Mozilla's blog post - improved

Mitchell Baker

Mozilla published a blog post regarding the resignation of Brendan Eich, hounded out as CEO because he supports traditional marriage.

In the spirit of transparancy, which Mozilla no doubt prizes, I decided to add my comments, to improve the text. All that is in bold is my addition.

Thank you Mozilla for making the world a better and more liberal place!

Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard [that of not employing people with dissenting views] and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right [because we also hold ourselves to be the arbiters of who is right and who is wrong in the gay marriage debate, that is what we feel web companies are called to do]: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.

We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act [i.e. only hire the sort of people who think in the right way]. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better [perhaps question all employees on their social and religious views before hiring them?].

Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community. [And the witch hunt had NOTHING to do with it...]

Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech [so long as people who are conservative are not held to be equal to liberals and do not speak]. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard [So we thought the best solution would be to give in to the masses and get rid of somebody who holds different views].

Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness [But we are trying to change that, by hounding out conservatives]. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views [So long as they are pro-gay marriage]. Mozilla supports equality for all [except those who do not think that the definition of marriage as being between people of different sexes should be changed].

We have employees with a wide diversity of views [Again, we are doing our best to narrow that down]. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public [So that you can hound them out if you don't agree with them]. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community [which is, apparently, the LGBT Community].

While painful, the events of the last week show exactly why we need the web [So that we can dig up dirt on people we hire and make them resign]. So all of us can engage freely in the tough conversations we need to make the world better [The best way to hold those conversations is to scream at people until they quit].

We need to put our focus back on protecting that Web. And doing so in a way that will make you proud to support Mozilla.

What’s next for Mozilla’s leadership is still being discussed [We are considering barring any religious believers from working for us, but haven't made our mind up yet]. We want to be open about where we are in deciding the future of the organization and will have more information next week. However, our mission will always be to make the Web more open so that humanity is stronger, more inclusive and more just: that’s what it means to protect the open Web [Making sure that people who we don't agree with don't get to speak out, or make them resign if they do].

We will emerge from this with a renewed understanding and humility — our large, global, and diverse community is what makes Mozilla special, and what will help us fulfill our mission. We are stronger with you involved [and with conservatives out].

Thank you for sticking with us. [All the rest of you, get lost]

Mitchell Baker, Executive Chairwoman [with a little help from Filipe]