Top all-time · #1423
Mitchell Baker
Personal blog · blog.lizardwrangler.combusinessculture
Mitchell Baker's personal blog at blog.lizardwrangler.com covers business and culture. Since 2008, 50 different Hacker News readers have linked it 66 times, most often “In Memoriam: Gervase Markham”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-04-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 31 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Mitchell Baker's personal blog, which HN commenters cite for Mozilla history and decisions, such as the 2012 Thunderbird maintenance-mode post and a 2018 obituary for Gervase Markham that drew debate.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter says to read the post, which they use to correct a misquote about Mozilla and H.264.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 31 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-06-11
- In Memoriam: Gervase Markham6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-08-07
- Building a Global, Diverse, Inclusive Mozilla Project: Addressing Controversy3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-03-26
- Reid Hoffman leaves the Mozilla board2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-02-01
- State of Mozilla and 2008 Financial Statements2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-11-20
- Zero Rating and the Open Internet2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-05-06
- A Return to Founders as Mozilla Moves Forward2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-03-24
- Content, Ads, Caution2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-02-13
- Thunderbird: Stability and Community Innovation2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-07-06
- Mozilla about to change video policy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-03-19
What Hacker News says?
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…
Comment linking /2014/03/29/on-mozillas-support-for-marriage-equality/
on “Tim Cook Speaks Up”Submitted Mozilla Launches Open-Source Support Program as a story · 169 points
HN discussionWhile 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…
Comment linking /2014/02/13/content-ads-caution/
on “Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products”Submitted Building a Global, Diverse, Inclusive Mozilla Project: Addressing Controversy as a story · 37 points
HN discussionHere 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-gerva... “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 encod…
Comment linking /2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase-markham/
on “Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products”Submitted Mozilla Launches Open-Source Support Program as a story · 13 points
HN discussion> 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…
Comment linking /2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/
on “Firefox Was Always Enough”Submitted Thunderbird: Stability and Community Innovation as a story · 11 points
HN discussionShe 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-gerva...
Comment linking /2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase-markham/
on “Mozilla lays off 70”Submitted Zero Rating and the Open Internet as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI'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.
Comment linking /
on “Mozilla names new CEO as it pivots to data privacy”Submitted Firefox 1.0 Launch Day (2005) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionhttps://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva...
Comment linking /2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase-markham/
on “Mozilla names new CEO as it pivots to data privacy”Submitted Chris Beard Named CEO of Mozilla as a story · 4 points
HN discussionCounter-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-gerva... And a well written reaction here https://lwn.net/Articles/762345/
Comment linking /2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase-markham/
on “Mozilla names new CEO as it pivots to data privacy”Submitted Mozilla's Mitchell Baker on Total Surveillance as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI 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].…
Comment linking /2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/
on “Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client”Submitted Mozilla Celebrating 15 Years of a Better Web as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> * 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…
Comment linking /2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva..
on “What's the future of Servo?”Submitted User Sovereignty for our data by Mitchell Baker as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI 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"…
Comment linking /2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase-markham/
on “What's the future of Servo?”Submitted Mozilla out-sourcing their website usage data capturing as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDevelopment 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-stabi... 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 e…
Comment linking /2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/
on “Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client”Submitted In Memoriam: Gervase Markham as a story · 2 points
HN discussionVotes 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 promo…
Comment linking /2014/03/26/
on “Firefox lost 50M users since 2019”Submitted Reid Hoffman leaves the Mozilla board as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMozilla 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:…
Comment linking /2017/03/13/the-worldview-of-mozilla/
on “Mozilla Awards Over Half a Million to Open Source Projects”Submitted Mitchell Baker – All Change, All the Time as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThat'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-t... Another post worth reading on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/3l9y7t/net_neutralit...
Comment linking /2015/05/06/zero-rating-and-the-open-internet/
on “Just Say No to Facebook's Internet.org, Says Inventor of World Wide Web”Submitted A Return to Founders as Mozilla Moves Forward as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
