cpeterso got the idea from other Mozilla employees. The "he as offered to stay as CEO" grew legs when employees started responding on the governance newsgroup to people complaining about the firing. One person (Yoric I think) said he was offered a position. Then it grew to offered to stay as CEO. Then it grew to "Brendan even got angry about being asked to stay on" or some such statement. It's a classic case of incremental additions to an originally incorrect statement.
Brendan set the record straight and after that the official Mozilla line was clarified. The FAQ was updated to be clearer after Brendan made those comments.
Is Gerv Markham the person who ironically claims to be "Hacking for Christ [1]", a religious leader who preached love and acceptance instead of hatred and discrimination [2]?
The same Gerv who posted an anti-gay-marriage petition to his blog [3] that was syndicated to the public Planet Mozilla forum, publicly calling on Mozilla community members to support the Coalition for Marriage [4], a homophobic hate group [5] that endorsed the legal codification of marriage in the UK as "the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others," [6] by distributing misleading gay marriage leaflets [7]?
The same Gerv whose bigoted post to Mozilla's public forum ignited a controversy about what kinds of content Mozilla tolerates on its Web properties, and triggered an internal discussion examining the nature and desirability of community standards for inclusion [8], which set the stage for the reaction to the revelation of Brendan Eich's $1000 donation in support of Proposition 8 [9], which eventually led to his ignoble resignation as CEO of Mozilla [10], and earned him the humiliating endorsement of support and call to arms from Eric Raymond, who threw down the gauntlet by proclaiming:
"Then I think it is now the duty of every friend of free speech and every enemy of political bullying to pledge not only to donate $1000 to the next anti-gay-marriage initiative to come along, but to say publicly that they have done so as a protest against bullying." [11]
Do you have any problem with giving bullies a taste of their own medicine, by exercising free speech, just like they enjoy?
And in what way were my posts abusive, or not factual, or not backed up by references and citation to prove my points?
I'd certainly characterize many of the responses from anti-gay-marriage bigots as abusive, Godwinesque trolling, inaccurate and completely unsupported by any facts or citations:
"Hey Don: What’s it like being so far up your own ass? John", "See, this is the idiotic propaganda which you people vomit all over the net. What frigging ‘rights’ are you talking about?", "The letter Mozilla should have written. http://t.co/jn2dNNltQY", "The irony of the current situation is the same people who cry because they are “discriminated minority” think and act like Nazis and they aggressively suppress any dissident.", "The gaystapo controls mozilla, it calls the shots. You are now working for this ugly and inhumane movement.", "The character assassination started with employees of Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla should have acted quickly and fired them. Will they still be employed?", "Are you a professional activist? Because, judging by the propagandist bull you sprout here, you sure sound like one. Eich was not ‘campaigning’ to remove any rights, he donated some money to a campaign to abolish special rights.", "Funny how gays demand tolerance from others, yet have no tolerance with those who disagree with their way of life. And pathetic Mozilla fell for it.", "We simply cannot have a civil society when the hyper sensitive and the perpetually aggrieved are allowed their way.", "I hope Mozilla goes bankrupt. I myself already convinced 150 people to stop using Mozilla on all their devices. ... With a bit of luck, I will have convinced at least 2000 people by the end of this year to stop using Mozilla. Maybe more.", "You on the other hand are way out of line and I think your pursuit of Brendan amounts to a hate crime." [12]
So, strafer32, if you think I was being abusive or unreasonable, especially compared to those other people I quoted, you must be nursing quite a persecution complex. Are you the same person who accused me of a hate crime? Since you created your account just two hours ago [13], and since you know my real name, would you please care to share your real name with us? Or are you afraid to stand up for your own beliefs for some reason?
You ask in what way are your comments abusive. I believe you to be trolling because of your style of argument. You say things like [1]:
"Gert (and his supporters), do you also hate women, blacks and jews as much as you hate gays, and do you agree with Brendan Eich’s support of Patrick J. Buchanan and Ron Paul?"
In that entire comment you bring up unrelated issues involving US politicians as if trying to direct supporters of Mozilla and Brendan of being supporters of that view. People discussing with you then have to address points like that or be seen as supporting it. It's a classic trolling technique to do this.
I also find statements like the following abusive [2]:
"Apparently the people who warned me that you had such a thick skull that no outside information could get through and affect your thought processes were correct, and that makes me sad, because I had more faith in you."
In that comment you bring up the Mormon religion which I have no idea what that has to do with Mozilla or the Brendan Eich saga. Again, classic troll misdirection.
Stuff pretty rarely gets escalated to that point, sure. I mean, the position exists for cases when normal means of resolving code ownership disagreements totally fail.
Maybe that's just obvious if you're familiar with the governance structure of the Mozilla Project but not clear to people who haven't been involved in it...
I'm familiar with the governance structure of Mozilla. I'm not a distinguished engineer or anything, but familiar enough. There are employees parroting that Brendan is still has an important position in the structure. Brendan's comment implies he does not consider that the case.
I wasn't trying to imply that you're personally not familiar with the governance structure. I can see how what I said could be read that way, and I apologize for that. It was meant as more of a general statement...
In any case I've seen one technical issue escalated to Brendan so far since he resigned, after mailing list wrangling back and forth for a while got nowhere. He made a call on it (a compromise of sorts, as it happens), and people abided by that call from what I can tell.
He clearly has a lot less impact on decisionmaking now than he did before, which is what you see in his comments. I can totally understand why he feels the way he does. But I think he's underselling the importance he still has.
He does not know otherwise and is mistaken. When Brendan's comment dispelling the rumour that he'd been offered to remain as CEO it was brought up in the Mozilla governance newsgroup and other places. Mitchell Baker clarified that he was not asked to stay on as CEO but was asked to stay on in another, lower level, position. Unfortunately some employees still repeat the false claim.
Andreas is not a great choice. His people skills are terrible. They are so bad that he no longer writes his own emails to employees. They have to go through a PA to make sure they have a human element.
The @RealAndreasGal twitter account that was recently deleted was so amusing because the things that it said were exactly on point. Same with the 'ShitGalSays' Tumblr account which is still around: http://shitgalsays.com/
Andreas is strongly pro-whatever partners want in Firefox OS. Expect DRM and other forms of lockdown to start appearing under his rule. He has no interest in the Mozilla mission.
Are you also the strafer32 who just created an account three hours ago to badmouth the new CEO of Mozilla and troll on the comment threads of Hacker News [1]?
I have not badmouthed the new CEO Mozilla at all. This is a thread about the new CTO. Note that I don't criticize the new CTO for his religious or other beliefs. I criticize him for not having the people skills to perform his job.
Given the age of your account and the contents of your comments I don't think you're one to throw stones.
Brendan set the record straight and after that the official Mozilla line was clarified. The FAQ was updated to be clearer after Brendan made those comments.