I think we are making the same point, neither of us are stating that mozilla shouldn’t be accepting money from commercial entities, just like auditters shouldn’t be forced to be out of pocket either.

However it doesn’t matter if it’s $10.00 or $10,000,000,000 what matters is what strings are attached to the dollar amount, and that’s where we both agree and even Mozilla’s own policies on certificate authorities has a discolure policy.

After all, one of the, if not the biggest marketing aspects apart from firefox not costing users money is the fact the software is supposed to be open source which is why linux distributions include it. So If other aspects had the same disclousre policies and people were freely able to inspect them as freely as the organisation touts the code is I’m sure this post wouldn’t even exist in the first place.

I guess Mozilla foundation/corp really will find out how much it is worth next time it goes to negoiate contracts with Google and others and demands the contracts be open. If they are worth what they think that are they won’t have to conceed on anything, if they aren’t then they will have to choose between the money and their users, and what does it mean if they choose the money over the users?

unfortunately, the goose and the gander may be closer than you think. You might recall when Frank Hecker was leading the very open Mozilla CA Policy project on the security mailing list, the prevailing mood about auditors was that if someone wasn’t a certified practitioner, then they should do it for free … to avoid conflicts.

It was me that pointed out that making it free doesn’t avoid the conflict of interest, it just buries it. Better is to state that the remuneration is public, so we the users can look for any sense conflicts and judge for ourselves. That’s what was adopted in the policy point 10: “the nature and amount of the party’s financial compensation by the CA is publicly disclosed;…”

As I am now auditing a CA (still, slowly) it’s clear that this gander cooked his own goose! I should point out that the CA has learnt from the policy as well (not through my own efforts) and it is definitely new territory, it’s very interesting to see it evolve.

If Mozilla is in such a strong position and would be able to get an equal amount of money from a competitor, why not demand all contracts and deals in future are made in an honest and open manner that would with stand community scrutiny?

If Mozilla isn’t in such a strong position then obviously you really are already bought and paid for by Google.

I am not a Buddhist so this doesn’t apply to me as a “should”, but it does apply to you since you subscribed yourself.

But there is a good reason why it is so. Suppose all your peers are crooked? Suppose all of them are compensated with 5 personal female slaves? Should you also demand the same compensation just because others get it too?

So when you think of your own compensation, you should think about what is best and what is right in the grandest sense of those words instead of what others get. Because often what others get is simply *not right* and also *not sustainable*.

By the way, I am *not* a Buddhist. I just like to borrow some ideas from Buddhism because they are useful. I am not any kind of “ist”.

What I am saying is very simple. Mitchell is unhappy that people read profit motive into everything Mozilla does. That’s one. Two: a commenter or two here argued over whether or not Mitchell makes too much money. I responded to both of these concerns simultaneously by attempting to illuminate the underlying psychodynamic.

It’s hard or impossible to tell from just a raw dollar amount number if the person is greedy or not. A lot depends on the person’s state of mind, and how they use the money and so on.

If Mitchell extracts joy from sources other than money or status, then I believe we should all be very happy, even if she does get paid less than other CEOs.

Another way to put it is this: What asset are we worried about protecting? Are we protecting Mitchell’s personal home and her cars? Are we protecting her social cachet? Are we protecting the Mozilla community of users? Are we protecting all of the above, and if yes, in what order of importance?

Most CEOs see it as their job to protect purely their own cash hoard (recently circulated internal Microsoft memos come to mind). This is exactly why the corporation vehicle was invented. It was invented to limit personal risks while at the same time not limiting personal gains. This has lead to people being irresponsible, because if your potential gains do not have appropriate risks, you will take very risky routes toward those gains. You will risk social stability and happiness of many people if there is a large enough gain and you’re a purely money-oriented person. And a corp is a legalistic tool that allows that to happen.

So, if we and/or Mitchell want to protect the Mozilla user base first and foremost, then Mitchell cannot afford to be greedy and she cannot afford to be conceited and she cannot afford to worry about her salary level at all, as long as it’s past a certain level. Her entire focus should be on the community if that’s the asset she (and we) want to protect. Greed and conceit would interfere with the vision one needs to protect the community.

However, if Mitchell’s personal stuff is the number one asset to protect, then the community can be sacrificed to some degree, as long as it’s not sacrificed so much that it is entirely killed off. An analogy would be if you have a cow and you just care about yourself, you can inconvenience your cow by milking it too much. The cow can be in intense pain and suffering, and if your own tiny identity is all you care about, your goal is simply not to go overboard and kill off the cow. If the cow is pissed off and unhappy, as long as you can still get your milk every day, that is “best” from a greedy perspective.

Unfortunately a lot of people think from the greed perspective because they don’t identify with all mankind. Rather many people see a sharp divide between themselves and others. And if others suffer, as long as they are not right next to your house, such that their pain and suffering is visible to you (and therefore annoying), it is OK that they suffer. That’s how the selfish mind works. It allows suffering to occur because those others are not you, and they are not visible, so it’s OK.

My main goal is to shine some light and let people decide what they want to do and who they want to be in life. So all my “shoulds” are just my opinions, no more and no less.

I am very happy with my bias and while I keep my eyes and ears open, I didn’t come to where I am lightly or easily. I keep my mind open, but at the same time, I believe what I am saying is very good and of high value and I plan to continue to talk about it in the near future.

There are a number of unspoken assumptions in what you wrote and, in the end, it isn’t very clear what you are trying to say. If you are trying to say that Mozilla shouldn’t pay its CEO much, I can understand your statement but that isn’t entirely clear.

At the end of the day, regardless of vision, everyone expect their daily work to pay them somewhere between “enough to live on” and “going rate for my role and my peers.” It isn’t conceit to compare the salaries of a role with those of similar roles elsehwere. I’m a Buddhist but I still compared the pay I was offered to what I could make elsewhere (along with MANY other factors, such as joy in the work or goals) before accepting a job at MoCo. None of us are independently wealthy (as far as I know) so we can’t simply disregard the idea of compensation.

So far, this issue seems like a blind to me. People seem to raise it in order to get a reaction out of people or to paint things with an implicit (rather than being explicit and open) brush. I have yet to hear what I would consider an effective criticism.

None of this is really here or there in the context of Mitchell’s actual post and its topic.

Because MoCo is privately opened and doing well, it can make decisions that are not entirely organized around “How can I make more profit for shareholders?” MoCo can make business decisions that are better in the long run or simply better for the open web that other companies may not be able to make. The end result is that “What is the financial impact of this decision?” is not the *final* factor in decision making though, responsibly, it has to be asked.

Everything depends on where the person takes their joy from.

If the CEO takes joy from money and possessions and constantly compares him or herself to other CEOs, then, if you don’t pay them a salary that is close enough to that of peers, the CEO in question will feel slighted. And a slighted CEO will not be wholehearted about protecting assets.

On the other hand, a CEO who takes primary joy from money is greedy and a CEO who constantly compares him or herself to other CEOs is conceited (I’m using a Buddhist definition of “conceit” here, which is a more profound and more correct definition — conceit is comparing oneself to others in any way, positive “I’m better”, negative “I’m worse”, or neutral “I’m the same”). Greed can be defined as a focus on quantity over quality. A greedy and conceited person is suffering from a type of blindness. Their eyes are not very clear. It’s like being in awe of shiny objects, and as soon as a shiny object is in your field of vision, you have hard time noticing other objects around it. That’s a type of blindness. So, a blind CEO truly cannot do a good job protecting assets, because you need a visionary, clear-eyed and clear-hearted CEO to do that.

So what possibilities do we have here?

1. A money oriented CEO, greedy and conceited. Greed and conceit always, necessarily blind. So you have a blind CEO. You have to pay him at least close to what his/her peers get or he/she won’t put a full-hearted effort into protecting the assets. But even when this CEO puts a full-hearted effort into protecting the assets, they cannot do a great job due to spiritual/mental/heart blindness (because inordinate attraction to wealth and status distorts one’s vision).

2. A CEO who takes joy from sources other than money. Money is, of course, still needed and is useful to such a person, but money is no longer the dominant concern. If they have their basic needs met and can take a decent vacation once a year, they are satisfied. This kind of person sees what is truly important in life and will do a better job protecting the assets, because they won’t have as many vision distortion as the CEO in #1 to get in the way of their duties. All else being the same, this #2 CEO has a better ability to see any and all situations clearly and holistically. This kind of CEO has their finger on the pulse of the planet and on the pulse of life itself.

Normally this issue is not discussed at all. But since Mozilla strives for openness and public service, this does become the subject of discussion. Other businessmen are assumed to be greedy and conceited by default, and so it doesn’t even enter into ordinary discussion (yet…). Everyone assumes extreme selfishness on the part of the highest level of management, and this is also why everyone is trying to read the money motive into everything that Mozilla does. This is because people have hard time understand the level of being where you can take immense joy, satisfaction, security and contentment from something other than sitting on a big pile of shiny things.

But for a greedy person it’s very hard to imagine that joy can come from something other than possessions and social status. It’s almost like a blind person trying to imagine the rainbow. It’s possible to do, but it is very hard and the blind must be thoroughly motivated to receive the vision of the rainbow for this to happen.