On Aug 17, 2012, at 7:09 PM, Stephanie Daugherty <[email protected]> wrote: > On the other hand, nothing about a "closed place to chat" feels right to me. > As a volunteer contributor that serves as an "air traffic controller", > directing and introducing interested people in the Brazilian community to > Mozilla projects, I watch a lot of different places in order to know what's > going on and who's doing what. I am constantly talking to people that had no > idea about existing projects/forums inside Mozilla because those are hard to > discover. One of the greatest qualities about Mozilla is that not only our > products, but also our processes are completely open. Let's keep it that way. > I'm concerned that by hiding our decision making we're going against our > existing projects to ease the path for new contributors – and by new I mean > new to a project, not necessarily new to Mozilla –, and making it harder for > people to feel like they are part of the project. > > > Generally agree with this, however in the wake of the Thunderbird leak and > it's potential motivations (one of them being a lack of perceived ability to > discuss the matter during the embargo), which created a lot of unwarranted > FUD about the future of Thunderbird, I think this is something we need to > look at. I'm strongly against maintaining a closed chat system on an ongoing > basis as I feel like it's anathema to the values of openness and transparency > that make Mozilla great, however, I do see the need to have the capability on > a less-regular basis - specifically in response to particular events and > announcements that require discretion, and would suggest one approach would > be that closed chats only happen as needed, in response to specific > communication needs, and are always hosted events focused on a particular > sensitive topic, rather than just keeping a private "backroom" available at > all times where it will be seen as some sort of private exclusive club. > > -Stephanie
The Thunderbird leak is a good example of something that shouldn't have been made private in the first place. The decision had already been made, it should be publicized just like any other MoCo decision, through the mailing lists and blogs. The unusual Mozillians-only, please-don't-share-this-secret-information heads up just created anxiety and the feeling that it was a bigger deal than it actually was. What if I wanted to discuss the news with my colleague who is a contributor but for some reason is not a registered Mozillian? That would be a pretty awkward situation, and would likely make him feel like his contributions are worth less than mine. There's no reason why I should know about Mozilla's decisions sooner than the guy who just contributed his first patch yesterday or the girl who loves Thunderbird and watches the project closely. -- reuben _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
