> You say this was inspired by Alan Cooper's /The inmates are running the
> asylum/, but only one of your four personas (Ling) is a `user' as Cooper
> would understand the term.
>
> You appear to be describing people using the Mozilla *code*, rather than
> those using a *product* which includes the code.
_Exactly_. This is a major point I'm making. These people are
mozilla.org's customers.
The people you are talking about ("end-users", if you like) are
represented in the way Mozilla does things, it should be through those
people who actually consume the code.
> understandable approach, but it is prone to severe bias. For example,
> the number of Lings (Mozilla testers/hackers) will surely be an order of
> magnitude greater than the number of Hanses (ISP distributors). Does
> that mean that Mozilla should concentrate on pleasing the Lings more
> than it concentrates on pleasing the Hanses? I hope not, since Hans will
> get Mozilla user agents used by far more people than Ling will.
No. I never claimed that the number of each type of user was a factor. I
am merely attempting to identify the different classifications.
> I doubt that Hans will be able to afford enough of an investment in
> Mozilla that he can either (1) deploy XUL account maintenance apps, or
> (2) hack Mozilla's XUL to remove unwanted menu/toolbar items. While
> Mozilla may be the ISP's default browser, they can't afford to lock out
> the fraction of customers who prefer browsers which don't support XUL,
1) is a fair point. I think that removing rubbish from Mozilla's menus
is trivial, though.
> Finally, do you have Ling's phone number?
Actually, yes :-) I know where I got the photo from, and she's a friend
of mine. But I'm not going to tell you who she is - that would be unfair.
Gerv
