Yes, we have to be careful to distinguish between what Mozilla as an organization is equipped to do and what Mozilla as a community is capable of doing. It is acceptable to say that MoCo can't make this a priority with dedicated resources at the moment, but that doesn't mean that if a group of contributors decided it was worth doing that they shouldn't pursue it, and that MoCo shouldn't then back it once it's hit critical mass.
If someone cares enough to do something that would have impact we shouldn't try to talk them out of it. If they are willing to take on all the obstacles, well that's how awesome things happen. Most awesome things that happen also aren't the awesome things that everyone saw coming. We spent a lot of time using this same argument - we focus on product, we don't have resources - while social and the cloud have become the dominant forces on the internet. Now browsers have standards and you're not locked into a browser, but users are just as (or more) locked in now than they were then, just from a different angle. It's much better to say "these are the current obstacles and we're not prepared to overcome them right now" or "this other organization is doing a good job at addressing that issue." We won't know until after it's over which fights were the right ones. On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Pascal Chevrel <[email protected]>wrote: > Le 30/04/2014 18:11, Mike Hoye a écrit : > >> On 2014-04-30, 11:46 AM, [email protected] wrote: >> >>> I think these are bad excuses. The right thing being hard is never a >>> good excuse for not doing the right thing. If that means hiring more >>> people, or mobilizing more community members to achieve that goal, or >>> lose a few months of good statistics, so be it. >>> >> >> The Open Web isn't suffering from a shortage of Right Things That Need >> Doing right now, but time and money aren't infinite and there are places >> that we can put employee and community effort that are way more >> important to Mozilla's mission and the future of the Internet than >> bailing out of Google Analytics. >> >> If you'd like to know what those things are, and how you can help, >> contact me! We have a ton of stuff that needs doing, and you can learn >> about them in a bunch of places: >> >> - Coding opportunities? >> Take a look at http://whatcanidoformozilla.org/ and >> Follow StartMozilla on Twitter at https://twitter.com/startmozilla/ >> >> - Helping test stuff? >> Take a look at https://oneanddone.mozilla.org/ or >> Try using a pre-release version of Firefox: >> http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/aurora/ >> >> And that's just scratching the surface. >> >> If you want to personally opt out of participating in Google Analytics, >> everywhere, there's an addon for that here: >> >> https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout >> >> ... but if we get to the point where that's the most important thing, or >> even one of the top twenty most important things, that Mozilla can put >> time and resources towards? That'll be a pretty remarkable day, if you'd >> like to help us get there. >> >> >> >> - mhoye >> > > Mike, > > > This is not a acceptable answer. > > Obviously you don't know Benoit. He has been deeply involved in the > Mozilla project for at least 10 years, he is one of our core localizers for > French, he was there when there was no money, no employee and we had to > build products on our own machines. He probably did more for mozilla as a > volunteer than many did as employees. > > Lecturing a core contributor, a volunteer that devoted countless hours of > work for free for Mozilla over a decade, on, I cite « Right Things That > Need Doing right now, but time and money aren't infinite and there are > places that we can put employee and community effort that are way more > important to Mozilla's mission and the future of the Internet than bailing > out of Google Analytics. » is hurting me deeply as a mozillian. > > He is not some random would-be volunteer making unreasonable requests. > Dismissing his opinion and lecturing him on priorities saying that we have > bigger fishes to fry and that you can assign him bugs and tasks to help him > achieve your goals if he is bored is just plain rude and disrespectful. > Disrespectful to him and our community. And by community, I mean core > contributors that made Mozilla what it is today. If as employees we dismiss > the opinion of the very people that helped create Mozilla, our most active > core community of volunteers, that's a problem. > > His email is a reasonable request, I am pretty sure some employees also > share his opinion, if we want to be serious about Mozilla as a global > organization in which our community opinion counts in the decision process, > then we can't behave as if only quarterly goals matter, we can't have > employees explaining our community that they don't get it. If we can't > listen to our core commmunity, the people that are on the ground with our > users, on the very sensitive topic of privacy, on the *governance* group, > then there is something wrong that needs to be fixed. > > > Pascal > > > _______________________________________________ > governance mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance > _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
