I was quite surprised by the calls for BE’s resignation.

I’ve found the vitriolic attacks and misinformation I see flowing through my
Twitter feed disgusting. Emotionally, I feel like the tweets come from people with no real skin in the game, nor do they understand how damaging Mozilla can be bad for everyone in the long run.

These attacks are the viral spread and distortion, of some valid concerns from MoFo staff. Unfortunately, these concerns carried the ultimatum asking for BE to resign; which is sadly the fuel for this ad-selling media hype.

For reasons Myk does a great job of capturing, I’m somewhat conflicted on some of the nuances of this topic. Prop hate was horrible and still echos through our lives.

But, to try to add something new to the conversation…

Ultimately this comes down to picking your battles.

There is a lot wrong with the world and not much time to fix it.

In my mind Mitchell and Brendan have been fighting to keep the web open and accessible for over a decade. They ARE Mozilla. Mitchell is the spirit and BE is the tech.

It is a privilege to have been paid staff for the last 5+ years, because together, we’ve created an amazing platform to try keep the web open and to improve our world.

I’m at Mozilla, because it’s the best place I can find to participate as a progressive technologist.

Attacking Brendan for something he did 6 years ago, which was disclosed through a leak for a private action without much context is simply not worth damaging the project over.

The Mozilla project is getting quite large. When I joined as a webdev, I was on the outskirts. I didn’t work shoulder to shoulder with BE, but I already had a mental model of him from my community participation.

Now, our project is even larger, working on important topics like rural broadband access, education and news. Perhaps many people fighting the good fight on those fronts have not gotten a chance to build up a mental model of BE.

Progress and inclusion requires forgiveness and benefit of the doubt. Making a change in the world requires picking your battles.

Time machine thought police is not the battle ground I would pick. Resignation is a high-stakes tactic.

I will fight for people’s rights. I know Christie Koehler will be there fighting. I know of dozens and dozens of folks I work with everyday that would stick their necks out to fight for your rights.

Yes, we should monitor BE, as we should monitor and help debug each other.

There are many ways we can start carving up our community to attack each other, but let’s make sure we’re fighting over something that needs changing and not fighting the wrong battle for the right reasons.

https://ozten.com/psto/2014/03/28/pick-your-battles/