Last week, Mr. Eich was forced to resign due to his opinion and monetary donation in 2008. Mozilla's Executive Chairwoman, Winifred Mitchell Baker used the most twisted Orwellian logic in explaining her actions by saying, "Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality." No one is stopping the Pro-Gay Marriage community from espousing their views. In fact, they are quite vocal. But Mr. Eich is not afforded that same right. Apparently all free speech is not created equal. They have re-defined free speech to mean, "those who have a set standard of beliefs we approve of." All others - beware. SLATE Magazine's William Saletan, is now calling for the "purge" of all 35,000 donors to Prop 8. He goes as far as to provide a link that lists the names and donations made. This is a dangerous witch hunt. McCarthyism. And it threatens every one's free speech. Every ones.
Free Speech means not only the ability to speak our minds but also to speak our minds without fear of reprisals. I don't give a damn whether you're pro or anti Gay marriage. This goes far beyond a single topic or agenda. It's about tolerance. Without tolerance for opposing viewpoints, there is no tolerance at all. The hard left now employs Fascist tactics. The message is simple - believe as we do, or we will demonize, attack, libel, intimidate and threaten you. Perhaps next, Mozilla will not enable their web browser to access websites that they find politically or socially offensive and intolerant. And how long will it be till other search engines or web browsers follow in an attempt to be "tolerant" lest they be targeted as intolerant. This is how it begins. And where true free speech may end.
Just my thoughts on the folks that want to "black list" or boycott Firefox because of the recent hoopla:
ReplyDeleteOpen Source software is a very social progressive movement not only providing free software with source code available to folks to modify, study or tinker with but it is for the betterment of mankind. One cannot simply just say that they will boycott Firefox because of this situation, simply put, Firefox's internals are in more things than you would believe. Not to mention that if this really angers you, it's really just Firefox you should be mad with, but the Open Source community as a whole - as they raised the pressure on this fella.
So that would mean boycotting a lot more things than just Firefox, like pretty much abandoning your computer all together. Pretty much all websites operate on a platform that is Linux, Apache, PHP, My SQL, etc. So you would have to start convincing people to abandon those technologies and use stuff like WIndows Server with IIS - which is not Free, is not secure or as functional as the Open Source LAMP platform. Let's just say that running a webserver with Windows is horribly expensive and woefully insecure.
If you want to abandon Firefox you should also abandon:
Open Office, Word Press, FileZilla, Audacity, GIMP, VLC Media Player, Handbrake, Blender, 7-Zip, Notepad++, TrueCrypt, Linux, and many others.
That being said,
While the situation was probably not 100% fair to Mr. Eich, one has to consider that being in an Open Source project like Mozilla you have to think of the greater implications of your political opinion, and certainly if you want to donate money to campaigns that are not socially compatible with the Foundation you are leading, you should probably be an anonymous donor - just so there isn't back lash like this.
Personally I am indifferent to the situation. He was taking good care of the folks that the Foundation employed - and prop 8 didn't pass, I consider that a win / win situation.
Just my thoughts on the folks that want to "black list" or boycott Firefox because of the recent hoopla:
ReplyDeleteOpen Source software is a very social progressive movement not only providing free software with source code available to folks to modify, study or tinker with but it is for the betterment of mankind. One cannot simply just say that they will boycott Firefox because of this situation, simply put, Firefox's internals are in more things than you would believe. Not to mention that if this really angers you, it's really just Firefox you should be mad with, but the Open Source community as a whole - as they raised the pressure on this fella.
So that would mean boycotting a lot more things than just Firefox, like pretty much abandoning your computer all together. Pretty much all websites operate on a platform that is Linux, Apache, PHP, My SQL, etc. So you would have to start convincing people to abandon those technologies and use stuff like WIndows Server with IIS - which is not Free, is not secure or as functional as the Open Source LAMP platform. Let's just say that running a webserver with Windows is horribly expensive and woefully insecure.
If you want to abandon Firefox you should also abandon:
Open Office, Word Press, FileZilla, Audacity, GIMP, VLC Media Player, Handbrake, Blender, 7-Zip, Notepad++, TrueCrypt, Linux, and many others.
That being said,
While the situation was probably not 100% fair to Mr. Eich, one has to consider that being in an Open Source project like Mozilla you have to think of the greater implications of your political opinion, and certainly if you want to donate money to campaigns that are not socially compatible with the Foundation you are leading, you should probably be an anonymous donor - just so there isn't back lash like this.
Personally I am indifferent to the situation. He was taking good care of the folks that the Foundation employed - and prop 8 didn't pass, I consider that a win / win situation.
The situation regarding Mr. Eich is just the 'canary in the mine'. Others will be targeted because of their beliefs. In fact, he's certainly not the first. Chik-Fil_A comes to mind. As a private citizen living in an alleged free country, you and I as well as Mr. Eich should be permitted to donate to any cause I choose, without fear of reprisals. It is neither my employer's or anyone else's business. The left preaches tolerance. But they are the least tolerant of any political ideology. Just imagine if a liberal was forced out of an organization/company because they donated money to a Progressive leaning agenda. All hell would break loose. The Progressive agenda subverts the will of the majority by negating the voter's will such as Prop 8, then attacking anyone who disagrees with them. You are correct when you say that it will be difficult to decide which businesses to boycott. Companies, product and economies are intertwined. I suppose we'll just have to do the best we can and support those we KNOW support the Conservative agendas.
ReplyDelete