Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

PG wrote:

> First. Mozilla has finally grown up, it is a big business entity now,
> and, as such, it's quite compartmentalized; UX designers just don't
> want to get involved with all the pesky "enterprisey stuff", and they
> definitely don't think it's their duty to take the needs of other
> departments and different kinds of users into account proactively. It
> is a very bad sign when designers say things like "we don't really
> care about enterprises - there is a separate subgroup within Mozilla,
> it's their business to do that". Not an easy thing to solve, but every
> big company meets this problem at some point, and most of them seem to
> deal with it somehow.

I think you're mis-characterizing that. Let me try to clear it up some. 
Mozilla has never focused on enterprises but now we're discussing 
whether we should or not. That's the Enterprise Working Group.

Mozilla has always been focused on the individual user and our UX team 
continues to focus on individual users.

If the Enterprise Working Group results in a change to Mozilla's mission 
(which as I said is focused on the individual) then Mozilla will put 
resources, including UX resources into enterprise features.

Until then, Mozilla continues to focus on individuals and Mozilla's UX 
team continues to work toward that goal.

Enterprises are not ghettoized off in some subgroup. They are simply not 
a part of Mozilla's process. There is an exploration going on, in 
concert with advocates of enterprises, about if and how Mozilla can 
become a part of the process.

Your energy is probably going to be put to better use in that group than 
it is in this group. This group is focused on individuals and will 
remain so until the Enterprise Working Group causes that to change.

I'm not trying to silence you or your concerns. If I was, I'd tell you 
to keep on discussing it here where it's not going to be very effective 
because none of the people who are making decisions about enterprise 
support are following this group with any regularity.

You're assuming animosity here where none exists. I want your voice to 
be heard. I want you to have the best possible audience in front of 
which to make your case. I want you to have more allies to work with as 
you try to make the case that Mozilla and enterprises can come closer 
together and find compromises.

If those are things you want, I repeat my suggestion that you migrate 
your advocacy to where it has the best chance of having a meaningful impact.

> Second. Violating OS standards (yes, putting version in About dialog
> is a standard) is not the best way to inspire confidence in Mozilla's
> official stance "we will only support standards better and better".

The Firefox menu is a violation of OS standards. Tabbed browsing is a 
violation of OS standards. We violate the OS standards when we think 
there's value we can add that the OS doesn't account for. All apps do 
this. We may do it more than some other browsers -- though that's 
increasingly not the case.

I think we should have good reasons to do it and not be casual about it, 
but we are not an organization focused on OS standards. We are focused 
on Web standards. That's the standards message that Mozilla is pushing. 
  That's the set of standards that we're deeply committed to at the 
Mission level.

http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto.en.html
http://www.mozilla.org/about/mission.html

OS standards are a valuable system for usability. We care a lot about 
those but we aren't "religious" about them the way we are about Web 
standards. OS standards are not the standards for which we exist (where 
Web standards are a big part of why we exist.) and I think conflating 
those two isn't particularly helpful.

> Sure, it's not a major problem, but it is a very bad PR - a loud and
> clear voice repeatedly (thanks to Asa in this popular thread) telling
> to everyone: we will support only standards that we like, and the rest
> we will break, and no one could tell us what to do.

I think you're confused about what Mozilla means when it talks about 
standards. We do not exist to advance OS standards. We do exist to 
advance Web standards. So, in a way, you are correct. We only care about 
some technical standards -- the ones that apply to the Web, and except 
for being tactically important to moving our mission forward, we do not 
care as much about some others. I encourage you to read the links I 
posted above and think that they'll help you better understand Mozilla's 
position on "standards".

> The same, in fact, could be said about the whole "software as a web
> page" idea: basically, Mozilla is telling me that it decided to break
> a standard long-standing industry agreement where I get to update
> software when I want to, and will silently install any code it wishes
> on my computer - but native executable, a major attack vector. One
> disgruntled employee, one inventive hack - and I just can't imagine
> the PR consequences of this.

Yes, this is a changing of expectations and how users interact with 
software. But Mozilla is not alone in this at all.  Most installed 
software -- including the Operating System itself, has been updating 
itself for years. Even Firefox 1 updated itself every 6 weeks or so (and 
every other version of Firefox after that).

What's new as of this year is that we're now doing only 6 weeks updates 
and not also doing 1 or 2 year updates.

This is a change, and it's not one we've made casually. I will note that 
this is no more risky though -- in the security cases you suggest -- 
than it was in any previous version of Firefox. Firefox has always done 
unprompted updates about every 6 weeks to deliver security and stability 
(and sometimes feature) updates.  If you are afraid that someone will do 
something bad in one of the Firefox releases today, the same concern 
applies to Firefox of 6 years ago.


> A few companies (Google and antivirus vendors) are willing and/or need
> to break this trust (and even most of them give me an option to
> disable it!), and it's their right - and that's also why I don't use
> Chrome. In fact, I would have agreed to an option "hold even security
> updates for a couple of days before prompting me to install - any
> major harm would have already been widely published by then", but
> Mozilla wants to be way more aggressive, and it's a painful breach of
> accepted standards.

Firefox also gives you the ability to turn off updates and continue to 
run an insecure version of Firefox for as long as you want. I don't 
recommend it, but it's available.

> Third and final point. Big companies - and Mozilla is now one of them
> - do tend to inhabit their own ivory towers and regard "mere users" as
> a bunch of sheep that just don't know what's best for them.

I think that this isn't really true. If anything, today we spend even 
more time thinking about what users needs are and trying to address 
them. When we had one million users back in 2003, they were willing to 
accept that we weren't particularly thoughtful about how we changed the 
product. Now that we have almost half a billion users, it's critical 
that we think very carefully about how the majority of those users will 
interact with Firefox.

Most of your post seems to assume that you represent most of our users 
or that you think we think of ourselves as representative of most of our 
users. Neither of those are the case. We have to think about what's best 
for nearly half a billion people and sometimes that is not what's best 
for you or for me. We're abnormal. We're computer experts and we're 
capable of dealing with just about any kind of change. That's not 
anything like most of our audience.

So I'd argue that we're more and more considerate of the large number of 
people using Firefox, sometimes at the expense of smaller groups of 
people using Firefox and that's probably a good thing. Time will tell. 
But it's not the case that we're ignoring users or think we know better 
than them. We're trying to understand them and to empower them.

But "them" is not you and it's not me. It's the 450 million other people 
who aren't participating in this discussion.  We have to represent those 
people -- you and me both. It seems like you think that you're 
representing them and I'm not. I disagree with that.

The outcome I'd most like here is that we both get to talking about 
what's the most we can do for the overwhelming majority of users who are 
nothing like you and me.

- A