Hi, Congratulations, by the way, to Brendan Eich, on his selection as CEO. I have been meaning to post the following here anyways (and posted it already in an earlier form elsewhere), but perhaps it is good timing for a "big ideas" post at the time of such a transition.
Mozilla's page describing its system of governance at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/ links to the Wikipedia article on Meritocracy. Significantly, the "Criticism" section of this very page points out a few of the perceived disadvantages of (pure) meritocracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Criticism . As I see it, Mozilla is in strong need of disengaging itself from an unqualified attachment to _absolute_ "meritocracy", and include more components of real democracy (note, I am not suggesting to replace meritocracy). My proposal is along the lines of: 1. Regularly scheduled town hall meetings (keeping world time zones in mind) for high level news, feedback, and idea-sharing; maybe on an annual or bi-annual basis, including recommendations that may be offered by the convocation as a whole, with a majority vote of those present (including those attending online), hopefully prompting Mozilla to take a very serious look at these recommendations. 2. Regularly scheduled community election of delegates who could make recommendations at annual meetings or such to the same effect as number #1. Ideally, in my view, delegates would be elected not based on the theater of self-promotion, campaigning, or even nominations (and their tendency to elect vocal but not necessarily competent or genuinely humble collaborators), but simply by a plurality among electors voting by secret ballot. Grand-standing can be minimized with people simply making their decisions based on the services they have seen any eligible person render. The electors' choices would also need not be restricted to a predefined slate except in the case of a follow-up vote for ties. ...with either or both of these being run at local/national as well as international levels. ...so that the impact on ALL users can be taken into account, and there is some feeling of moral pressure to do so beyond whatever the "benevolent custodians" imagine without due consultation should be Firefox's direction (even while those custodians ought in general to indeed remain chosen based on merit and with the freedom to ultimately decide their conscience). The proposed changes could help Mozilla: 1. Share big planned direction changes in a widely publicized public forum beyond the mere placement on some private wiki page somewhere 2. Gauge reactions in the community beyond the voices of those happening to engage in some discussion group somewhere 3. Hear voices out to minimize complaints spilling over into the wrong forum 4. Give a chance for consultation to occur in a more human and sympathetic setting. 5. Give a greater sense of global community identity and raise public awareness of Mozilla as actually being a force in a sense "owned" by the public. Whereas the likes of Apple or Microsoft might have public unveilings of their grand plans, why not something similar for Mozilla, but with an aptly bi-directional component? Without such engagement, I believe Mozilla will continue to be seen by some as a mere "least undesirable" option, with Mozilla benefiting from public participation and a sense that Mozilla really does have its heart in the right place, but facing a sometimes unconcealed frustration from its community supporters (e.g., small add-on developers) if not users, that our voices are not being heard. Best wishes, Brett Zamir _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
