Cupid and Firefox not a match made in heaven

[Woollyhats]

So I stumbled on this story today. Essentially, an activist that contributed to the successful proposition 8 campaign has been made CEO of Moxilla.

Responses vary, but the dating site "OkCupid" has had an interesting response: When people visit the dating site from firefox, they receive this message,

"Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.

Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.

Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there's a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we're asserting ourselves today. This is why: we've devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we've worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it's professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.

If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.

However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid."


Normally I'm a little cautious when I see businesses involved in political causes, but Okcupid makes their reasoning as to why they care clear.

But what does this mean at a personal level?

Say your internet browser suddenly became "Antigay". Would you care?

http://valleywag.gawker.com/okcupid-bloc...socialflow

[southbiochem]

Well, the browser has not actually turned "anti-gay" and no action is being taken to hamper the access to LGBT-related sites. I also care not for sites like OK cupid.

However, on the bigger context, I would not like using anything that gives money to someone who is trying to deny me rights. So I think it is nice that Ok cupid gives that kind of info. It's not like they're forcing you to not use Mozilla, just putting a bit of info out there and you can make a choice.

I have never used Mozilla and I'm not about to start now, so.

[nfisher1226]

In this case it's sort of overblown in my opinion. Firefox has a long history, being descended from the Mozilla internet suite which was descended from the Netscape internet suite. It's history is hugely intertwined with the history of the web itself, and is also strongly tied to the free software community. The mozilla foundation has also done quite a bit to promote freedom and free access to the internet without censorship.

Firefox itself is free software. There is no monetary exchange involved in installing it onto your computer. Even more to the point, the source code itself is freely available and community involvement in the development process is encouraged. Quite a bit of the code is and was written by volunteer hackers for fun and/or to give something back to the community at large. There's no logical reason to penalize each and every one of the contributors to the mozilla project codebase because the board decided to promote Mr. Eitch to CEO.

Anyway, I'm not going to give up firefox. It's the most reliable browser on Linux with the possible exception of Chrome, which I'm hesitant to use because I'm not quite thrilled with google's dominance of everything these days.

All that said, Mr Eitch himself is an asshole. He's done some backpedaling already in order to keep his new job and save the foundation some embarrassment, but even that he screwed up enough that the foundation had to release another statement independently of Mr Eitch clarifying that they support marriage equality. He's an asshole, in the same way that George W Bush was an asshole. I didn't stop using the benefits of US citizenship during that asshole's presidency. I just roundly criticized the assholes who voted him into orfice. Just as I say WTF to mozilla for this move. I'm hoping his tenure will be brief and relatively non-destructive.

[Pix]

I see it as no different as providing financial support for the Ku Klux Klan. Actually, I'd have more respect for him (don't confuse respect with sympathy) if he donated that money to David Duke as he knows he'd score no points with anyone over that since white supremacy no longer has Biblical justification the way anti-gay bigotry still does, and therefore it takes more guts and conviction.

I'm just sad over it. But heartened knowing that one day supporting things like Prop 8 will one day be as socially unacceptable as supporting bans on interracial marriage. But for now bigots like him have a little wiggle room.

I generally gave up on boycotting over every little thing many years ago because if I was consistent then I'd have to go live in a cave. The world is just fucked up, and no matter what corporation gets my money there are people who are going to be hurt by it. Still, if I catch he's making anymore donations (which he presumably gets from Mozilla) then yeah, I'll stop using Firefox. I'm not financing my own oppression. Luckily, I think the backlash has been so severe over this that it will serve as an incentive to not repeat such a thing.

[TimeSage]

Firefox is entirely free so I don't see the point in boycotting it.

[Pix]

Firefox is entirely free so I don't see the point in boycotting it.

To be more specific, not use it. Using it generates advertisement fees for them. Google pays them a lot for when they get used as well. There are other sources. You don't pay anything, but they get paid by others when you use it (I think they get donations, too). And if the money they make then gets put into making us second class citizens then that's a problem.

[Lilitu]

who uses firefox anymore lol

[dfiant]

The beauty of democracy and free speech is if you believe in something so strongly, you are allowed to make a statement in a manner that succesfully expresses an opinion and brings attention to the belief that there is a problem.

If OK Cupid had not have done this, I would never have know that a bigot was no the CEO of Mozilla allowing me to make and educated choice on what software I use...YES I do take morals into consideration when I consider brands.

That is my right.

[dfiant]

Having said that and being an Linux user for a decade I have always used Firefox because it played nicely...but it's syncing featured is an absolutely cunt.

For the last 2 weeks I have been playing with Chrome just for the heck of it and found that using it on 5 seperate devices, the syncing between all devices has being fluid and a dream come true.

[Woollyhats]

Short update:

The anti-gay CEO that was hired by Moxilla has "Quit".

So, whatever your answer to my opinion question, firefox no longer has a hardcore anti-gay CEO.

"Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn't live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it's because we haven't stayed true to ourselves.

We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act. We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We're sorry. We must do better.

Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He's made this decision for Mozilla and our community."

It's interesting to see that sometimes public opinion actually does influence private business.

http://valleywag.gawker.com/that-was-rel...socialflow