I think a large problem with this conversation is that people speaking for Mozilla have already clearly made up their minds, which is true otherwise the feature wouldn't have shipped. However it would be great to get more info on how this decision was made. It's all sort of piecemeal.
There is a question of whether or not this feature was in demand. I think someone said it was, but it wasn't as fully formed an answer as the one Mike just gave about partnerships vs open. Also there seems to be an open question of what the ToS actually mean for Firefox users. I think both of these questions are more important to answer over whether or not a partnership makes sense, because even people who aren't opposed to partnerships will be opposed to this particular idea if a) there isn't enough demand to justify adding a feature and b) if the ToS don't align with what people expect from Mozilla. Our values set us apart. If we can't include features while maintaining our values (choice, privacy, user first), then we don't have an edge and we'll end up in an arms race. If we're in an arms race but people no longer trust us to protect their privacy (which is a big part of our marketing efforts now) then we lose. On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 3:56 PM, Mike Connor <mcon...@mozilla.com> wrote: > On 17 June 2015 at 13:37, <tucker.mckni...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Mike Connor, I really appreciate your replies. > > > > > The reality is that Mozilla is still a relatively small company, > > > and all of our major competitors have a couple of orders of > > > magnitude more people and money to back their efforts. To compete > > > with those companies we need to maximize leverage, and make > > > pragmatic decisions on whether to buy/build/partner for each > > > problem we want to solve. > > > > I understand that this was a pragmatic decision. And I get that Firefox > > needs to have great features in order to attract users. I see the > conflict > > here: Firefox needs users to accomplish its goal, but its goal is to > > promote an open and non-proprietary web. It seems like the goal with this > > feature was to attract users, which it does at the expense of Firefox's > > "master goal." That master goal is inherently difficult, but that's why > > Mozilla exists. Overtaking IE6 was difficult; creating a new programming > > language is difficult; launching an HTML5 operating system is difficult; > > and as a software developer myself, I understand that creating a > > Pocket-like service is certainly also difficult. We are all hoping that > > this is a stop-gap to reach feature parity with other browsers until > > Mozilla implements a more, well, "Mozillian" solution. > > > > The master goal requires Mozilla to attract and retain users. Without our > users we don't have the same influence over standards, public policy, or > the direction of how the Web evolves. The master goal is not about every > service being open source, but about keeping the Internet open for all, and > that explicitly includes for commercial entities. The Mozilla Manifesto > [1] even calls this out in Principle 9: > > > Commercial involvement in the development of the Internet brings many > benefits; a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is > critical. > > Nowhere in the Manifesto does it say proprietary services are inherently > bad, or that commercial entities can't innovate in useful ways for users. > Nor is it our mission to make open source versions of everything that we > could possibly build. We don't have unlimited time or resources, so we have > to pick our battles. If a market segment is effectively contended (i.e. > there are a number of competitors competing effectively and providing real > choice) then the system is working. Users have choices, and there's room > for new, better entrants to come in with better offerings. > > Moving forward, I expect us to continue to balance partnering and building > things ourselves. Some things we need to own. In other cases we will serve > our users better by partnering with some of the best services out there and > leveraging their existing technology and knowledge. I'm not going to > promise we'll be 100% open, that's just the nature of negotiations with > potential partners, but I think we can and should do better. > > -- Mike > > [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/ > _______________________________________________ > governance mailing list > governance@lists.mozilla.org > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance > _______________________________________________ governance mailing list governance@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
