoting him to CEO removed the protective coating around him and exposed the whole organization and its userbase to his political views... views that were antithetical to the stated views of the Mozilla Foundation (which was what attracted so many great people to it in the first place, both as developers and users), and which proved to be a powerful and fast-acting toxin. The gross lack of judgement on the part of the Board of Directors in promoting him to CEO has not only caused a huge backlash against the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox browser when it was already on the ropes, but may have destroyed the ability of one of the more important historical figures in the history of the Internet to remain an effective and contributing net denizen. The damage done with this one act may be incalculable in both its immediate impact and in its long-term opportunity cost (the cost of things that Eich will not be able to do because of this shitstorm caused by the poor judgement of the Board of Directors... it brings to mind the recent fiasco with the rejection of the appointment of Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court of Canada... again, staggeringly poor judgement [if you'll pardon the pun] by the grossly incompetent Conservative government that has now done irreparable damage to someone who had much to offer in the role they had been in prior to the ill-considered actions of said government).
Maybe something good will rise from the ashes of one of the few organizations to have successfully challenged Microsoft in their heyday and won. Perhaps the firefox was simply a creature born to live in a very particular time and fated to die out when the environment changed too much and too quickly for it to adapt. Or perhaps I am utterly wrong and changes will be made to turn the situation completely around. Sadly, once "the suits" have infested a place and fortunes turn against them, all that's usually left to do is watch the looting as they pack up their belongings and look for a new host to inhabit.
Brendan Eich has tendered his resignation today as CEO to the Mozilla Foundation, stating "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader", and they accepted it. See, for example:
Brendan Eich, Mozilla CEO, resigns after protests over anti-gay marriage stance
Sadly, this doesn't really end the crisis because what this really says is the Board of Directors of the Mozilla Foundation are likely not smart enough to run that organization (anywhere but into the ground). Start your stopwatches, the countdown is now running, I wonder what will arise to take over from them? And when?
What needs to be kept in mind is that corporate concerns, like Chrome, by the very nature of their existence, cannot assume the mantle of promoting freedom of information and communications. There is an inherent bias and conflict of interest in these products that cannot be overcome (or to which they will ultimately succumb). Once upon a time, Netscape was the dominant web browser, but lost market share because Microsoft was able to ship Internet Exploder with its operating system which grew to achieve dominance (and ultimately a monopoly at the time) for desktop systems, and therefore of web browsers as well. When Netscape realized it was losing the "browser war", it released its source code to the public and set up the Mozilla Foundation to continue development of it as an Open Source project. What power Netscape had left was squandered through gross incompetence when it was acquired by AOL in 2000, and nothing was left to credibly challenge Microsoft's stranglehold on the ability to view the world wide web... until Firefox finally came into its own through amazing work done under the guidance and nurturing of the Mozilla Foundation. Microsoft was still unassailable until about 2009, and by 2010 Firefox had a 30% share versus IE's 70% share... then Chrome hit and while Firefox use stayed about the same, IE was completely crushed by the combined juggernauts of Chrome and the rise of the smartphone. Last I looked, Firefox, Internet Exploder, and mobile web browsers each had about a 20% share (very -ish) and Chrome is in the 40% share range (again, -ish).
The point of all of that being that Netscape innovated and brought the world wide web to life before having the web usurped by the Microsoft monopoly, and Mozilla was critical in providing an alternative to that monopoly when regulators and the marketplace itself finally started to intervene (the timing was almost ideal for Firefox in that regard). Mozilla's only real advantage at this point is nostalgia... much of the political stance (regarding open source software development and network freedoms) that got them where they were has been eroded in the past few years by numerous commercial deals that impinged on the ideals of those that had supported them in the community so loudly (the deal with Cisco to use proprietary codecs, the adware incursion I have already discussed, various non-free software projects under their umbrella all come to mind). As an outsider, it seems to me that the success of the Firefox browser attracted the usual corporate types to the Foundation who specialize in the monetization of intellectual property and brand names. This is always to "help the long term stability of the organization" but which ultimately seem to only manage to line the pockets of those particular individuals with cash earned through parcelling out the soul of something that was once good... and yes, I did work for Nortel before the same thing happened to it by that same crowd of people... and yes, I quit the moment I saw what was about to happen and didn't get caught there when it finally caved in (so my bitterness there is in the loss of something great and not because it destroyed me as it did so many others that had put their lives into making it the great thing it was)... and yes, I personally know those responsible for driving it into the ground and can see those sorts of people coming at great distances now, thus the reason my "spidey senses" are tingling on this one. But with Google assuming the helm of a new monopoly through the paradigm shift from desktop operating systems to web-based services and the concurrent rise of its Chrome browser platform, Mozilla is in a precarious state and it is not currently in a position to weather this latest "browser war" because it is still running on desktops — it is failing to understand the nature of the evolving web and making its investments correctly for the future. And this is where the Board of Directors of Mozilla comes back into the picture: it is they who have failed the Mozilla Foundation and, in my opinion, the people of the world (again, Firefox was as much a political statement as a technology and those who adopted and promoted it were, for the most part, at least subtly politically motivated). The fact that half the Board of Directors quit when Eich was appointed CEO also speaks of a profound structural dysfunction with the organization as well. The nominal reason they gave for their resignations was not Eich's stand on gay marriage, but the fact that a candidate (I don't know who, does anyone reading this know?) that had a vision and background in mobile platforms was passed over to give Eich the job. Again, this casts a serious gloom over the chances that the Mozilla Foundation will remain relevant for much longer. I suspect that the damage done was instantaneous, irreversible, and will ultimately prove fatal.
And now, perhaps, a word about Brendan Eich is in order. He has done great things, and the current state of the world wide web is in no small part directly traceable back to his work on Javascript. In particular, Javacript was the key ingredient needed for the rise of the AJAX paradigm: Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Sounds a little boring when put that way, but you may have heard of some web-based services that were built using AJAX technologies? Maybe you have heard of Gmail? How about Google Maps? Yeah... thought so. Pretty much any interactive web-based service uses some variation of the AJAX paradigm. Funny that Eich's work at Netscape provided the framework needed by Google for its expansion out of the search engine business into so many aspects of the lives of those who are web-connected (even if you don't use either of those products, you are still affected by it in uncountable ways, on a day-by-day basis due to its ubiquity and its influence on so many other services and products). There was a level of discomfort, certainly, with Eich as a senior member of the management team at Mozilla when his political views about gay marriage became known, but his technical expertise and his well-defined role allowed for him to remain effective and safe within and to the organization. Promoting him to CEO removed the protective coating around him and exposed the whole organization and its userbase to his political views... views that were antithetical to the stated views of the Mozilla Foundation (which was what attracted so many great people to it in the first place, both as developers and users), and which proved to be a powerful and fast-acting toxin. The gross lack of judgement on the part of the Board of Directors in promoting him to CEO has not only caused a huge backlash against the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox browser when it was already on the ropes, but may have destroyed the ability of one of the more important historical figures in the history of the Internet to remain an effective and contributing net denizen. The damage done with this one act may be incalculable in both its immediate impact and in its long-term opportunity cost (the cost of things that Eich will not be able to do because of this shitstorm caused by the poor judgement of the Board of Directors... it brings to mind the recent fiasco with the rejection of the appointment of Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court of Canada... again, staggeringly poor judgement [if you'll pardon the pun] by the grossly incompetent Conservative government that has now done irreparable damage to someone who had much to offer in the role they had been in prior to the ill-considered actions of said government).
Maybe something good will rise from the ashes of one of the few organizations to have successfully challenged Microsoft in their heyday and won. Perhaps the firefox was simply a creature born to live in a very particular time and fated to die out when the environment changed too much and too quickly for it to adapt. Or perhaps I am utterly wrong and changes will be made to turn the situation completely around. Sadly, once "the suits" have infested a place and fortunes turn against them, all that's usually left to do is watch the looting as they pack up their belongings and look for a new host to inhabit.
