I know, don't feed the troll, _ad hominem_ arguments are fallacies on their face, and all that.

But so that there is no confusion on the part of readers who haven't been around the block, or around the valley, and therefore might be taken in by your libels, here's a personal testament:

You (byefruit) may be young, and/or not in my Silicon Valley job market. Look at my peers of around the same age as me. Many are independently wealthy. Those at executive or C-level (Chief of...) positions make similar salaries, not counting stock options from public companies which generally remunerate them to a much greater degree.

I'm not looking for a new job, but I get head-hunter contacts often enough. From the non-startups, the promised packages are as good or better in terms of salary. Doing a startup would mean a reduction in exchange for more founders' equity.

I have had invitations and targeted recruiting pitches from Google starting in 2002 and running up to this year. Had I gone in 2002, I would be set for life. I'm not independently wealthy, in spite of a decent salary for someone at my age and level.

Getting Firefox out, restarting JS standardization, helping build Mozilla, competing with Chrome, starting Mozilla Research (http://www.mozilla.org/research/), launching Firefox OS -- these add up to hard work, as hard as I've ever done save for the crazy Netscape days in 1995-6. This is especially true lately with lots of travel, which is not easy on my wife and small children.

Meanwhile, open source means living in a fishbowl, and Mozilla with its mission and people-first social movement roots means finding a business structure that doesn't loot our brand or screw volunteers by trying to cash out via an IPO or acquisition.

The structure that we chose was a U.S. 501(c)(3) Foundation, with IRS approval up front, but then with IRS reneging after a couple of years, followed by a fight to deny us our status and tax our early revenue that had been declared tax-free at the time by that same agency.

In the course of this "package audit", I had the joy of a personal IRS audit, which I passed cleanly (I defended myself). And Mozilla prevailed on the question of its public benefit status.

I don't live in Atherton or Palo Alto. I don't drive a fancy car. I'm in a house built in 1960 that was enlarged in the '70s but is modest by any standard (and very messy right now!).

So, do you really think I am just in this for the money?

This is not a boast, it doesn't make me great or even good. Like most who have some years of sustained work and credit/blame on their backs, I am little by myself. I'm much less than some truly great people who work for a good cause for no more, and often a lot less, than I make.

I am 100% sure that I could not persuade most of Mozilla's top talent of anything if I were merely an empty suit adding no value and sucking a big salary.

So it is just galling to hear your spin on thetruthaboutmozilla, which by the way seemed in that 2007 piece to say that I was worth every penny (not that I'm giving it any credence :-|).

If I'm right that Mozilla matters, then it matters no matter what I make or where I go. If I'm valuable to Mozilla, then my staying will help. I have to consider that too, in negotiating compensation.

"Know thyself" is as important now as it was at Delphi in ancient Greece. I'm not at Mozilla to make money. I'm here to make the web better for everyone, users, developers, your parents -- without having to face business-agenda or personal-financial conflicts of interest.

Aristotle and Jesus agreed on this point regarding money (Mammon) vs. "the good" (God): you can't serve two masters.

So, enough about me. Whom or what do you serve, and why?

/be