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March 19, 2006

Reflection

I've been doing a bit of it lately. All manner of topics. We recently moved and things have been chaotic so it's been nice to take the time to think. I've had a chance to look at how far we've come, and form some ideas about what we might need to do to go the right places.

The past couple of years have brought some immense highs, and some considerable angst. With success has come the realization that true now as ever: the spirit of open source is expressed through the creative freedom of the many. The surest way to navigate the murky waters of increased attention and marketshare and such like is, as Leslie has been saying for some time, to keep your karma clean. Do the right thing, not only in technical matters but also relationships.

For the Mozilla project, what we need to do (I think) is:

Better define the things that are important to us. The things that define who we are. Impart the positive aspects of open development culture and practice on everyone involved because they're effective, and as a safeguard against recurrence of some of the troubles of the past.
Engage the community more effectively. Create and maintain an infrastructure of open communication to remove the "mystery" behind the decision making process. Organize our contributor materials better to make the project more accessible to newcomers. These are just a couple of examples.

For my part, I'm starting out this year by doing things a little differently. I think we need to grow more as a project. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to achieve some positive change.

I understand that this post might seem a little abstract. I think what I'm saying might become a bit more clear after I talk about some tangible efforts, which I will do in future entries.

Posted by ben at March 19, 2006 2:00 AM

Comments

Not a bad idea.

You can start by engendering an environment where your developers don't automatically demonize the users when they come to you with a problem. As a developer myself, I find the tendency toward blaming your users for the issues they find with firefox to be reprehensible. The earlier brouhaha about memory usage is a pretty good example. While I freely admit that there can be some issues where the problem isn't caused by firefox, the attitude of many (if not most) of the developers nonetheless drives a wedge between the users and the project.

As much as you all may hate it, if you want firefox to become a browser with a significant market share, you're going to have to get over the idea that the users are always wrong. As good as firefox is becoming, there are still real problems with it, and the usual developer mantra of 'it works for me' only puts people off.

'Do the right thing' not only means producing the program and creating nice new features, it also means taking the time to do the nasty, boring, tedious bits of work that make up the last 10% of the effort: fine tuning, clean up, attention to detail, making sure the program is well behaved in all environments (as much as humanly possible), and making sure you don't alienate your users. Without them, firefox is just another hobby program. You've done good so far, you've even woken the slumbering giant and prodded Microsoft into improving their offering. Don't sit back on your asses now. Go ahead with the new features, but don't ignore the fact that there are substantial underlying flaws in the program, and those need to be addressed as well.

Posted by: Gorbnartz at March 19, 2006 9:34 PM

@Gorbnartz

Where have Fx developers blamed users?

Posted by: FP at March 20, 2006 4:24 AM

Gorbnartz,

I didn't intend to come off sounding like I was blaming users in my posts about memory usage. I'm sorry if I did. I was just trying to provide some info about a likely candidate for higher usage from Firefox 1.0. "It's not a bug, it's a feature" was tongue in cheek. I guess not everyone else shares my sense of humor ;-)

-Ben

Posted by: Ben at March 20, 2006 9:04 AM

The impact of Firefox on the industry has been nothing short of amazing in the short time period that it has been available, and it is great that you are looking at ways to continuously improve. Reducing the "mystery" behind decision making and making the project more accessible to newcomers are great steps in the right direction.

Posted by: GeekyGirl at March 20, 2006 12:14 PM

What about trying to outreach people who are "new journalists" writing about firefox that might be good firefox evangalists, and alequent people that might help reach out to the community.

Posted by: george li at March 21, 2006 8:41 AM

George:

Using "journalist" and "evangelist" in the same sense seems a little creepy to me ;-) Check out Fox News.

-Ben

Posted by: Ben at March 21, 2006 9:23 AM

IE 7 is 100 times better then firefox !

Posted by: James Ryan at March 22, 2006 9:04 AM

You Gotcha real nice blog

Posted by: Manual at March 26, 2006 10:11 AM

TicketsMyWay.com is on the spam blacklist on this page. http://wiki.mozilla.org/Spam_blacklist . We had people working on the site a while back and I am not sure what they did but it obviouslt wasnt good. Like I said it has been a very long time since they worked on the site and we would appreciate it if you would take us off that list. Thank you. They put you as the contact and I apologize if I am mailing you at the wrong place.

Posted by: Mike at March 31, 2006 8:23 AM

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