12 ms·

Mozilla CTO: Andreas Gal

84 points by msujaws 12y ago

rdl 12y ago
For some reason I thought Eich had gone back to CTO. I guess after the controversy that wasn't really possible.
- matthewbauer 12y ago
  Is he involved with Mozilla at all any more?
  - meowface 12y ago
    Unfortunately, no. It appears he basically decided to retire early.
    - rdl 12y ago
      Maybe we will all get lucky and he will do a startup -- it isn't like the web technology world is mature yet. His political donations and personal beliefs probably wouldn't be an issue in a small, purely commercial organization.
      - anatoly 12y ago
        Oh really? Do you suppose many VCs will want to invest in his startup, knowing that a crowd of zealots will be chomping at the bit to protest them and boycott their other investments? I'm afraid he may be effectively blacklisted in this industry now.
        rdl 12y ago
        1) Startup doesn't necessarily mean VC funded, or large VC funded. 2) He doesn't have to be CEO; I don't think most people who disliked him as CEO had a problem with him as CTO of Mozilla.
        xtrumanx 12y ago
        > I don't think most people who disliked him as CEO had a problem with him as CTO of Mozilla. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to oust him from the CTO position as well. It's not like it took that much effort on their part. Sign a petition here, post blog post there and presto Eich resigned.
      - DonHopkins 12y ago
        I heard a rumor Brendan Eich was going to start working on a new project with a couple of his staunchest and loudest supporters, Eric Raymond and Russell Nelson, who were also forced out of their jobs as leaders of Open Source companies because they were bigots. Following the precedent of Project GNU's rebranding "FireFox" as "IceCat" for their own political and ethical reasons, they're going to rebrand "FireFox" as "WhistleDog", and develop a web browser aligned with their own political and ethical ideology, which is more inclusive of people who think it's wrong to be intolerant of intolerant people, and less tolerant of communists like RMS, bullies like homosexual activists, and blacks, who Raymond and Nelson describe as "stupid", "violent" and "lazy".
        Crito 12y ago
        > "Following the precedent of Project GNU's rebranding "FireFox" as "IceCat" for their own political and ethical reasons" Do you mean the issue of Mozillas restrictions on the "Firefox" name, which the FSF/GNU think are at odds with their notion of "Free Software"? Do you mean you are annoyed with the FSF for their entire purpose in this world?
        DonHopkins 12y ago
        You misunderstand. I'm an old friend of RMS from the 1980's, and I'm on his side, although not quite as ... RMSque as he is. He's recently been asking me for advice about packaging node.js desktop apps, which I've been discussing with him. Does anyone else have any advice or opinions or corrections to add, please? RMS> The questions I'm concerned with are very limited: they have to do with how node applications fit into the existing and general framework of GNU/Linux. If I can install them with apt-get, start them with a shell command or from a menu, and use them to operate on ordinary files in my file system with no Internet connection, then they're just as good as C or Python or Lisp programs. So I don't need to know any more -- I can conclude "there's no problem here, everything's ok," and move on to other issues. RMS> Can you confirm for me whether this is possible? RMS> If not, then they have a problem and I'd like to know more about the problem. Don> Yes, I think node will suit your needs quite nicely. Don> So yes I think you can conclude that there is no problem and it's ok to use it! Don> Node has its own package manager called "npm" that might be more appropriate to use than apt-get, since it knows a lot more about what is going on with node, and solve the problem of dependencies in a much nicer way than apt-get can. Don> For example, you can install packages in the system globally to share with other users, or locally in a project to isolate projects from each other and make them independent. Don> I believe you could still package node software up so it can be installed by apt-get of course, but it would be more monolithic and system wide, and not be able to take advantage of all the things you npm can do because it knows it is dealing with node, instead of trying to solve a much more general problem of linux software installation. Don> Also, it is a much fresher simpler approach to some of the problems that gnu configure solves, since it abstracts a lot of the system dependencies, so there is no need for the artificial intelligence layer that is implemented by shell scrips, and all the guessing and probing and syntactic backflips to maintain compatibility with old versions of Xenix for ZX80 and AT&T answering machine cassette tape drivers and stuff like that. Don> So I think using the node/npm ecosystem instead of the older stuff would make installation and configuration about four to five orders of magnitude simpler and more elegant. Don> Definitely there is no problem using it for what you want the same way as python or whatever scripting language. Don> Not only is node.js useful for implementing servers of all persuasions, but you can also use it to develop local desktop applications with or without user interfaces, RMS> Can you tell me more about this possibility? Perhaps tell me the specific URLs I can fetch to read about it? I don't browse sites unrelated to me from my own computer, but I can fetch a specific article by sending mail to a demon. Don> Here is one alternative that uses built-in WebKit to do the user interface: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit Don> Here is another alternative, that uses QT instead of WebKit, which is what you should use if for some perverse reason you want to severely limit the scope of people who know how to or are willing to program the user interface, and also severely narrow the scope of what you can do with the user interface and which libraries and frameworks you can use: https://github.com/arturadib/node-qt https://github.com/arturadib/node-qt Don> And somewhere in-between, but hardly as effective as simply using a real web browser like WebKit to do real web things, and certainly not stable or mature: https://github.com/arturadib/node-five https://github.com/arturadib/node-five Don> And of course if you're happy using a separate stand-alone browser as the user interface (and don't need the high bandwidth direct access in-memory single-threaded bi-directional function calling interface between node and the user interface), you can simply run any old web server module in node (there are lots to choose from), and run node in the background on your desktop computer, and talk to it via https and localhost sockets. Don> Node has full access to your local computer, including accessing local files, calling native code, etc. Don> I presume that WebKit can run sandboxed JavaScript code, but I don't know how WebKit's JS interpreter relates to node's JS interpreter, if they're different or one and the same, or how they're isolated from each other (or how it's isolated from itself ;). Don> I'm not familiar with what work has been done on sandboxing JavaScript directly in node.js, but you might start looking here: https://www.npmjs.org/package/sandbox https://www.npmjs.org/package/sandbox Don> Once you've installed node and npm, you can get it and look at the source by going "npm install sandbox". Don> This one looks like it sandboxes JavaScript code in a sub-process, which is probably even safer but terribly non-optimal if you've already got two other JavaScript interpreters hanging around in the same process after linking node and WebKit together. https://www.npmjs.org/package/node-sandbox https://www.npmjs.org/package/node-sandbox RMS> One specific question: can these applications read and write files in the local file system? If so, is it normal for them to do so? Don> Good question. Yes you can store a certain amount of stuff in the web browser's "local storage", and certainly a remote server or local server. But the JavaScript code would have to be running in some kind of privileged shell or context, such as a Firefox or Chrome extension in a normal web browser, or the desktop equivalent of "PhoneGap" that wraps a web browser in a mobile app and exposes apis to privileged functions like file system access. Or of course the aforementioned node.js + webkit application. Don> There is a great tool for node/npm called "Browserify", kind of like a linker for JavaScript source code modules, which itself is a nicely factored flexible set of node modules, that lets you take a bunch of node modules and package them together to run in the web browser, substituting shims that implement nice asynchronous node apis by wrapping nasty browser based apis, so you can write portable code that runs in the browser or server without any modification! RMS> If you "browserify" an application in this way, where and how does it store data? Does it store data in files in the local system? Or does it have to store them somewhere else, such as Local Storage Objects or a remote server? Don> That enables you to achieve the holy grail of re-using the same code and data without modification, on both the client and the server and embedded devices and whatever! RMS> My holy grail is that we could install these Javascript packages through the GNU/Linux distro's package system, run them in the same ways we run C programs, and have them operate on local files just like C programs. Don> I don't see why not! If you don't need a sandbox, then it should be a piece of cake that you can both have and eat too, which is not a lie. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-cake-is-a-lie http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-cake-is-a-lie RMS> But there's one other thing that would be very useful to help this case: RMS> * There is a server that sends nonfree JS code to the user's machine and won't run without it. RMS> * We ask them to fix this. RMS> * If node.js makes it easy for them to fix it by running their _existing_ JS code on the server side, that would be a big help. Don> I don't quite understand what you mean or what your motivations are (aside from your usual well known motivations), but it sounds possible. Don> It's probably somewhere between "it's only an awk script away" (which means it's possible, but at the cost of losing your soul), and "a simple matter of programming" (which mean trivially technically possible except for all the difficult non-technical parts like asking nicely and getting along with people who hold different beliefs, goals, and priorities, and getting users to press the "any" key, stop trying to photocopy CD-ROMS, etc). ;) Don> So if you're using aptitude to snapshot the binary platform specific results of doing an npm install and compiling native code modules, then users installing the software with apt-get won't need to have npm compile the code, or even need to have compilers installed. RMS> That is a fine way of doing it. Or, alternatively, running apt-get on that package could do the npm install. How it works is NOT THE ISSUE. The point is to offer users a single uniform UI for installing all the packages in the system. RMS> When a programming platform comes with its own "convenient" way of installing packages, it is convenient for hackers who develop things in that language, but it's nothing but trouble for users that want to install a package and not have to know what language it is written in. RMS> And that includes people like me, who know how to program, but don't program in that particular language. RMS> Thus, I think one thing that every programming platform ought to have is a convenient way to generate a .deb.
  - bzbarsky 12y ago
    He's still the buck-stops-here person for the module owner system in the Mozilla Project. He's not involved with the Mozilla Corporation as far as I can tell.
    - strafer32 12y ago
      He may be but as he says himself, that's not much involvement: http://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/a-curse-and-a-blessing/#comment-4280 http://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2014/04/07...
      - bzbarsky 12y ago
        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...
        strafer32 12y ago
        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.
        bzbarsky 12y ago
        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.
  - yulaow 12y ago
    For what I know, nope. He has resigned from any position. I don't know if Mozilla tried to offer him another job or his previous role of CTO, but in a situation like that one he ended in, I think he just decided to sever all the ties.
    - cpeterso 12y ago
      MoCo's board tried to convince him to stay the course as CEO or CTO, but he felt he should sever all ties with Mozilla to draw fire away from the organization: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...
      - cjbprime 12y ago
        This is incorrect (odd, since you're a Mozilla employee) -- at http://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/a-curse-and-a-blessing/ http://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2014/04/07... Brendan says: "No one tried to convince me to stay as CEO."
        coldtea 12y ago
        Or you know, he says it but it's not true, and the OP knows otherwise.
        cpeterso 12y ago
        I am a Mozilla employee, but I have no first-hand knowledge of what the board did. In Mozilla town hall meetings, multiple board members said they pleaded with Brendan to stay. I don't think they or Brendan would mislead us, so perhaps Brendan is using a very precise meaning of "tried to convince me to stay as CEO."
        strafer32 12y ago
        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.
  - yeukhon 12y ago
    He still own brendan@mozilla.org (https://github.com/tc39/agendas/commit/6d5fa287a755429707e6e38aa0c8c0889678670b https://github.com/tc39/agendas/commit/6d5fa287a755429707e6e...) Though this is not a sign of him actually remaining in power I guess, but more of an advisor and active contributor.
- krick 12y ago
  Me too. Very sad that they lost one of the most significant people for Mozilla and for the whole web as well over some nonsense, to think of it. I wonder if it actually would be that bad if they just ignored those, umh, haters? And now what? I'm sure this Andreas Gal is very notable and significant person as well, but I'm not really sure I ever heard of him, and I surely heard of Eich, FWIF. Well, I hope he does well and will be good choice for the CTO chair, but all that stuff is sad somehow anyway.
- eps 12y ago
  After their spineless handling of this farce I see no reason for him to have to do anything with Mozilla.
  - EC1 12y ago
    Because he donated $1k to prop 8?
    - EC1 12y ago
      Why did I get -4 downvoted for this? I was asking why.
  - eps 12y ago
    Hey, mods, where did my Edit link go? The heck is this?
    - dang 12y ago
      Hmm, this looks like a bug. I'll try to fix it before the edit window expires. Alternatively, if you want to email an edit to hn@ycombinator.com, we'll put it in for you. Edit: Just fixed it, I think. Please try again.
      - eps 12y ago
        Thanks. My apologies for over-reacting. That didn't look good as a feature.
- SilasX 12y ago
  Public outrage can have hysteresis, not just hysteria.
jasoncartwright 12y ago
I wonder - did they check his political donations?
- tbrooks 12y ago
  Any donation >$250 to a candidate's committee is required to be disclosed to the FEC. It's also searchable here: www.fec.gov
  - SilasX 12y ago
    FWIW, Eich's donation was not to a candidate's committee, but to that of a ballot proposition.
    - tbrooks 12y ago
      Yep, should've made that clear in my original comment.
- honksillet 12y ago
  He'll be fine as long as he toes the thought police orthodoxy line.
  - jimktrains2 12y ago
    How is it thought police for the community around an organization to not want the organization to have a CEO that is diametrically opposed to the beliefs of many in community?
    - coldtea 12y ago
      Huh? Isn't that the very definition of thought police? To get you inline with the beliefs of "many in the community"?
      - jimktrains2 12y ago
andrewryno 12y ago
The link to Shumway is broken, FYI.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  Thanks. It's been fixed.
pvnick 12y ago
As with every other Mozilla story posted over the past couple weeks, this may end up getting flagged/controversy-filtered off the front page quickly. Dang, if that happens, could we possibly get an exception? I'm tired of everything Mozilla-related getting swept under the rug around here.
- dang 12y ago
  Not sure I have a good answer for you. All the options I know of, in general, suck. Fortunately this thread hasn't gone too far off the rails so far.
  - ndesaulniers 12y ago
    I think we get flagged for ring voting a lot too, since a lot of us share a similar location... (so I dare not up vote this submission)
adrianlmm 12y ago
#uninstallfirefox
- camus2 12y ago
  #growup , I mean,the story is over,let's talk about technology,now.I wish Eich well.I'm sure he'll be joining a startup or something soon.
  - kar2014 12y ago
    May be you need to grow up? This is just the beginning of end of free speech where minority gets their way ousting a co-founder for $1000 donation six years ago without any proof of inappropriate behavior.
- kar2014 12y ago
  Firefox falls to third place, lowest user level ever. http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/mozilla-firefox-falls-to-3rd-place-hits-lowest-user-level-ever/ http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/mozilla-firefox...
fabrice_d 12y ago
Andreas is the perfect choice for this role. Top notch technical abilities, and very nice human being if you like the "no bullshit" way of doing things. Edit: his own post is at http://andreasgal.com/2014/04/24/technical-leadership-at-mozilla/ http://andreasgal.com/2014/04/24/technical-leadership-at-moz...
- daeken 12y ago
  100% agreed. I had the pleasure of working with Andreas (and you, if you're the Fabrice D. I think you are) on the Boot2Gecko project, and he was a great project leader. He's technically adept, he knows how to work with people, and just gets things done. I'm very optimistic about Mozilla's future with him as CTO.
  - hkphooey 12y ago
    I disagree about Mozilla's future. What does it matter if Andreas is technically competent when he has to manage activists rather than programmers?! There are people working at Mozilla today, many of whom are pulling in a decent salary, who believe they are working for social justice charity rather than a technology non-profit. Firefox is the golden goose but they might eventually bankrupt themselves by spending resources on non-core missions, like the GNOME foundation who had to whip out the begging bowl because they spent all their money on a women's outreach program rather than developing technology.
    - ossreality 12y ago
      >There are people working at Mozilla today, many of whom are pulling in a decent salary, who believe they are working for social justice charity rather than a technology non-profit. ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah You're an idiot, and I think you even know that you're completely misrepresenting the situation which I guess just makes you a liar.
    - DonHopkins 12y ago
      Are you just as frustrated with Tim Cook for telling global warming deniers that he doesn't want their money? Life is just so unfair, isn't it?
beagle3 12y ago
Before joining Mozilla, he worked on JITs for Java, and after he joined Mozilla, he worked on JITS for JavaScript mostly, from memory. Good luck, Andreas. Thanks, Brendan.
ksec 12y ago
My only question and request to the new CTO. Please accelerate Project Async and e10sm2.

84 points by msujaws 12y ago

rdl 12y ago

For some reason I thought Eich had gone back to CTO. I guess after the controversy that wasn't really possible.

matthewbauer 12y ago
Is he involved with Mozilla at all any more?
- meowface 12y ago
  Unfortunately, no. It appears he basically decided to retire early.
  - rdl 12y ago
    Maybe we will all get lucky and he will do a startup -- it isn't like the web technology world is mature yet. His political donations and personal beliefs probably wouldn't be an issue in a small, purely commercial organization.
    - anatoly 12y ago
      Oh really? Do you suppose many VCs will want to invest in his startup, knowing that a crowd of zealots will be chomping at the bit to protest them and boycott their other investments? I'm afraid he may be effectively blacklisted in this industry now.
      - rdl 12y ago
        1) Startup doesn't necessarily mean VC funded, or large VC funded. 2) He doesn't have to be CEO; I don't think most people who disliked him as CEO had a problem with him as CTO of Mozilla.
        xtrumanx 12y ago
        > I don't think most people who disliked him as CEO had a problem with him as CTO of Mozilla. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to oust him from the CTO position as well. It's not like it took that much effort on their part. Sign a petition here, post blog post there and presto Eich resigned.
    - DonHopkins 12y ago
      I heard a rumor Brendan Eich was going to start working on a new project with a couple of his staunchest and loudest supporters, Eric Raymond and Russell Nelson, who were also forced out of their jobs as leaders of Open Source companies because they were bigots. Following the precedent of Project GNU's rebranding "FireFox" as "IceCat" for their own political and ethical reasons, they're going to rebrand "FireFox" as "WhistleDog", and develop a web browser aligned with their own political and ethical ideology, which is more inclusive of people who think it's wrong to be intolerant of intolerant people, and less tolerant of communists like RMS, bullies like homosexual activists, and blacks, who Raymond and Nelson describe as "stupid", "violent" and "lazy".
      - Crito 12y ago
        > "Following the precedent of Project GNU's rebranding "FireFox" as "IceCat" for their own political and ethical reasons" Do you mean the issue of Mozillas restrictions on the "Firefox" name, which the FSF/GNU think are at odds with their notion of "Free Software"? Do you mean you are annoyed with the FSF for their entire purpose in this world?
        DonHopkins 12y ago
        You misunderstand. I'm an old friend of RMS from the 1980's, and I'm on his side, although not quite as ... RMSque as he is. He's recently been asking me for advice about packaging node.js desktop apps, which I've been discussing with him. Does anyone else have any advice or opinions or corrections to add, please? RMS> The questions I'm concerned with are very limited: they have to do with how node applications fit into the existing and general framework of GNU/Linux. If I can install them with apt-get, start them with a shell command or from a menu, and use them to operate on ordinary files in my file system with no Internet connection, then they're just as good as C or Python or Lisp programs. So I don't need to know any more -- I can conclude "there's no problem here, everything's ok," and move on to other issues. RMS> Can you confirm for me whether this is possible? RMS> If not, then they have a problem and I'd like to know more about the problem. Don> Yes, I think node will suit your needs quite nicely. Don> So yes I think you can conclude that there is no problem and it's ok to use it! Don> Node has its own package manager called "npm" that might be more appropriate to use than apt-get, since it knows a lot more about what is going on with node, and solve the problem of dependencies in a much nicer way than apt-get can. Don> For example, you can install packages in the system globally to share with other users, or locally in a project to isolate projects from each other and make them independent. Don> I believe you could still package node software up so it can be installed by apt-get of course, but it would be more monolithic and system wide, and not be able to take advantage of all the things you npm can do because it knows it is dealing with node, instead of trying to solve a much more general problem of linux software installation. Don> Also, it is a much fresher simpler approach to some of the problems that gnu configure solves, since it abstracts a lot of the system dependencies, so there is no need for the artificial intelligence layer that is implemented by shell scrips, and all the guessing and probing and syntactic backflips to maintain compatibility with old versions of Xenix for ZX80 and AT&T answering machine cassette tape drivers and stuff like that. Don> So I think using the node/npm ecosystem instead of the older stuff would make installation and configuration about four to five orders of magnitude simpler and more elegant. Don> Definitely there is no problem using it for what you want the same way as python or whatever scripting language. Don> Not only is node.js useful for implementing servers of all persuasions, but you can also use it to develop local desktop applications with or without user interfaces, RMS> Can you tell me more about this possibility? Perhaps tell me the specific URLs I can fetch to read about it? I don't browse sites unrelated to me from my own computer, but I can fetch a specific article by sending mail to a demon. Don> Here is one alternative that uses built-in WebKit to do the user interface: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit Don> Here is another alternative, that uses QT instead of WebKit, which is what you should use if for some perverse reason you want to severely limit the scope of people who know how to or are willing to program the user interface, and also severely narrow the scope of what you can do with the user interface and which libraries and frameworks you can use: https://github.com/arturadib/node-qt https://github.com/arturadib/node-qt Don> And somewhere in-between, but hardly as effective as simply using a real web browser like WebKit to do real web things, and certainly not stable or mature: https://github.com/arturadib/node-five https://github.com/arturadib/node-five Don> And of course if you're happy using a separate stand-alone browser as the user interface (and don't need the high bandwidth direct access in-memory single-threaded bi-directional function calling interface between node and the user interface), you can simply run any old web server module in node (there are lots to choose from), and run node in the background on your desktop computer, and talk to it via https and localhost sockets. Don> Node has full access to your local computer, including accessing local files, calling native code, etc. Don> I presume that WebKit can run sandboxed JavaScript code, but I don't know how WebKit's JS interpreter relates to node's JS interpreter, if they're different or one and the same, or how they're isolated from each other (or how it's isolated from itself ;). Don> I'm not familiar with what work has been done on sandboxing JavaScript directly in node.js, but you might start looking here: https://www.npmjs.org/package/sandbox https://www.npmjs.org/package/sandbox Don> Once you've installed node and npm, you can get it and look at the source by going "npm install sandbox". Don> This one looks like it sandboxes JavaScript code in a sub-process, which is probably even safer but terribly non-optimal if you've already got two other JavaScript interpreters hanging around in the same process after linking node and WebKit together. https://www.npmjs.org/package/node-sandbox https://www.npmjs.org/package/node-sandbox RMS> One specific question: can these applications read and write files in the local file system? If so, is it normal for them to do so? Don> Good question. Yes you can store a certain amount of stuff in the web browser's "local storage", and certainly a remote server or local server. But the JavaScript code would have to be running in some kind of privileged shell or context, such as a Firefox or Chrome extension in a normal web browser, or the desktop equivalent of "PhoneGap" that wraps a web browser in a mobile app and exposes apis to privileged functions like file system access. Or of course the aforementioned node.js + webkit application. Don> There is a great tool for node/npm called "Browserify", kind of like a linker for JavaScript source code modules, which itself is a nicely factored flexible set of node modules, that lets you take a bunch of node modules and package them together to run in the web browser, substituting shims that implement nice asynchronous node apis by wrapping nasty browser based apis, so you can write portable code that runs in the browser or server without any modification! RMS> If you "browserify" an application in this way, where and how does it store data? Does it store data in files in the local system? Or does it have to store them somewhere else, such as Local Storage Objects or a remote server? Don> That enables you to achieve the holy grail of re-using the same code and data without modification, on both the client and the server and embedded devices and whatever! RMS> My holy grail is that we could install these Javascript packages through the GNU/Linux distro's package system, run them in the same ways we run C programs, and have them operate on local files just like C programs. Don> I don't see why not! If you don't need a sandbox, then it should be a piece of cake that you can both have and eat too, which is not a lie. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-cake-is-a-lie http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-cake-is-a-lie RMS> But there's one other thing that would be very useful to help this case: RMS> * There is a server that sends nonfree JS code to the user's machine and won't run without it. RMS> * We ask them to fix this. RMS> * If node.js makes it easy for them to fix it by running their _existing_ JS code on the server side, that would be a big help. Don> I don't quite understand what you mean or what your motivations are (aside from your usual well known motivations), but it sounds possible. Don> It's probably somewhere between "it's only an awk script away" (which means it's possible, but at the cost of losing your soul), and "a simple matter of programming" (which mean trivially technically possible except for all the difficult non-technical parts like asking nicely and getting along with people who hold different beliefs, goals, and priorities, and getting users to press the "any" key, stop trying to photocopy CD-ROMS, etc). ;) Don> So if you're using aptitude to snapshot the binary platform specific results of doing an npm install and compiling native code modules, then users installing the software with apt-get won't need to have npm compile the code, or even need to have compilers installed. RMS> That is a fine way of doing it. Or, alternatively, running apt-get on that package could do the npm install. How it works is NOT THE ISSUE. The point is to offer users a single uniform UI for installing all the packages in the system. RMS> When a programming platform comes with its own "convenient" way of installing packages, it is convenient for hackers who develop things in that language, but it's nothing but trouble for users that want to install a package and not have to know what language it is written in. RMS> And that includes people like me, who know how to program, but don't program in that particular language. RMS> Thus, I think one thing that every programming platform ought to have is a convenient way to generate a .deb.
- bzbarsky 12y ago
  He's still the buck-stops-here person for the module owner system in the Mozilla Project. He's not involved with the Mozilla Corporation as far as I can tell.
  - strafer32 12y ago
    He may be but as he says himself, that's not much involvement: http://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/a-curse-and-a-blessing/#comment-4280 http://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2014/04/07...
    - bzbarsky 12y ago
      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...
      - strafer32 12y ago
        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.
        bzbarsky 12y ago
        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.
- yulaow 12y ago
  For what I know, nope. He has resigned from any position. I don't know if Mozilla tried to offer him another job or his previous role of CTO, but in a situation like that one he ended in, I think he just decided to sever all the ties.
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    MoCo's board tried to convince him to stay the course as CEO or CTO, but he felt he should sever all ties with Mozilla to draw fire away from the organization: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...
    - cjbprime 12y ago
      This is incorrect (odd, since you're a Mozilla employee) -- at http://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/a-curse-and-a-blessing/ http://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2014/04/07... Brendan says: "No one tried to convince me to stay as CEO."
      - coldtea 12y ago
        Or you know, he says it but it's not true, and the OP knows otherwise.
        cpeterso 12y ago
        I am a Mozilla employee, but I have no first-hand knowledge of what the board did. In Mozilla town hall meetings, multiple board members said they pleaded with Brendan to stay. I don't think they or Brendan would mislead us, so perhaps Brendan is using a very precise meaning of "tried to convince me to stay as CEO."
        strafer32 12y ago
        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.
- yeukhon 12y ago
  He still own brendan@mozilla.org (https://github.com/tc39/agendas/commit/6d5fa287a755429707e6e38aa0c8c0889678670b https://github.com/tc39/agendas/commit/6d5fa287a755429707e6e...) Though this is not a sign of him actually remaining in power I guess, but more of an advisor and active contributor.
krick 12y ago
Me too. Very sad that they lost one of the most significant people for Mozilla and for the whole web as well over some nonsense, to think of it. I wonder if it actually would be that bad if they just ignored those, umh, haters? And now what? I'm sure this Andreas Gal is very notable and significant person as well, but I'm not really sure I ever heard of him, and I surely heard of Eich, FWIF. Well, I hope he does well and will be good choice for the CTO chair, but all that stuff is sad somehow anyway.
eps 12y ago
After their spineless handling of this farce I see no reason for him to have to do anything with Mozilla.
- EC1 12y ago
  Because he donated $1k to prop 8?
  - EC1 12y ago
    Why did I get -4 downvoted for this? I was asking why.
- eps 12y ago
  Hey, mods, where did my Edit link go? The heck is this?
  - dang 12y ago
    Hmm, this looks like a bug. I'll try to fix it before the edit window expires. Alternatively, if you want to email an edit to hn@ycombinator.com, we'll put it in for you. Edit: Just fixed it, I think. Please try again.
    - eps 12y ago
      Thanks. My apologies for over-reacting. That didn't look good as a feature.
SilasX 12y ago
Public outrage can have hysteresis, not just hysteria.

jasoncartwright 12y ago

I wonder - did they check his political donations?

tbrooks 12y ago
Any donation >$250 to a candidate's committee is required to be disclosed to the FEC. It's also searchable here: www.fec.gov
- SilasX 12y ago
  FWIW, Eich's donation was not to a candidate's committee, but to that of a ballot proposition.
  - tbrooks 12y ago
    Yep, should've made that clear in my original comment.
honksillet 12y ago
He'll be fine as long as he toes the thought police orthodoxy line.
- jimktrains2 12y ago
  How is it thought police for the community around an organization to not want the organization to have a CEO that is diametrically opposed to the beliefs of many in community?
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Huh? Isn't that the very definition of thought police? To get you inline with the beliefs of "many in the community"?
    - jimktrains2 12y ago

andrewryno 12y ago

The link to Shumway is broken, FYI.

cpeterso 12y ago
Thanks. It's been fixed.

pvnick 12y ago

As with every other Mozilla story posted over the past couple weeks, this may end up getting flagged/controversy-filtered off the front page quickly. Dang, if that happens, could we possibly get an exception? I'm tired of everything Mozilla-related getting swept under the rug around here.

dang 12y ago
Not sure I have a good answer for you. All the options I know of, in general, suck. Fortunately this thread hasn't gone too far off the rails so far.
- ndesaulniers 12y ago
  I think we get flagged for ring voting a lot too, since a lot of us share a similar location... (so I dare not up vote this submission)

adrianlmm 12y ago

#uninstallfirefox

camus2 12y ago
#growup , I mean,the story is over,let's talk about technology,now.I wish Eich well.I'm sure he'll be joining a startup or something soon.
- kar2014 12y ago
  May be you need to grow up? This is just the beginning of end of free speech where minority gets their way ousting a co-founder for $1000 donation six years ago without any proof of inappropriate behavior.
kar2014 12y ago
Firefox falls to third place, lowest user level ever. http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/mozilla-firefox-falls-to-3rd-place-hits-lowest-user-level-ever/ http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/mozilla-firefox...

fabrice_d 12y ago

Andreas is the perfect choice for this role. Top notch technical abilities, and very nice human being if you like the "no bullshit" way of doing things. Edit: his own post is at http://andreasgal.com/2014/04/24/technical-leadership-at-mozilla/ http://andreasgal.com/2014/04/24/technical-leadership-at-moz...

daeken 12y ago
100% agreed. I had the pleasure of working with Andreas (and you, if you're the Fabrice D. I think you are) on the Boot2Gecko project, and he was a great project leader. He's technically adept, he knows how to work with people, and just gets things done. I'm very optimistic about Mozilla's future with him as CTO.
- hkphooey 12y ago
  I disagree about Mozilla's future. What does it matter if Andreas is technically competent when he has to manage activists rather than programmers?! There are people working at Mozilla today, many of whom are pulling in a decent salary, who believe they are working for social justice charity rather than a technology non-profit. Firefox is the golden goose but they might eventually bankrupt themselves by spending resources on non-core missions, like the GNOME foundation who had to whip out the begging bowl because they spent all their money on a women's outreach program rather than developing technology.
  - ossreality 12y ago
    >There are people working at Mozilla today, many of whom are pulling in a decent salary, who believe they are working for social justice charity rather than a technology non-profit. ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah You're an idiot, and I think you even know that you're completely misrepresenting the situation which I guess just makes you a liar.
  - DonHopkins 12y ago
    Are you just as frustrated with Tim Cook for telling global warming deniers that he doesn't want their money? Life is just so unfair, isn't it?

beagle3 12y ago

Before joining Mozilla, he worked on JITs for Java, and after he joined Mozilla, he worked on JITS for JavaScript mostly, from memory. Good luck, Andreas. Thanks, Brendan.

ksec 12y ago

My only question and request to the new CTO. Please accelerate Project Async and e10sm2.