Mitchell Baker

I'd wager forced too. She didn't blog about this in https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/. Given that the last 3 blogposts are about company changes, the lack of a post about this event smells of resentment.

That's because better alternatives exist that provide access to the whole Internet free of cost. For example, Mozilla is trying out a couple of variants of free Internet in Africa and Bangladesh: https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2015/05/06/zero-rating-and-the-open-in… Another post worth reading on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/3l9y7t/net_neutrality_supporte…

24, 31, 38 represent the version of Gecko that Thunderbird ships with. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/New_Release_and_Governance_Model Thunderbird now follows an Extended Support Release process, rolling out every eight release cycles equaling every 54 weeks. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/organizations/faq/ This is because Thunderbird is no longer in active development; it is primarily in maintenance mode. https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-c…

>Idk, Rust seems to be working out. Rust was created to write a new rendering engine in, which they abandoned half-way. Then they abandoned Rust itself. And, guess what, they also abandoned Thunderbird: "Thunderbird has been independent since 2012. See https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-c… Many people have not realized this, but for Thunderbird to grow and adapt to a changing environment having some sort of income stream is important. There is a limit to what the volunteers can do. Hence significant fund raising efforts. The web site perhaps answers the current arrangement best. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/about/ One of the issues we face is that people in general do not differentiate between Mozilla co the commercial entity that produces Firefox and the Mozilla foundation that owns it. Thunderbird's arrangements are with the foundation, not the company."

I think there's some truth to this. Mozilla has become less of a technology organization and more of a political one. There have been quite a few instances over the past few years of Mozilla demonstrating its left leaning politics: * The Brendan Eich situation where his private contribution to a conservative cause impacted his employment * Baker calling a former conservative employee's views "traumatic and damaging" in their obituary - https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase-markham… * The removal of "meritocracy" from the governance document in the name of D&I - https://blog.mozilla.org/careers/words-matter-moving-beyond-meritocrac… * Promoting BLM and anti-racism content via Pocket and their homepage * Replacing "master password" with "primary password" - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/primary-password-replacing-master… Agree with their positions or not, they are definitely alienating to some. Even if just delivering a great browser and getting people to use it is not their primary mission (and it's not directly if you've ever read the Mozilla Manifesto), it is the means by which they retain the ability pursue those goals. Recall Michael Jordan's reason for staying away from politics, "Republicans buy sneakers too".

I used Thunderbird daily for the better part of a decade until about 3 months ago. It's nothing personal against the project, which is currently the best serious desktop mail client available afaik. It's simply that Mozilla doesn't care about it anymore since everyone uses webmail now. Thunderbird is doing feature releases about once a year now [0], and Mozilla has pulled most (all?) of its full-time developers [1]. A few months ago, Mitchell Baker sent a message that said they were looking to detach Mozilla from the project completely, partially because it didn't have enough industry-wide impact to be worth Mozilla's resources [2]. The sad fact is that desktop mail clients are going away, and even the big projects like Thunderbird are barely limping along, which I guess is slightly nicer terminology than "pretty much dead"? [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/releases/ [1] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-c… [2] http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/30/thunderbird-flies-away-from-mozilla/

Interesting society argument. For sake of argument I'll just talk about Mozilla employees. Does being a CEO require you to take political actions to support (or at least, not hurt) your employees in their outside lives, over other local political concerns? As a citizen, is that ethical? People who oppose gay marriage typically believe it would hurt "society" at large -- do you really want to say he should have taken an action (or inaction) he believed would generally hurt everyone in his political jurisdiction (which the vote was in), so that he could help his Mozillian sub-society? (The typical proponent response would be that it doesn't hurt anyone, but that's the crux of where people disagree.) What other areas does this reasoning extend to? Maybe I'm making a straw man here, but how is this sub-society argument different than "The majority of my employees are white people or supporters of white people, so I should vote and campaign to support white people even though I believe it would hurt others"? For what it's worth, Mozilla reportedly offer healthcare benefits to same-sex couples[0], and I've read several reports that Brendan personally treated gay employees equitably. I recognize the difficulty of reconciling all this, the near-hypocrisy of campaigning to ban legal unions of people you're cordial with at work, but I can't find a way to support the idea that he should be accountable to them for his legal participation in a process that transcends Mozilla. …

Counter-anecdote. She also wrote this incredibly rude and grotesque obituary for Gervase Markham after he died of cancer (working for Mozilla until the end). You are welcome to disagree, but Gerv contributed just as much to Mozilla as Mitchell did. https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase-markham… And a well written reaction here https://lwn.net/Articles/762345/

> * Baker calling a former conservative employee's views "traumatic and damaging" in their obituary - https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva... She went a little far in what she said publically, but she wasn't wrong. I knew Gerv from very early on. He was a convert to christianity and as most converts, was vehement in it's absolute correctness to the detriment of his relationships. But, when you think you have an absolute truth of life after death on your side, people become a secondary concern. > * Promoting BLM and anti-racism content via Pocket and their homepage So, I will admit that I don't see there being any valid stance besides being against racism, and for treating all human life with value.

Mozilla isn't neutral politically, though there isn't a specific political alignment that is endorsed. That is, it's issue-focused, rather than partisan. We have a strongly-worded manifesto that lays out what we believe: https://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto/ Mitchell Baker, the chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, talking about how the current political environment in America might overlay that manifesto: https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2017/03/13/the-worldview-of-mozilla/ I'm an employee at Mozilla, though am trying to set personal politics aside to present public explanation of our institutional viewpoint.

Development by Mozilla has been stopped since 2012, which means that Thunderbird has been relying on community support for maintenance and new features, Mozilla still contributing security updates. For details see here: https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-c… Development has been slow since then, but the project is far from dead. I'm on version 42 beta (latest Firefox is 43 I think) and for example they've just includes the Lighting add-on in the base install. Plus all add-ons that interest me are compatible, like Markdown-here.

https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-c… more or less maintenance only

I'm more interested in the case of people whose beliefs don't affect their actions in a professional capacity, as opposed to people whose beliefs never affect their actions. I agree people who have strong beliefs but are able to set them aside to some extent in part of their life are rare. They do exist, though. As a case in point, from my personal interactions with Brendan, I can assure you that he is not the sort of person who will tell you all about his thoughts on gay marriage within an hour of meeting him. In fact, I don't know what those thoughts are (short of trying to guess based on the donation thing), and I've known him for years. Mitchell Baker has known him for even longer, and worked with him more closely, but see the next to last paragraph of https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2014/03/26/building-a-global-diverse-i…

Links to blog posts are broken at the bottom of the page. Mitchell Baker's post - https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2014/03/24/a-return-to-founders-as-moz… Brendan Eich's post - https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/mozilla-news/

> But many things I don't get: - Word processors - Spreadsheets - Photo editors In 2012 Mozilla stopped innovating its Thunderbird mail agent [0]: "Is Thunderbird a likely source of innovation and of leadership in today’s Internet life? Or is Thunderbird already pretty much what its users want and mostly needs some on-going maintenance?" [0] - https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-c…

Looks interesting. I've been a Thunderbird user for a long time but the fact it appears to have been practically abandoned[0] by Mozilla is a shame. The 'Import from Thunderbird' wizard appears to be a bit broken, though. It tried to import all my Thunderbird accounts but seems to have just munged them all into one account in Opera Mail. It would be nice if I could selectively import single Thunderbird accounts. Also, as others have mentioned, it seems to be lacking compared to Thunderbird in auto configuration (in TB, I can enter a Google Apps email address and it'll figure out it's Google for me). [0] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-c…

The original post announcing the change in Thunderbird's status, written by the Chair of the Mozilla Foundation: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-co…

This is also a perfect misquote. Read Mitchell's post http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/03/18/video-user-experience-and-ou…

Google will help you find more recent financial details. The 2008 financials are right here: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/11/19/state-of-mozilla-and-2008/

Google just signed a 3 years deal with Mozilla. So, personally, I don't think that Google Chrome would be direct competitor to Firefox. They are in fact in two different market - normal browsing VS web application. Refer: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-wi… http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-reflections/

Votes are private. Donations are public. The LA Times reported Eich's donation in 2012. Mozilla leadership including Baker knew about it before 2014. Eich knowing not to broadcast his support for discrimination is the minimum expected of most employees. Eich himself said he resigned because the controversy was hurting Mozilla. He also said it would have been illegal to fire him. Baker publicly supported Eich's promotion.[1] At least before he botched a predictable and winnable PR crisis. Other people did say his actions and standing by them meant he couldn't credibly promote Mozilla's claimed values. And his belief his discrimination wasn't discriminatory called into question how he could do the CEO's job of preventing discrimination. But basically no one said he couldn't work there with his views. He remained CTO after his views and actions were widely known. And board members asked him to stay in another role after he resigned. The US Supreme Court recognized marriage as a civil right in 1967. It's the law of the land. And same sex marriage was legal in California before Proposition 8. Believing reducing some people's rights is justified doesn't make it not reducing their rights. And calling it what it is isn't persecution. I've never worked for someone who publicly said I should be a 2nd class citizen. I feel sorry for you if you have. It sounds like you might have your own definition of civil rights though. [1] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2014/03/26/

> If anything, they should spin off development of Thunderbird into a separate company with its own independent funding structure. They already did that. - In 2012 Mozilla (the corporation) started this move by announcing that "Thunderbird was not a priority for Mozilla" [1]. At this point Mozilla (corp) stopped actively investing in Thunderbird. - In 2015, Mitchel Baker made it clear that the Mozilla (corp) wanted to get rid of Thunderbird [2]. At this point the Mozilla corp started shutting down support services for the Thunderbird project. - In 2017 Thunderbird was legally moved to the Mozilla Foundation (instead of the corporation) and started surviving mostly on its own, with some minor help from the Mozilla Foundation [3]. Here Mozilla (corp), the company responsible for Firefox, already got rid of Thunderbird entirely. - In 2020, it became clear that Thunderbird can survive entirely on its own donations and could even try to provide commercial services. Thus, the Mozilla Foundation created a new "MZLA Technologies Corporation" that is now the legal entity responsible of Thunderbird [4]. MZLA Tech is not responsible for any other product that I know of. [1] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-c… [2] https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.governance/c/kAyVlhfEcXg/m/Eqyx1X6… [3] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-home/ [4] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

ere is a (selective) look at the management of Mozilla in the recent past. From Mitchell Bakers blog https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase-markham… “Gerv’s faith did not have ambiguity at least none that I ever saw. Gerv was crisp. He had very precise views about marriage, sex, gender and related topics. He was adamant that his interpretation was correct, and that his interpretation should be encoded into law. These views made their way into the Mozilla environment. They have been traumatic and damaging, both to individuals and to Mozilla overall.” From http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/29/gerv.html “I bring up Gerv's open-mindedness because I know that many people didn't find him so, but, frankly, I think those folks were mistaken. It is well documented publicly that Gerv held what most would consider particularly “conservative values”. And, I'll continue with more frankness: I found a few of Gerv's views offensive and morally wrong. But Gerv was also someone who could respectfully communicate his views. I never felt the need to avoid speaking with him or otherwise distance myself. Even if a particular position offended me, it was nevertheless clear to me that Gerv had come to his conclusions by starting from his (a priori) care and concern for all of humanity. Also, I could simply say to Gerv: I really disagree with that so much, and if it became clear our views were just too far apart to productively discuss the matter further, he'd happily…

While I was getting ready to reply and say that most of my comments in this thread talking about the CEO were meant as general comments not referring to a specific Mozilla CEO, I went and read the Wikipedia Page for Mitchell Baker, so while you are correct that she took over from Chris Beard as CEO, there is also this bit of history to consider: > When the Mozilla Corporation was launched as a taxable subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation on August 3, 2005, Baker was named the CEO of the new entity. In addition, she joined the Mozilla Corporation's Board of Directors, though she also kept her seat on the Mozilla Foundation's board, as well as her role as Chairperson. In 2014, she wrote this piece[0] (while she was not CEO, but Chair), justifying putting ads in Firefox. [0] - https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2014/02/13/content-ads-caution/ It appears that she has been setting the direction at Mozilla for a really long time, CEO or not.

Yeah, I remember being disappointed about the Mozilla chairman's announcement[1] that Thunderbird "not a priority" and they were essentially giving up on it. (I don't personally use Thunderbird, but we have a lot of Windows users at work who do). So this bubbly and optimistic-sounding blog post confused me a little. But then I looked next at the previous entry in this blog[2] and it states that at the end of 2014 they reorganized and elected new leadership to take over from the Mozilla people who weren't working on it any more. So apparently there are at least some people actively working on it again, and they are hoping for financial sponsorship to cover a full-time developer. If it works out, then actually it seems like Mozilla's handling of the problem ('we have a standards-based IMAP email client with millions of users, but nobody -- including the team in charge of it -- wants to work on it any more') was pretty good. They did keep the project on life support with security updates, for a little over two years, until they found some people that did want to work on it. [1]: https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-c… [2]: https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2014/11/thunderbird-reorganizes-a…