As some mozillians may have noticed, since the recent Barcelona event, I'm spending some of my time helping Mark Surman (recently appointed Executive Director for Mozilla Foundation) with regards to the 2010 goals.
I have encouraged Mozilla contributors to discuss goals by email, and now I'm trying another format.
Since I was in Mountain View (California) last week, I had a quick video interview with Mitchell Baker about the Mozilla 2010 goals:
Mitchell Baker - 2010 goals (short version)
Tiffney has done a transcript of the video so that it's more accessible. Here is an excerpt, as Mitchell explains why Mozilla needs these 2010 goals:
The main thing that's important about goals is making sure that the Mozilla community is motivated to participate and that what we're doing as an organization is something we're all proud of and want to be a part of. So many people, thousands, tens of thousands, donate their time and effort and energy, so we want to make sure that the broad directions that we're moving in are goals that motivate us, and that if we look up at the end of 2010 we're all happy with what we've accomplished. So that's one, and I guess as to why we're different or what's different about it — these are really high-level goals. They're broad goals. They're not management tools to track and measure people's performance. These are aspirational and that's because of the kind of community we are which is thousands of people each making their own decisions as to what's important about the Web and what we want. So the goals are supposed to be something that people can say "Yes, that makes sense to me, I want that to happen. I'm going to go out and do X" in a very distributive way where each person makes many of their own decisions about what they do and yet we're all comfortable that we're moving in a general direction that's good.
I encourage the broad Mozilla community to participate to the goals discussion. It's simple:
- read Mitchell's post about proposed 2010 goals and pick the part that gets you excited. Is it Mozilla's role? community development? What we could do around data (more about this in a future video post here)? Mobile? Mindshare and market share? Pick your topic!
- Give feedback. There are many ways to give feedback.
- Leave a comment below[1]
- Visit the Mozilla.Governance Newsgroup and respond to the appropriate thread
- Visit the 2010 Goals wiki page and follow the instructions.
Now there is another way to participate today. As some of you may have seen, today is the Support Firefox Day, 4th edition. During this event, discussions related to the 2010 goals will take place on IRC at 14:30 (Central European time, that is GMT+1), with Mozilla's Swedish rock star, David Tenser (the event starts at 13:00, but the Goals part is at 14:30). More details on David's post and on the Support Firefox Day 4 page. Later in the day at 12:30 (Pacific time, GMT-8), a similar discussion will happen with Mitchell herself. Be there or be square!
Notes
[1] Don't let the FR form intimidate you. Use a nickname and fake email address or if you want. Click on Prévisualiser
(preview), proofread your comment, then click again on Envoyer
(Send). It's easy! Comments are moderated, so don't freak out if you don't see it right away.
10 réactions
1 De jÔÔ; - 21/11/2008, 14:06
2010 goals, it's a lot !
anyone should find what he wants to do in there.
...
2 De ~laurent - 21/11/2008, 16:34
Il me manque quelque chose en lisant le billet de Mitchell ainsi que son interview : un objectif simple.
Pour moi le succès de Firefox (vis à vis d'Internet Explorer) repose principalement sur ses qualités. Firefox était meilleur qu'Internet Explorer : plus fiable, plus rapide et de surcroît plus riche grâce à son système de plugin. Firefox a "gagné" parce que les équipes de Microsoft n'ont pas été capables de faire un bon logiciel.
Firefox d'une certaine manière (même si c'était implicite) se définissait par les défauts de son concurrent. De fait l'objectif "simple" de Firefox était de proposer le meilleur navigateur du marché.
Avec l'arrivée de chrome cela devient un peu plus "compliqué", vu que Chrome implicitement occupe un créneau similaire : être le navigateur n°1 devant celui de Microsoft ... et aussi parce qu'en recommençant de zéros avec les moyens a leurs disposition il peuvent faire un très bon produit.
Pour revenir à un objectif simple, il me semble qu'il n'y a pas d'autre alternative que de continuer à proposer le meilleur navigateur du marché ... tout autre objectif a caractère "philosophique" est moins pertinent : la grande majorité ne fait pas le choix du logiciel libre par conviction mais tout simplement parce que c'est le logiciel le moins cher ou parce que c'est le meilleur ...
3 De DrinkTheCoolAid - 21/11/2008, 16:55
Hey, if the I.R.S. still bothers Mofo, why not creating a Church of Mozilla?
Tristan, we could even buy some "indulgences" (pardon my French).
4 De Tristan - 21/11/2008, 19:31
@Laurent : if you don't mind, I'll respond in English, so that other readers can participate too. (and you've managed to read the post, so I guess you can read my comment too )
You said that "Mozilla needs a simple goal. 'Philosophy' is less relevant than practicality." (I paraphrase but I hope not to over-simplify your message, so bear with me). I think there is some confusion here. The goals we're talking about are goals for the project and its participants, not the users per se. I understand that many non-developers are more interested in what Mozilla brings them, most likely a cheap (because it's free) browser of high quality (because, well, IE is a bit lagging behind).
But I do think that *contributors* to the Mozilla project are more interested in where Mozilla is going. I'll quote Mitchell in this:
> (our goals) are aspirational and that's because of the kind of community we are which is thousands of people each making their own decisions as to what's important about the Web and what we want. So the goals are supposed to be something that people can say "Yes, that makes sense to me, I want that to happen. I'm going to go out and do X"
These goals are to set a direction, and we want them to be exciting. Now Mozilla can do many things. Producing Firefox and Thunderbird are central, and most likely our biggest achievements (and biggest levers to promote our values). But there are many things beyond products.
Accessibility. Education. Explaining to the World what social hybrid enterprises are about. Work on the privacy issue and many others, including what's maybe the biggest challenge: keeping the Web open.
Also, contributors are very diverse. They may have different skills, different motivations. What's important with our goals is to give them the ability to contribute if they want, the way they want.
Something that many people don't get about Mozilla is that we're very decentralized. We want people to be able to make decision on they area of expertise. Therefore, it's important to set a general direction so that people know how to contribute without asking questions. Also, making the goals exciting is important in order to fuel the enthusiasm of our contributors.
Also, I suspect that there are many different topics for which Mozilla can make a difference, most likely related to the Open Web, but not through Firefox and Thunderbird.
5 De joey - 22/11/2008, 08:57
Un objectif que j'aimerais que Mozilla se fixe : redevenir un boite en avance technologiquement parlant.
Actuellement pour moi c'est clair, webkit a dépassé gecko et l'écart se creuse que ce soit au niveau des performance, de l'implémentation des normes ou des implémentations expérimentales : css gradients, animations, transformations... stockage coté client d'HTML5, etc.
6 De ~laurent - 22/11/2008, 09:39
Merci de ta réponse (if you don't mind je vais continuer en français - langue dans laquelle je me sens plus à l'aise pour être plus précis dans mon argumentaire) ...
Même si Mozilla n'est pas une entreprise privée, je pense que d'une certaine manière, à son corps défendant, Mozilla doit fonctionner comme tel - en assumer les contraintes - ou disparaitre.
Quoi qu'il arrive vous avez maintenant des "clients" : les millions d'utilisateurs particuliers ou professionnels dont le quotidien dépend de "votre" produit : lorsque Firefox bug, a une faille de sécurité, ce sont des millions de personnes qui perdent du temps de l'argent. Si il y a un problème ces "clients" ne vont pas se retourner vers la communauté mais vers le service client (ce que tu assumes en quelque sorte par exemple en parlant des prob. avec les prud'hommes).
Quoi qu'il arrive Mozilla a maintenant des salariés - 160 il me semble ? (et c'est tant mieux). Mozilla se doit d'être rentable pour en assurer la survie.
MySQL par exemple est devenu une entreprise privée et en assume - avec un bon dosage - les contraintes. En tant que client professionnel je leur fait confiance.
Dans une entreprise privée, les objectif pour les collaborateurs doivent être a peu près les mêmes que pour les clients, c'est pour cela que je disait que "faire le meilleur navigateur du marché" me semble simple et fédérateur.
J'ai l'impression que la communauté des développeurs n'a pas de vrai problème de motivation. Personnellement je n'ai aucun doute sur la "sincérité" des équipes de direction - c'est pour cela que comme beaucoup je suis prêt a donner un peu de mon temps de mon énergie pour ce projet. Le seul doute que j'ai est que Firefox perde sa place de navigateur le plus dynamique du marché - ce que je trouverai dommage
7 De Tristan - 22/11/2008, 12:30
Wow, it looks like only my French readers are willing to comment... This is going to make the discussion slightly harder than expected. Anyway, I'll try to respond in English so that non-French speaking people can participate too.
@Joey, who thinks that Webkit is more innovative than the Mozilla codebase and that "Mozilla should become innovative again":
I agree that competition (excluding Microsoft) has become more competitive, and this is good. Actually, it's demonstrating that our goal, "bringing back choice and innovation on the Internet" was the right one, and we're successful . So seeing increased competition is just what we wanted. I wished that IE6 and soon IE7 would die of a quick death so that the Web can move forward faster.
But I really disagree when you consider Mozilla less innovative. Consider just a few things:
Actually, just have a look at the browser market:
Considering our size compared to our competitors, I think we're doing pretty well, and I know that Mozilla is focused on shipping a great Firefox 3.1. Maybe we're not leading in every part of the game - and this is ok - but considering our size, we're doing more than our share, in my humble opinion.
8 De Tristan - 22/11/2008, 12:34
@Laurent who says "Mozilla must be sustainable to succeed". I think Mitchell Baker's recent post brilliantly demonstrates that Mozilla is sustainable.
9 De joey - 22/11/2008, 19:22
En fait je parlais du moteur de rendu donc de Gecko et pas de Firefox.
En tant que développeur web, une chose qui compte pour moi c'est les possibilités qui me sont offertes par le navigateur pour créer mes propres trucs.
Tiens, je t'ai fais une page vite fait pour voir : http://www.zzzombie.com/css-novelas...
A tester sous Firefox, même 3.1, sous webkit et sous opera 9.5.
Voilà ce que je veux et entre parenthèses, qui doit encore l'implémenter (OP : opéra, FF : firefox, WK : webkit.... IE on n'en parle même pas)
- des bords arrondis (OP)
- des couleurs RGBA (OP)
- pouvoir choisir ma police truetype (OP)
- les transformations, au minimum les rotations (OP). Au passage, compare le rendu du texte oblique : propre avec WK, alors que Firefox fait des espèces de vagues.
- des dégradés (FF, OP)
- le tag vidéo et qu'il soit compatible avec les codecs de mon système (FF, OP)
- pouvoir créer une zone de drag'n'drop (FF, OP)
- des ombres sur du texte. (FF, OP) FF3.1 apporte les ombres sur les divs, c'est déjà ça... près de 2 ans après webkit
- Un contour sur le texte (FF, OP)
- des masques (FF, OP)
- pouvoir utiliser une image SVG comme image de fond (FF, WK)
- des réflexions (FF, OP)
- des animations en CSS (passe le pointeur sur le titre de la page pour un exemple)
Voilà quelques-unes des raisons qui expliquent pourquoi j'écrivais plus haut que je trouve que Firefox prend du retard.
10 De Pierre - 28/11/2008, 08:02
Hello,
working in the field of Web accessibility on technical and political issues, I'm looking at the "Mozilla's 2010 goals" initiative with interest. Without (re)writing the goals and what Tristan said, I would like to publish my understanding of this initiative at first and then make a proposal.
As all know, the Internet has become more than a tool. It is a life environment for human’s beings and surely a picture of our future. On the Internet, you can read, get education, talk, publish, meet, buy... but 2 issues come to my mind : in which context(s) ? everyone ?
The context (based on a philosophy) is essential : free and safe navigation, on all platforms (different OS, mobile, pc, TV...), in different cultures and languages... through a universal access like a Web browser (I do not mean "one browser", I mean that the Web browsers could become the unique access to all : software, Web...). In another words, it means : give to the net user the possibility to do all through his preferred browser according to his personal choices.
That is the potential I see in the "Mozilla's 2010 goals" initiative and that's why I would like to make a proposal on a goal : Web accessibility. It is directly linked to what I previously wrote and it answers my second question : everyone ?
Yes, everyone has the right to access all on the Internet. Is this the case ? No. People with disabilities in particular, but seniors or anyone who goes differently to the Web, meet difficulties and even barriers. Why ? On one hand, because most Web sites (and now Web applications) are not developed with the accessible rules from W3C/WAI and on another hand because Web browsers have not taken into consideration all accessible rules and do not offer both to developers and net users enough functionalities and tools to make Web contents accessible to all.
Will Web accessible to all in the future ? I want it and think that it must be one of the goals of Mozilla.
They are a lot to do but I think that we can split into 2 categories all ideas :
1) back office : how a Web browser can help developers to make Web applications/sites/services accessible to all ?
2) front office : how a Web browser can help all net users (I said all !) to access and use all Web applications/sites/services (just one example : if the interface of a Web application has not been designed accessible, the Web browser could "repair" it to offer an accessible interface to the net user when this one uses it) ?
Well, I would appreciate if discussions could start on this proposal (I just posted on the "2010 Goals wiki page" this proposal : https://wiki.mozilla.org/Project/20...).
Thank you !