I don't assume this wasn't thought through (after an initial period of "What?! Ads on newtab? Whaargrbl!", but that speaks to my lack of vocabulary more than anything), but I am bothered by the fact that I can't find any more info about this outside of the blog post. Thus, I'm in the position that a) A feature that, at first glance, sounds contrary to Mozilla's values, has been announced, and b) The only official info on this feature is a tweet from an employee and a badly-worded blog post.
I mean, the feature is called Directory Tiles, right? First, I went to the Mozilla Wiki and searched for the phrase, came up with nothing. Next, I did an internet search and pulled up a bunch of news posts about it echoing the blog post. Then, I went to the firefox-dev list (based on the mention earlier that Firefox devs knew about this) and searched through thread titles for the past few months, found nothing. Frustrated, I decided to see if the team had a page anywhere outside of this blog. Wiki + Internet Search for Mozilla Content Services turns up nothing but more posts about this particular feature, and some profiles of Darren Herman. As a Mozillian, this is the point I'd ask who is on that team and then message them directly. As a non-Mozillian? I'm stuck! I would've expected a wiki page, maybe some meeting notes, or at least an email or two to a public list. I can understand arguments about controversial features being developed internally until we announce it, but I think it's fair to have more questions and doubt about those features than ones developed out in the open. Trust is what's keeping us (Mozillians, not users/the public) from saying "Mozilla is selling off users, end times are nigh, repent!", but it won't keep us from asking hard questions. (PS: If the details about this feature are available somewhere and I failed to find it, yay! A link would be greatly appreciated! Then we just have a discoverability problem.) - Mike Kelly On Wed Feb 12 07:50:05 2014, Sheeri Cabral wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Benjamin Kerensa" <[email protected]> > Cc: [email protected] > Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 3:29:11 AM > Subject: Re: sponsored new tab tiles - please tell me this is a (bad) joke > > I have to say right now on Google+ and on other Social Media networks there > are lots of people not taking the announcement well. I would say this is > impacting at least a minority of our users feelings about Firefox. > > > ----------- > > Of course there are lots of people unhappy about this announcement - any time > an open source company tries to make money, people are unhappy. There are > also a lot of people unhappy that a large percentage of our revenue comes > from Google. There are many people who are unhappy because they think that > Google controls us. > > I'll say it again - any time an open source company tries to make money, > people are unhappy. By diversifying our income, we can better serve everyone. > If we do not have money, we have to tighten up what we do. Lots of people are > still unhappy about us putting Thunderbird and Seamonkey on the back burner, > but we do not have unlimited funds to pay engineers and infrastructure staff > to develop every product we have ever come up with - even the successful one. > > I wasn't part of coming up with sponsored tiles, but I'm surprised at how > very little trust everyone has in the people who did. Do you really think > that the concerns that popped into your head within 24 hours of hearing this > announced did not occur to the committee of people who brainstormed this idea > for *weeks* (if not months)? > > We're all smart and have unique ideas, but OMG SPONSORED CONTENT! DON'T > INVADE PRIVACY! is not unique, and it was stated that the new feature will > hold Mozilla's values, which include a commitment to privacy. > > And really, people complaining about the new feature is probably better than > people complaining about why we have it. The last thing I want to see is > headlines like OMG MOZILLA HAS NO MONEY! or OMG GOOGLE IS TRYING TO CONTROL > MOZILLA WITH MONEY SO THEY ARE DESPERATELY TRYING TO BREAK FREE! > > Do we have the *potential* to break trust? Absolutely! But we've had that > potential for 15 years and we have a damn good reputation for it, with > Firefox on the Desktop, on Android, and now with Firefox OS. What I'm not > proud of is so many smart colleagues who just assume that an issue as big as > this was not thought through backwards and forwards, just because there are > potential problems. > > -Sheeri > > (PS This response was to Ben, but it applies to everyone thinking this way. > It's bullshit and I'm really tired of it, and I'll own my own sensitivity to > this kind of issue - I've been dealing with 5 years of OMG THE SKY IS FALLING > AND ORACLE IS GOING TO KILL MYSQL....even though Oracle has had ownership of > a major component of MySQL - InnoDB - since 2005. Oracle has a reputation of > not killing MySQL for 9 years now, and yet, people are still saying Oracle > will kill it. I don't love Oracle, but there's no base in the idea that > they'll kill MySQL.) > _______________________________________________ > governance mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
