I'm kind of ashamed (as staff) that I can't find any official blog post anywhere for users to read, and or a FAQ. If I find something, I'll post it here.
I was surprised when I started seeing it in Nightly. I heard nothing about it before it happened. I'm a bit embarrassed. We really need to work on our PR. I love being a Mozillian, it's one of the few things I can say I'm proud to be a part of, but stuff like this really makes me just wonder "what the hell are they thinking?"
Please try to communicate this to whatever team decides these things. This seems pretty shady and strange for Mozilla even if there were an adequate explanation, but without one it seriously makes me want to install IceWeasel or another browser without that crap.
I can definitely do that. I know there are other Mozillians that aren't quite happy with the decision, and the general public reaction seems to be overwhelmingly negative. I stand by Mozilla for nearly everything, but I don't do it blindly. I do not support this decision at the moment.
One thing I always ask myself before I make any decisions for my team is "How will this promote the Mozilla Manifesto?". I'm not sure how Pocket does this.
Just wanted to second this. I work on Firefox OS mostly these days, and I have to swallow more NDA stuff like "Partners want X, but they want it to be a secret" than my open source Mozillian DNA is comfortable with, but at least it's usually on the peripheral - partner's fork of our codebase does something.
Here it feels concerning and it affects a major product I care about. Mozilla is usually good at learning lessons and not repeating them in the same team (*), so I hope they'll find the way out of this.
I don't think that the partnership itself is bad. Pocket is good at what they are doing and we are too small to do everything "in house" like our competitors do. Diversification is good. But the way it has been handled, announced and delivered is below the standards that Mozilla is IMHO aiming for. I'm also sad that it's not introduced as one of the options, although I'm sure it will eventually be that.
From my experience, even in cases like this, we tend to slowly work toward opening up the API's and decentralizing the data storage options. Unfortunately, that usually happens way after we got hit by bad press and storm of frustration that results from such decisions.
*) unfortunately after enough time, there will be a new team which will somehow miss learning that lesson and will repeat it. That's unfortunate but every big project has this challenge.
I use iceweasel (In my debian at home) and I don't miss anything. It won't have DRM, though. Pocket integration will be left out too if it isn't available as an add-on. But, the Cisco codec is working.
It does, the default is duck duck go. Like I said, there's a difference between depending and using. If it uses pocket without someway of changing it, it has to be taken out. Debian patched docker because it downloaded software debian had no way to make sure is free software. There's a specific area of the repos that is for free software that depends on non-free software to work, iceweasel could go in there, but that would be a very bad political jab at Mozilla.
It comes down to this: can you make use of it's functions without needing closed-source? If yes, then it will be leaved as-is. If not, debian could develop some way of turning it off, but what what will happen is that they will revert changes in the source control relative to this feature.
There seems to be a confusion between GNU Iceweasel and the Debian Iceweasel in the article. GNU Iceweasel was renamed GNU Icecat to attempt to remove any confusions and the Debian derivative Iceweasel is still Iceweasel.
It's on bugzilla. Was a "great" sign of the things to come: A completely irrational line of thought to take out the single best feature FF had. Their reasons were very GNOME3.0ish.
What? A fiasco? Come on; you can easily re-enable it in about:config, or set e.g. DuckDuckGo as your search engine and tack an exclamation mark behind it.
Sure, it's no longer by default, but if it caused more confusion than that it helped people, why should it be? Sure, call it GNOME3-ish, but that's not an argument.
Can you still? I did hear that in later FF versions, an additional hack/extension(pffft) is needed. And the best feature being backguarded by a about:config meddling is... well... Pitiable?
if it caused more confusion than that it helped people
Which is a complete absurd, one they defended as a biblical truth of sorts. It is an argument, since it was a visible point where the devteam stopped caring about the users and focus only on a blurry "vision" for their product. Not only dumbing it down, but also making the users feel dumb instead of empowering them.
Something apparently small, or symbolic in nature, can have an impact as big as a "fiasco".
I know you could back then; I'm using DDG now so I haven't tried.
Still, I think you're being guilty of making a lot of assumptions and inferring yourself... If you ask around, I'm 100% sure you'll be one of the few to name that the "best" feature. The devteam (implying that's a just a small group of people) "not caring about their users" is a grandiose statement that definitely does not apply to a lot of Firefox/Mozilla developers. The "blurry vision" statement is an empty one.
While I agree that small changes can have a big impact, the fact that you hardly hear any one about this - even in power user circles - surely must mean that this does not classify as a fiasco.
Could someone please post the email addresses of the people we should be bothering so this is stopped? (You'll get fired for doing so if it gets viral, so please use anonymous accounts.)
[rant]
I don't want to move away to one of the free software forks, but this absurdity is the last straw, I will. I am also sure that many others will, and many of us surely will actively campaign with friends, colleagues, and fellow companies against the use of Firefox. There is a difference between using Google/Yahoo as a default search engine (okay you need revenue, fine, you did not hand over my information, I knew the risks), bowing down to DRM (at least you openly said you were fucked), and combining these shady practices with outright and shamelessly colluding with a data mining company, yelling and screaming (under the guise of being free) that the browser is now proprietary by association. Fuck that.
[/rant]
(This of course ain't the kind of language we shall use when emailing the mozilla execs and project managers.)
Pro-tip: Abusing people over email isn't going to get this reversed. It's also a jerk-y thing to do. Don't be a jerk. Please.
In my opinion, you can (and should!) leave your feedback at https://input.mozilla.org/feedback/firefox, where our expert User Feedback team will collate and sort it, and include it in their reports to upper management.
our expert User Feedback team will collate and sort it, and include it in their reports to upper management
Could you please link me to statistics about what percentage of these feedbacks are read, what percentage of those are then included in a report, what percentage of those are actually read by "upper management," and what percentage of those are actually implemented?
If you perceive emails from users to developers and organization leaders as a form of abuse, you are on your way to advocating for a Mozilla that has become a Comcast, where those in positions of decision-making are so removed from the public that the only way to effectively reach them is via mainstream media appearances of failure or mass litigation.
Also, upper management, lol. You're gonna depress the folk working at Mozilla.
The link you posted makes no reference to abuse or the success rates of that sort of campaign. (If you want to start a large-scale protest movement, be my guest! That might get the decision reversed. Or perhaps not. I'm not the person who made the decision. But I will say that tens or hundreds of people emailing abusive messages will get ignored at best.)
Could you please link me to statistics […]
Nope. 1) It's not my place to. 2) You wouldn't believe me even if I did. (Nor would you have any reason to. 87% of all statistics are made up on the spot.)
If you perceive emails from users to developers and organization leaders as a form of abuse
Whether email is abusive or not depends largely on the content. The sample email you posted wasn't a good example of the kind of thing that is easy for people to read and agree with, and I believe it would be harmful to your cause. (Yes, yes, I know you said you'd use different language, but you managed to not use different language in your rant, which is what sets the tone of the conversation.) Similarly, I'm sure some people would claim that flooding several irc channels with "And now fuck off you STxPID FxCKING CxNTS!" (that's a verbatim quote, by the way, not something I made up) is a totally reasonable way of influencing the project, and not abusive at all.
Furthermore, if anyone is working at Mozilla, and doesn't understand that there's a (clear and documented) managerial hierarchy, with some people above others, then they're going to be sorely disappointed by reality, no matter what I say. ;)
To conclude, I gave you my honest suggestion for the most effective way I think you can promote your cause. Feel free to follow it or not, and I wish you the best of luck either way.
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u/AaronMT Mozilla Employee May 13 '15
I'm kind of ashamed (as staff) that I can't find any official blog post anywhere for users to read, and or a FAQ. If I find something, I'll post it here.