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PM Activities for Firefox 3

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Sherman Dickman

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Jun 20, 2006, 6:34:57 PM6/20/06
to dev-apps, dev-planning
All,

In case I haven't met some of you, my name is Sherman Dickman, and
I'll be driving product management activities in support of Firefox 3
planning.

Since the product management role is a relatively new one at Mozilla,
I thought it would be useful to outline some of the most important
functions that a PM should perform, particularly within the context
of product planning. Many of these will be conducted in parallel
with the Gecko 1.9 engineering planning efforts currently underway.
The end PM deliverable for Firefox 3 will be a MRD that can be
referenced by all, but the real value for the Mozilla community will
be derived from the MRD development process itself.

Activities
------------------------------------------------------------
Here are some of the activities and deliverables that a PM helps to
coordinate, all geared towards providing the organization with the
information it needs to make effective product decisions. These
include:
* identifying market and technology trends
* competitive analysis and strategy
* customer segmentation and value delivery chains
* user personas and use case scenarios
* value proposition and differentiation strategy
* product vision and strategy
* key feature requirements
* participation in release criteria discussions
* etc.


Subjective Activities
------------------------------------------------------------
Additionally, there are more subjective activities that can help
clarify thinking and spur creativity. One of the most important
things a PM can do is to engage the team in answering some very tough
questions about our goals, product, and strategy. For example:

* Where do we want to go? How will we get there? Why do we think
we'll be successful?
* Why should anyone use our product over another product? Do the
benefits outweigh the tradeoffs that a user must endure when
switching? If yes, why don't more people use our product?
* Which of our technology assets are clearly superior to the
competition? How do we keep them from being easily copied or
duplicated? Are there barriers to entry or significant hurdles for
competitors to overcome?

Questions such as these can be particularly difficult to answer. But
once answered, they help to direct downstream activities tremendously.


User Feedback
------------------------------------------------------------
Another critical product management function is to collect user data,
and then analyze the information to find hidden stories and
opportunities. The biggest challenge in collecting user data is
knowing what questions to ask and from whom.

If you ask a panel of home cooks questions about how to build a
better oven, they'll tell you. But if you ask them about the
challenges of feeding a family each night, you might receive a
completely different set of answers — answers that might suggest a
new product opportunity (such as the microwave oven).

A formula that has worked very well in the past looks like this:

1. How do we build a better product?
2. What are your biggest challenges? What do you spend most of
your time and/or money on? What keeps you up a night? What would
you do differently if given unlimited resources? What's your worst
case scenario?
3. If we did everything that you told us to do in question 1,
would that address any of the issues outlined in question 2?

The answer to the last question is usually "no," but that's okay if
the customer articulates their greatest pain points and unmet needs,
many of which *can* be addressed by the product if approached in the
right way. For example, Nike golf shirts now have SPF 30
protection. What types of questions did they ask consumers to come
up with that idea?

The product management team at Mozilla is currently working on
mechanisms that will allow us to better capture user data to uncover
these hidden stores and opportunities. Expect to see some things
roll out in the next month or so.

Cheers,
Sherman

Nunya Bidness

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Jun 20, 2006, 9:37:28 PM6/20/06
to
Sherman Dickman wrote:

> * Which of our technology assets are clearly superior to the
> competition? How do we keep them from being easily copied or
> duplicated?

Somebody needs a paradigm shift! :P

smaug

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Jun 21, 2006, 4:37:57 AM6/21/06
to

Exactly. This sounds too scary. Mozilla (as a project or community)
should in every possible way encourage to openness, freedom and
innovation.


Deb Richardson

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Jun 21, 2006, 7:53:42 AM6/21/06
to

One could argue that this very openness and freedom (which in turn
fosters innovation) is one of Mozilla's major competitive advantages
that has a high barrier to entry and is very difficult to copy.

~ deb

Michael Lefevre

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Jun 21, 2006, 9:35:52 AM6/21/06
to

One could argue that, but it's an argument that Mozilla marketing folks
have previously rejected out of hand, and I'd have to say I'd agree in the
context. If Firefox consumers are using Firefox because of openness and
freedom, then why are nearly all of them on Windows? Is the freedom of the
source code really going to be a selling point for the average user?

It also makes it pretty hard to answer the question - how can Mozilla have
openness and freedom for itself while keeping others from openness and
freedom?

Given the disparate bits of the Mozilla community with different goals and
targets, it strikes me that product management is going to be a pretty
hard task if it aims to get the entire community to agree on anything.
My first thought was that this product management exercise was going to be
focused more on the Firefox 3 front end, and the core developers working
on that for Mozilla. As long as some heed is given to other views from the
community as well, I don't see why that exercise is a bad thing.

And, jumping back up the thread a little, what's "MRD"?

--
Michael

Benjamin Smedberg

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Jun 21, 2006, 9:37:15 AM6/21/06
to
Sherman Dickman wrote:

> * Which of our technology assets are clearly superior to the
> competition? How do we keep them from being easily copied or
> duplicated? Are there barriers to entry or significant hurdles for
> competitors to overcome?

Why would we want to prevent competitors from copying our technology assets?
Sounds like the question should be "how can we help our competitors create a
better product by copying our best technology innovations".

--BDS

beltzner

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Jun 21, 2006, 10:22:12 AM6/21/06
to newsreply...@michaellefevre.com, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org

I agree; we shouldn't be afraid of gathering this data and making sure
that we're keeping track of the directions and trends that Internet
technologies are moving in, what choices our users have in terms of
leveraging those technologies, what problems our users are facing, how
other offerings are planning on solving those problems and how we can
go about helping our users and even our competitors solve those
problems.

As for the question of keeping our technologies from being copied or
duplicated, I'm going to give Sherman the benefit of the doubt (it
helps that I've met him :) and assume he meant how we can keep our
technologies from easily being copied in a way that is counter to the
MPL, giving another vendor some form of lock-in.

> And, jumping back up the thread a little, what's "MRD"?

Market Requirements Document, IIRC.

cheers,
mike

--
/ mike beltzner / phenomenologist / mozilla corporation /

Eric Shepherd

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Jun 21, 2006, 10:22:38 AM6/21/06
to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
Marketing Requirements Document -- at least, that's what it was in
the last job I had where we had marketing folks.

Eric Shepherd
Technical Writer
she...@mozilla.com

Mike Shaver

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Jun 21, 2006, 11:06:52 AM6/21/06
to newsreply...@michaellefevre.com, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
There was a lot of great, well-thought-out stuff in Sherman's mail, so
I hope that everyone doesn't get hung up on that one sentence. I fear
they will, though. :(

On 6/21/06, Michael Lefevre <news+07...@michaellefevre.com> > If


Firefox consumers are using Firefox because of openness and
> freedom, then why are nearly all of them on Windows?

Because there was no alternative that let them get their work done?
Nobody is saying that people are using Firefox _only_ because it's
open -- that would be rather facile, and counter-examples abound.

> Is the freedom of the
> source code really going to be a selling point for the average user?

The source code is not the only thing that's open. The application
architecture is open, which creates a much larger set of choices for
extension and customization than would otherwise be present, for
example.

I think that openness is both a goal and a tactic for Mozilla, but
we're getting a little side-tracked here.

> It also makes it pretty hard to answer the question - how can Mozilla have
> openness and freedom for itself while keeping others from openness and
> freedom?

Mozilla doesn't want openness and freedom for itself, it wants it for
the web and for the humans who inhabit the web today and tomorrow.

But not all "choice" is equal, even if we somehow manage to avoid
staying away from morality and politics. Some near-term choices work
for the presence and viability of meaningful long-term choice, and
some work against it.

> Given the disparate bits of the Mozilla community with different goals and
> targets, it strikes me that product management is going to be a pretty
> hard task if it aims to get the entire community to agree on anything.

Everything is a hard task around here, indeed. :)

Unanimity has never been a requirement for action in the Mozilla
world, and not all opinions are equal (f.e., Darin's opinion about an
HTTP design choice is more important than mine). We will not ignore
people for the sake of ignoring them, but Mozilla project leaders,
wherever they might be employed, must -- MUST -- be able to use their
judgement rather than democracy to make product and project decisions.

> My first thought was that this product management exercise was going to be
> focused more on the Firefox 3 front end, and the core developers working
> on that for Mozilla. As long as some heed is given to other views from the
> community as well, I don't see why that exercise is a bad thing.

The Mozilla Corporation is part of the community, though certainly a
disproportionately influential part in some regards, due to its
relationship with the Foundation. We all know that we can't succeed
without "the community". Even product managers!

Mike

Axel Hecht

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Jun 21, 2006, 11:14:42 AM6/21/06
to

Now that MRD is cleared up (hopefully) and guessing that PM stands for
product management / product manager as appropriate, that list of
activities is full of PM terms, which may have a life of their own in a
PM-trained head, but not in mine.
"competitive analysis", is that a bunch of guys trying to find out who's
analyzing faster bigger better? "Customer segmentation" is something
that I don't want to be involved in either, at least if taken literally.
Not sure if I'd guess the right thing about a "user persona". "value
pro...", man, that's too long to quote, and I get about that far into
the term.

I'd be thankful if we could limit the amount of non-tech terms to a
ratio that is feasible for non-native non-marketing speakers in the
audience here, as they don't live up to their intention, that is, making
the communication fast and failsafe.

Axel

Michael Lefevre

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Jun 21, 2006, 11:57:24 AM6/21/06
to
On 2006-06-21, Mike Shaver <mike....@gmail.com> wrote:
> There was a lot of great, well-thought-out stuff in Sherman's mail, so
> I hope that everyone doesn't get hung up on that one sentence. I fear
> they will, though. :(

Although I was following up to a follow up, I included a more general
paragraph in response. Getting more user feedback makes sense. I'm not
sure I'm in a position to comment usefully on first part of Sherman's
message, as I found the jargon rather impenetrable.

> On 6/21/06, Michael Lefevre <news+07...@michaellefevre.com> > If
>> Firefox consumers are using Firefox because of openness and
>> freedom, then why are nearly all of them on Windows?
>
> Because there was no alternative that let them get their work done?

I fear this could drag things even further from the topic, but I guess
you're saying that upwards of 90% of people couldn't get their work done
on Linux. Certainly it has limitations (I don't use it myself), but if
freedomness was a serious consideration for the average user, I imagine
there'd be more people switching. Actually I would say the preinstallation
of Windows is probably a bigger factor, but anyway...

> Nobody is saying that people are using Firefox _only_ because it's
> open -- that would be rather facile, and counter-examples abound.

I wasn't saying that anybody was saying that. I said that Mozilla folks
had rejected it as a selling point (I can't find the bug instantly, but
there was a suggestion that the Firefox product page should mention its
open source nature which wasn't taken up on the grounds that it wouldn't
be of interest to the target audience)

[snip]


> Unanimity has never been a requirement for action in the Mozilla
> world, and not all opinions are equal (f.e., Darin's opinion about an
> HTTP design choice is more important than mine). We will not ignore
> people for the sake of ignoring them, but Mozilla project leaders,
> wherever they might be employed, must -- MUST -- be able to use their
> judgement rather than democracy to make product and project decisions.

I understand that. Sherman's message, while acknowledging that finding
answers to the questions would be hard, seemed to imply that they could be
answered. I was just pointing that it's likely to be impossible to get
useful answers if it's the whole community rather than the project leaders
who are doing the answering.

>> My first thought was that this product management exercise was going to be
>> focused more on the Firefox 3 front end, and the core developers working
>> on that for Mozilla. As long as some heed is given to other views from the
>> community as well, I don't see why that exercise is a bad thing.
>
> The Mozilla Corporation is part of the community, though certainly a
> disproportionately influential part in some regards, due to its
> relationship with the Foundation. We all know that we can't succeed
> without "the community". Even product managers!

Sorry - my poor phrasing. I meant "the rest of the community".

What I was trying to get across, was that I thought the
big-question-answering exercise that Sherman suggested would be pretty
much impossible, IMHO, to do with the wider community, but that I thought
it could be useful in any case, even mostly reflecting the views of the
Corporation folks.

--
Michael

Mike Shaver

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Jun 21, 2006, 12:20:19 PM6/21/06
to Benjamin Smedberg, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On 6/21/06, Benjamin Smedberg <benj...@smedbergs.us> wrote:
> Sherman Dickman wrote:
>
> > * Which of our technology assets are clearly superior to the
> > competition? How do we keep them from being easily copied or
> > duplicated? Are there barriers to entry or significant hurdles for
> > competitors to overcome?
>
> Why would we want to prevent competitors from copying our technology assets?

Why would we want to work to avoid a fork? They're similar questions,
I think. (Why do we have a copyleft in our license?)

> Sounds like the question should be "how can we help our competitors create a
> better product by copying our best technology innovations".

So who would you say is a competitor? If they are a competitor, why
would we want to help them? If they're really acting towards the same
goals, then they're not competing with us, IMO. And if they're acting
against those goals, then I don't know that it's necessarily in our
interest to help them create a better product.

Market-share is a resource that we should work with carefully. As
with revenue, accumulating it is not a primary goal of our work, but
having it gives us much more capability to pursue goals like "a
universal web" and "keeping applications and experiences on a
universal web, instead of on proprietary systems". (It's a resource
for other people in the browser and network-technology spaces, too,
and they will likely perform similar calculus.)

But was that really the only thing in Sherman's mail that you thought
was worth replying to? ;)

Mike

Mike Shaver

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Jun 21, 2006, 12:35:57 PM6/21/06
to Axel Hecht, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
> Now that MRD is cleared up (hopefully) and guessing that PM stands for
> product management / product manager as appropriate, that list of
> activities is full of PM terms, which may have a life of their own in a
> PM-trained head, but not in mine.
> "competitive analysis", is that a bunch of guys trying to find out who's
> analyzing faster bigger better? "Customer segmentation" is something
> that I don't want to be involved in either, at least if taken literally.
> Not sure if I'd guess the right thing about a "user persona". "value
> pro...", man, that's too long to quote, and I get about that far into
> the term.

If you really want clarification of a term, you can just ask for it;
others did for MRD, and it worked out well. Or you could search for
it: none of those terms are rare, and are generally pretty
well-defined. If you just want to make fun of "marketing speak" in
response to a good-faith effort to reach out to this forum, can you do
it in a private reply, or somewhere else? If nothing else, it'll
reduce the noise for people who want to actually respond to the
content of the message.

> I'd be thankful if we could limit the amount of non-tech terms to a
> ratio that is feasible for non-native non-marketing speakers in the
> audience here, as they don't live up to their intention, that is, making
> the communication fast and failsafe.

If we're going to talk about product management here, and I really do
think that we should continue to do so, then using common product
management terms seems pretty appropriate. Where people want someone
to define or clarify specific terms, we should do that, but expanding
"value proposition" or "user persona" every time it's used doesn't
help communication either, and it would make our work much less
portable to other domain experts or audiences. We talk about user
scenarios and Fitts' law in here too, which are cousins if not
siblings of the terms in question and at least as opaque on first
encounter.

Mike

Mike Shaver

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Jun 21, 2006, 12:41:54 PM6/21/06
to Axel Hecht, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On 6/21/06, Mike Shaver <mike....@gmail.com> wrote:
> If you just want to make fun of "marketing speak" in
> response to a good-faith effort to reach out to this forum, can you do
> it in a private reply, or somewhere else?

Struck by a variant of the Usenet law of spelling corrections, it
seems. My message should also have been a private reply. :(

Mike

Robert Sayre

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Jun 21, 2006, 1:33:25 PM6/21/06
to Mike Shaver, Benjamin Smedberg, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
Mike Shaver wrote:
> On 6/21/06, Benjamin Smedberg <benj...@smedbergs.us> wrote:
>> Sherman Dickman wrote:
>>
>> > * Which of our technology assets are clearly superior to the
>> > competition? How do we keep them from being easily copied or
>> > duplicated? Are there barriers to entry or significant hurdles for
>> > competitors to overcome?
>>
>> Why would we want to prevent competitors from copying our technology
>> assets?
>
> Why would we want to work to avoid a fork? They're similar questions,
> I think.

That's a useful direction to take this discussion. For example, it would
beneficial for the Web and Mozilla if other browsers made use of
SpiderMonkey instead of re-implementing JavaScript.

IMHO, we don't want to prevent competitors from copying us, but we do
want to make the prospect of forking or re-implementing daunting. Not by
underhanded means, but by making the development, support, and QA
resources provided by Mozilla the best we can. Public tests should make
it difficult for anyone to approach Mozilla's correctness, or even claim
that they are "close enough". QA and test resources should be relevant
to all embedders whenever possible, increasing their interest in the
project's well-being.

Making competitors compete with Firefox, Flock, Second Life, Adobe,
Eclipse, and others will make their life miserable, so they might as
well join us :).

The other asset Mozilla has is a development environment that's very
accessible to Web developers familiar with CSS and JavaScript. Removing
XPCOMisms from the JavaScript side of things is key here. That means
more tools developed for-and-by web developers.

-Rob

Robert O'Callahan

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Jun 21, 2006, 5:13:35 PM6/21/06
to
Robert Sayre wrote:
> That's a useful direction to take this discussion. For example, it would
> beneficial for the Web and Mozilla if other browsers made use of
> SpiderMonkey instead of re-implementing JavaScript.

Not necessarily beneficial for the Web. Multiple, high quality
implementations of Javascript competing on an equal footing forces
developers to not rely on the quirks of one particular implementation,
which is a good thing for the Web.

Rob

Robert O'Callahan

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Jun 21, 2006, 5:26:14 PM6/21/06
to
Mike Shaver wrote:
> So who would you say is a competitor? If they are a competitor, why
> would we want to help them? If they're really acting towards the same
> goals, then they're not competing with us, IMO.

Webkit and KHTML, and to a lesser extent Opera, we would generally
consider competitors, but are largely working towards the same goals. I
think helping them is consistent with Mozilla.org's mission (and mine,
for what that's worth).

We even want to help IE to do things right, for example by encouraging
them to adopt our new platform features, even though their goals are not
the same as ours.

I think the original comment shows that some reorientation is required.

Rob

Christian Biesinger

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Jun 21, 2006, 7:51:14 PM6/21/06
to
Robert O'Callahan wrote:
> Not necessarily beneficial for the Web. Multiple, high quality
> implementations of Javascript competing on an equal footing forces
> developers to not rely on the quirks of one particular implementation,
> which is a good thing for the Web.

Not to mention that multiple independent implementations are unlikely to
share the same security bugs.

Robert Sayre

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Jun 21, 2006, 7:58:31 PM6/21/06
to Christian Biesinger

Eh, it's certainly the conventional wisdom, but I don't buy it in this
case. :)

JavaScript has been around for a while. How many high quality
implementations are there?

-Rob

pascal

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Jun 21, 2006, 10:31:02 PM6/21/06
to
Sherman Dickman a écrit :

> All,
>
> In case I haven't met some of you, my name is Sherman Dickman, and I'll
> be driving product management activities in support of Firefox 3 planning.
>
> Since the product management role is a relatively new one at Mozilla, I
> thought it would be useful to outline some of the most important
> functions that a PM should perform, particularly within the context of
> product planning. Many of these will be conducted in parallel with the
> Gecko 1.9 engineering planning efforts currently underway. The end PM
> deliverable for Firefox 3 will be a MRD that can be referenced by all,
> but the real value for the Mozilla community will be derived from the
> MRD development process itself.
>
> Activities
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Here are some of the activities and deliverables that a PM helps to
> coordinate, all geared towards providing the organization with the
> information it needs to make effective product decisions. These include:
> * identifying market and technology trends
> * competitive analysis and strategy
> * customer segmentation and value delivery chains

I will be very interested in seeing how you will draw a diagram for the
mozilla value delivery chain, given our mostly community-based and
informal production model, it will be like modelizing social networking,
good luck :)

> * user personas and use case scenarios
> * value proposition and differentiation strategy
> * product vision and strategy
> * key feature requirements
> * participation in release criteria discussions
> * etc.
>
>
> Subjective Activities
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Additionally, there are more subjective activities that can help clarify
> thinking and spur creativity. One of the most important things a PM can
> do is to engage the team in answering some very tough questions about
> our goals, product, and strategy. For example:
>
> * Where do we want to go? How will we get there? Why do we think we'll
> be successful?
> * Why should anyone use our product over another product? Do the
> benefits outweigh the tradeoffs that a user must endure when switching?
> If yes, why don't more people use our product?

That's an easy one : because they have never heard of it. Even in Europe
where we have a significantly higher (and growing) market share than in
the US, firefox users are mostly very well informed people with excelent
technology skills, that's much wider than the geek community but that's
also very far from the general public and probably won't go further than
about 20% of people with an internet access. People can make a choice
only if they know that this choice exists.

> * Which of our technology assets are clearly superior to the
> competition? How do we keep them from being easily copied or
> duplicated? Are there barriers to entry or significant hurdles for
> competitors to overcome?

I think I don't agree on this strategy.

> User Feedback
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Another critical product management function is to collect user data,
> and then analyze the information to find hidden stories and
> opportunities. The biggest challenge in collecting user data is knowing
> what questions to ask and from whom.
>

>

> A formula that has worked very well in the past looks like this:
>
> 1. How do we build a better product?
> 2. What are your biggest challenges? What do you spend most of your
> time and/or money on? What keeps you up a night? What would you do
> differently if given unlimited resources? What's your worst case scenario?
> 3. If we did everything that you told us to do in question 1, would
> that address any of the issues outlined in question 2?
>
> The answer to the last question is usually "no," but that's okay if the
> customer articulates their greatest pain points and unmet needs, many of
> which *can* be addressed by the product if approached in the right way.
> For example, Nike golf shirts now have SPF 30 protection. What types of
> questions did they ask consumers to come up with that idea?

"how much would you accept to pay for this upper-class recognition
symbol ?" I guess ;)

To be honest I don't think this method can be directly translated to
Firefox because :

- we don't have customers but users, that's a huge difference in the way
you communicate and interact with the people. We are offering something
much closer to a state service like the NHS or public transportations
than a targeted commercial product.
- asking what users want is ok when you address an identified and
well-known niche market like the above Nike example, not when you build
a mass-market service.


>
> The product management team at Mozilla is currently working on
> mechanisms that will allow us to better capture user data to uncover
> these hidden stores and opportunities. Expect to see some things roll
> out in the next month or so.

I can only ask you one thing : be very open about it. I and many others
still remember the absurd UI and feature choices Netscape/AOL did, we
thought them in Bugzilla and were usually said 'our secret internal
usability study says that the users expects this'. The Phenix project
contradicted all AOL internal marketing studies, user personas and use
cases...

Ask a non firefox user what he expects from a browser and he will
describe his conception of a browser based on his knowledge of his own
current solution : IE. You will never hear from joe user that he needs
tabs, XUL or extensions, should we remove them then ? You will hear from
him that we need the googlebar, access to activeX based sites like
windows update and full hotmail/yahoo mail compatibility, should we
modify the product for that compatibility then ?

Here are a few very obvious things that don't need a study to be
discovered and should be top priority in my opinion :

- we don't have any market share in arabic countries because there is no
official arabic mozilla portal nor any arabic online resources about
mozilla.
- one of the next 2.0 release main features (which is a problem for 3.0
as well), form spellchecking, will only be available to English users
for licensing reasons. It's a 6 year old problem. There is an urgent
need to finance the creation of our own dictionnaries with a licence we
and openoffice can use, because they have the same problem.
- we need corporate deployment and *maintenance* tools to get into the
enterprise. The CCK is a first small step, but the one major blocker for
network administrators is maintenance. I have to say that I am quite
concerned to see that all you said seems to be only based on the
end-user and nothing is said about strategies for the corporate world.
- plugins are still a problem, it has improved a lot over the Suite
days, but we definitely need to make plugins installation easier.
Something like what they did with EasyUbuntu would be great I think.
- native ODF compatibility would be a corporate killer feature for FF3

Cheers

Pascal

Chase Phillips

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Jun 21, 2006, 10:40:00 PM6/21/06
to
Let me start by saying it's great to see the product management work
being done here! Thanks Sherman for these efforts!

Mike Shaver wrote:
> There was a lot of great, well-thought-out stuff in Sherman's mail, so
> I hope that everyone doesn't get hung up on that one sentence. I fear
> they will, though. :(

I'll try getting us hung up on a couple more sentences, I suppose. :)

> I think that openness is both a goal and a tactic for Mozilla, but
> we're getting a little side-tracked here.

I don't think that's side-tracking. I'm curious.. who sets the goals
and tactics you allude to? For the goals and tactics to be effective
must most active or influential participants in the Mozilla universe
assume them?

> > It also makes it pretty hard to answer the question - how can Mozilla have
> > openness and freedom for itself while keeping others from openness and
> > freedom?
>
> Mozilla doesn't want openness and freedom for itself, it wants it for
> the web and for the humans who inhabit the web today and tomorrow.

How far do you take it? Is Mozilla just plain indifferent about how
open and free it is? Would it be fine to have closed parts that people
can't participate in? For what good? Would people not in the closed
parts even know those parts exist?

I ask you these questions because you seem to know what Mozilla
wants/doesn't want. I don't doubt you're in touch and can answer them
.. in fact it's being in such close touch that makes your statements so
powerful for their authority.

I have always seen Mozilla as a flagship open source project, and I
have always expected such a meaningful project to be obliged to that
role by showing how it all works to sister projects and curious
onlookers. It also begs the question of whether or not a group can
create an "open web" from an "inopen project."

Does an open web flow purely from an open source web browser project?
Could not Mozilla advance its mission even further by working closely
with the other major open source web browser projects?

On closed work:

Yes, closed work is vital in a small number of areas. Namely to
protect users' security from vulnerabilities. But closed work is
against the ethos that the Foundation and Corporation should always
strive to do what's best for the community. Why shouldn't we design
the organizations in such a way to ensure they avoid becoming
entrenched in the power they hold?

I assume you'll say that sometime ago Mozilla decided that what's best
for the community is that we have lots of users and we do what's best
for them so that we get money and power to support the community and
still achieve an open web, but (aha!) I don't believe it to be true
that accruing more and more users alone an open web will bestow.

Mozilla's users have to know that what they've chosen is good for the
web *because* it's open. Just like the world can't fix even bigger
problems like global warming without consumers becoming smarter agents
and choosing green economies over greed, or Presidents choosing not to
help profitable and efficient countries if human rights violations are
present.

So what differentiates Mozilla? Will Firefox features keep the users
you've gained from Microsoft from going back to Microsoft in a year or
two? If you take openness out of the equation as a Good, you're left
with features, and in a feature war between the little guy and the Big
Guy, Microsoft always wins. Here's a (paraphrased) quote from Startup
from Go about Microsoft during the early-90s pen computing war:

"The good news is we have them running. The bad news is they're
running in our direction."

That's what's happened here. Microsoft is awake now, and they're
headed in Firefox's direction. I believe they have their own
organizational problems to overcome, but they'll overcome them --
sooner or later -- and eventually IE will be at parity with Fx.

What to do? Openness in and of itself should be paramount. Mozilla
should be actively educating their millions of users about the open
project that made their favorite browser and why that's fundamentally
better (and will always be better!) than a closed project that makes
their browser.

> But not all "choice" is equal, even if we somehow manage to avoid
> staying away from morality and politics. Some near-term choices work
> for the presence and viability of meaningful long-term choice, and
> some work against it.

Are you free to note some concrete examples of near-term choices that
would help, and near-term choices that would hurt? If yes, could you
please?

> The Mozilla Corporation is part of the community, though certainly a
> disproportionately influential part in some regards, due to its
> relationship with the Foundation. We all know that we can't succeed
> without "the community". Even product managers!

In what ways do you believe the Mozilla Corporation can't succeed
without "the community?" Adoption? Localization? Marketing? Probing
for security holes?

What would the Mozilla Corporation/Foundation owe "the community" in
return for their help right now and what do they owe for their help
from The Beginning?

Thanks for your time reading and replying to this Mike. It's always
good to talk with you.

Chase

Michael Lefevre

unread,
Jun 22, 2006, 6:59:40 AM6/22/06
to
["Followup-To:" header set to mozilla.dev.apps.firefox.]
... because there seem to be more posts in this group and crossposting
sucks.

On 2006-06-22, pascal <pascal....@free.fr> wrote:
> Sherman Dickman a écrit :


>> The product management team at Mozilla is currently working on
>> mechanisms that will allow us to better capture user data

[...]


> - we need corporate deployment and *maintenance* tools to get into the
> enterprise. The CCK is a first small step, but the one major blocker for
> network administrators is maintenance. I have to say that I am quite
> concerned to see that all you said seems to be only based on the
> end-user and nothing is said about strategies for the corporate world.

I nearly followed up in bugzilla the other day on a discussion that
doesn't belong there (I decided against it and someone else did it
anyway... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=231062 )

Mike Connor wrote in
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=231062#c126 :
: We have consistently stated that our goal is to support consumers,
: enterprise deployment is an entirely different scenario that we're not
: set up to support at present. Entering the enterprise market requires a
: lot more than just an MSI and some group policy support, its a matter of
: adopting an entirely different focus than targeting the consumer market.
: Right now, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to do that.

I hunted around a little, and it's true that Mozilla Corporation stuff
recently has focused on consumers. Back in 2003/2004 though, there was
lots of talk of going for enterprises (as someone in the bug has quoted
Chris Hofmann saying so). More recent comments about enterprise have only
come from people of Mozilla Europe and Mozilla Foundation.

I should note that Mike Beltzner followed up in the MSI bug to say that
making it work was somewhere in middle of the list of things to do, and it
was just that "the value isn't worth blocking a release, nor has it gotten
to be a high point on anyone's radar. Perhaps the IBMers working on CCK
would like to take it or something like it. Perhaps you would like to
start building a list of the features that IT departments would truly
require, prioritizing the buglist, and driving the development of the
feature."

I guess at some point in 2005 it was decided that Mozilla's own
developers/marketing folks should focus on home users rather than try to
aim for enterprises as well. Was that a conscious decision or did it just
happen that way? Maybe it was at the point when MSI and stuff were dropped
from the list of blockers for Firefox 1.5?

--
Michael

sherman...@gmail.com

unread,
Jun 22, 2006, 10:44:21 AM6/22/06
to
>
> Since the product management role is a relatively new one at Mozilla,
> I thought it would be useful to outline some of the most important
> functions that a PM should perform, particularly within the context
> of product planning.

I'll admit that product management (PM) is one of more loosely defined
roles in the industry, but at least for now, I hope everyone found the
breakdown of activities and examples helpful.

Also, there's some great responses here that touch on openness,
competition, enterprise support, etc. I look forward to addressing
these topics and many others in future posts and requests for comments
very soon.

As mentioned, my goal is to provide the community with the information
it needs to make informed product decisions, to prioritize features,
and to focus discussions. I don't have expectations that we'll all
have the same answers or will reach the same conclusions. Diverse
opinions are important, and I've found that the best ones usually float
to the top.

With respect to unfamiliar marketing terms, I have only this to say:
tinderbox, cairo, and reflow branch. :P But seriously, terms like
"value proposition" are simply labels for useful tools, and I'll be
touching on many of these in detail over time.

And yes, I promise to be as open as possible! Cheers!

Jeff Walden

unread,
Jun 22, 2006, 1:14:50 PM6/22/06
to
pascal wrote:
>> * Which of our technology assets are clearly superior to the
>> competition? How do we keep them from being easily copied or
>> duplicated? Are there barriers to entry or significant hurdles for
>> competitors to overcome?
>
> I think I don't agree on this strategy.

Barriers to entry need not be artificial in nature. For example, if another browser were to implement extensions it would have to implement something comparable to XUL with scriptability similar to that provided by JavaScript, because the code compilation step is a significant hurdle for most of the population of prospective extension developers. Implementing a new version of XUL, embedding some sort of scripting with it, and making the underlying parts of your application accessible from script is a lot of work. Consequently, extensions as a feature cannot be easily copied or duplicated -- not for anything approaching anti-competitive reasons, but simply because it's a whole lot of work to do it correctly. Is it unfair to capitalize on the advantages extensions provide?

Jeff

--
Rediscover the Web!
http://snurl.com/get_firefox

Reclaim Your Inbox!
http://snurl.com/get_thunderbird

Ben Goodger

unread,
Jun 22, 2006, 1:46:28 PM6/22/06
to
Michael Lefevre wrote:
> I guess at some point in 2005 it was decided that Mozilla's own
> developers/marketing folks should focus on home users rather than try to
> aim for enterprises as well. Was that a conscious decision or did it just
> happen that way? Maybe it was at the point when MSI and stuff were dropped
> from the list of blockers for Firefox 1.5?

Firefox itself is a nod towards the consumer since it did not contain
much of the enterprise support companies like IBM et al had been
developing for the Application Suite. The switch to Firefox as the most
publicized browser project could be seen as the point at which the
emphasis changed. Mozilla themselves have been targeting consumers while
companies that have more experience interacting with businesses have
been targeting deployment issues.

-Ben

Ben Goodger

unread,
Jun 22, 2006, 1:49:33 PM6/22/06
to jwald...@mit.edu
Jeff Walden wrote:
> Barriers to entry need not be artificial in nature. For example, if
> another browser were to implement extensions it would have to implement
> something comparable to XUL with scriptability similar to that provided
> by JavaScript, because the code compilation step is a significant hurdle
> for most of the population of prospective extension developers.

For existing extension developers, perhaps.

I don't think you'd need something exactly like XUL though, and you
probably wouldn't want it. Mozilla's "infinite unfrozen API" (the user
interface) is the Achilles heel of the extension system. Version
checking and disabling mitigates the user's browser getting broken, but
it does not a good user experience make.

-Ben

Martijn

unread,
Jun 22, 2006, 1:54:45 PM6/22/06
to newsreply...@michaellefevre.com, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On 6/22/06, Michael Lefevre <news+07...@michaellefevre.com> wrote:
> I guess at some point in 2005 it was decided that Mozilla's own
> developers/marketing folks should focus on home users rather than try to
> aim for enterprises as well. Was that a conscious decision or did it just
> happen that way? Maybe it was at the point when MSI and stuff were dropped
> from the list of blockers for Firefox 1.5?

There was some discussion about this in the Gecko1.9 meeting:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/StatusMeetings/2006-06-21
As you can see "Corporate Deployment Support" is under P3, which means
it doesn't get a high priority. Other things get a higher priority.

Regards,
Martijn

> --
> Michael
> _______________________________________________
> dev-apps-firefox mailing list
> dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-firefox
>

Robert O'Callahan

unread,
Jun 22, 2006, 3:46:55 PM6/22/06
to

At least three.

Rob

Message has been deleted

Gervase Markham

unread,
Jun 23, 2006, 6:48:02 AM6/23/06
to
Michael Lefevre wrote:
> One could argue that, but it's an argument that Mozilla marketing folks
> have previously rejected out of hand, and I'd have to say I'd agree in the
> context. If Firefox consumers are using Firefox because of openness and
> freedom, then why are nearly all of them on Windows? Is the freedom of the
> source code really going to be a selling point for the average user?

Firefox sells itself in two ways:

- As a browser, to end-users
- As a project to work on, to developers and hackers

The openness and freedom is a much greater selling point in the second
sort of sale than the first.

[This is sad, but true - hopefully one day, everyone will have an
understanding of the importance of software freedom.]

Gerv

Gervase Markham

unread,
Jun 23, 2006, 6:54:21 AM6/23/06
to
pascal wrote:
> - we don't have any market share in arabic countries because there is no
> official arabic mozilla portal nor any arabic online resources about
> mozilla.

What makes you think those are the two main reasons?

> - we need corporate deployment and *maintenance* tools to get into the
> enterprise.

Why is getting into the enterprise a goal?

> - native ODF compatibility would be a corporate killer feature for FF3

There's already an extension which allows viewing of ODF documents
directly in Firefox. And it's pretty simple. I certainly think we should
consider doing this for Firefox 3, because increased use of ODF furthers
the Mozilla Foundation's meta-goal of promoting choice and innovation on
the Internet.

Gerv

Gervase Markham

unread,
Jun 23, 2006, 6:59:36 AM6/23/06
to
Gervase Markham wrote:
> There's already an extension which allows viewing of ODF documents
> directly in Firefox. And it's pretty simple. I certainly think we should
> consider doing this for Firefox 3, because increased use of ODF furthers
> the Mozilla Foundation's meta-goal of promoting choice and innovation on
> the Internet.

And, I should add, because the lack of easy availability of an ODF
viewer hinders adoption, because you can't email people ODF documents
and expect that they'll be able to read them.

Gerv

Mike Shaver

unread,
Jun 23, 2006, 8:02:52 AM6/23/06
to Chase Phillips, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
I'm out sick right now, so I can't respond to all of this right away
(much as I'd like to!), but I wanted to clear up one misunderstanding
at least:

On 21 Jun 2006 19:40:00 -0700, Chase Phillips <cphi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Mozilla doesn't want openness and freedom for itself, it wants it for
> > the web and for the humans who inhabit the web today and tomorrow.
>
> How far do you take it? Is Mozilla just plain indifferent about how
> open and free it is?

I don't mean that Mozilla doesn't want openness *of* itself, I mean
that Mozilla doesn't seek openness so that Mozilla can take advantage
of that openness. It seeks openness so that the humans of the web can
benefit from the effects of those freedoms. (A more open and free
web, if we're not yet totally sick of the terms, certainly helps
Mozilla as well, as openness begets openness or something, but that's
IMO a virtuous cycle and not a goal.)

I think that Mozilla does want openness of itself and its work, though
not (as you point out with the security example, and to which I think
we could add other economic-in-the-philosophical-sense examples) at
all costs. But if I get into that now, I'll die at my keyboard.

(I should clarify that when I speak of what "Mozilla wants", I'm
speaking of my opinion, though one informed by a fair amount of
experience with the project and organization. To actually state what
Mozilla's True Goals are is above my pay grade, so to speak, but these
sketched goals are the ones to which I align my work, and try to align
the work of others. If I find out I'm wrong about them, I'll have to
learn to adapt somehow. :) )

We should probably follow-up to mozilla.introspection or whatever that
group is called, but I'm not up to the task of moving a thread right
now.

Mike

wyrfel

unread,
Jun 23, 2006, 8:05:54 AM6/23/06
to
Hi,

> I didn't test myself but from the descriptions I have read the Opera 9
> "Widget" system is already something similar.

No it isn't. It is rather something similar to GDesklets or dotWidget.
At least to my understanding.

André.

Adam Hauner

unread,
Jun 23, 2006, 8:21:58 AM6/23/06
to
Gervase Markham wrote:

>> - we need corporate deployment and *maintenance* tools to get into the
>> enterprise.
>
> Why is getting into the enterprise a goal?

Tools for large-scale deployment and maintenance are keys for next
increase of market share for their browsers. Probably MoFo, MoCo and
whole community wanna see Gecko-based browsers on more computers.

Futhermore, the mission of the Mozilla project is to preserve choice on
the Internet. Big companies and organizations actually haven't the
choice of web browser because only one (?) browser has tools their need.

Network administrators still continue to ask and Mozilla project still
haven't satisfying answer.

Best regards
--
Adam Hauner
Projekt CZilla
http://www.czilla.cz/ - http://start.czilla.cz/
http://firefox.czilla.cz/ - http://thunderbird.czilla.cz/

Michael Kaply

unread,
Jun 23, 2006, 11:40:11 AM6/23/06
to
pascal wrote:
> - we need corporate deployment and *maintenance* tools to get into the
> enterprise. The CCK is a first small step, but the one major blocker for
> network administrators is maintenance. I have to say that I am quite
> concerned to see that all you said seems to be only based on the
> end-user and nothing is said about strategies for the corporate world.

Can you please be more specific as to what you mean by "maintenance"

Mike Kaply

Michael Kaply

unread,
Jun 23, 2006, 11:43:35 AM6/23/06
to
Adam Hauner wrote:
> Gervase Markham wrote:
>
>>> - we need corporate deployment and *maintenance* tools to get into the
>>> enterprise.
>>
>> Why is getting into the enterprise a goal?
>
> Tools for large-scale deployment and maintenance are keys for next
> increase of market share for their browsers. Probably MoFo, MoCo and
> whole community wanna see Gecko-based browsers on more computers.
>
> Futhermore, the mission of the Mozilla project is to preserve choice on
> the Internet. Big companies and organizations actually haven't the
> choice of web browser because only one (?) browser has tools their need.
>
> Network administrators still continue to ask and Mozilla project still
> haven't satisfying answer.
>
> Best regards

Are there bugs around this? Is MSI really all we're talking about here?

Is it all about Windows deployments?

Mike Kaply

Ben Goodger

unread,
Jun 23, 2006, 3:57:16 PM6/23/06
to
Michael Kaply wrote:
> Are there bugs around this? Is MSI really all we're talking about here?
>
> Is it all about Windows deployments?

For some deployments yes. Consider this. A company has a large number of
Linux and Windows machines. The Linux machines are used largely by the
engineers and the Windows machines by both engineers and non-engineers.

On the Linux side, there might be some support infrastructure in place
to manage Firefox, but it's not as important since the engineers can and
will configure things how they want.

On the Windows side, you need to support the less technical types, so
you will want/need a comprehensive automated installation/update mechanism.

People are crying out for MSI. The solutions at present are much more
complicated than an administrator that wasn't necessarily determined to
deploy Firefox are willing to put up with.

-Ben

Robert O'Callahan

unread,
Jun 25, 2006, 10:58:45 PM6/25/06
to
Gervase Markham wrote:
> Why is getting into the enterprise a goal?

It should be a goal *eventually* because people surf the Web from their
offices a lot. Whether it makes sense to invest in this right now is not
so clear.

Having said that, companies like Novell that are pushing "enterprise
desktop Linux" are invariably implicitly pushing Firefox as well. Work
on Firefox manageability etc is being done, but not necessarily on Windows.

Rob

pascal chevrel

unread,
Jun 27, 2006, 1:49:50 PM6/27/06
to
Le 23/06/2006 12:54, Gervase Markham a ecrit :

> pascal wrote:
>> - we don't have any market share in arabic countries because there is no
>> official arabic mozilla portal nor any arabic online resources about
>> mozilla.
>
> What makes you think those are the two main reasons?

Because if you look at the languages/countries where we are strong,
these are the languages where we have end user support and online
presence, that's the chicken and egg problem. Even when a localized
version doesn't exists many people use it in English because they know
that in case of doubt they can have help forums in their language and a
minimum set of information in their language, having official pages in
your languages also says to these people that they are not second-class
net-citizens, that the project is also for them even though their
community isn't as organized yet as the western one. Of course there are
other reasons to poor market share like gecko CSS rendering bugs in RTL
languages, but if I am arabic and see that there isn't even a download
page in my language, I will probably not even consider downloading it.


>
>> - we need corporate deployment and *maintenance* tools to get into the
>> enterprise.
>
> Why is getting into the enterprise a goal?

* Because convincing one system administrator of installing Firefox on a
5000 seats company means convincing a few people, while convincing 5000
individual users with lots of different motivations is harder
* Because lots of people all over the world only have web access at
their office and not at home, specially in poorer countries where
internet access is very expensive for an individual
* Because lots of web sites and software targetting the enterprise world
are IE-only just because we don't have a significant corporate market
share, that's bad for open standards defense
* Because there is a big demand for that, especially among smaller
organisations who don't have the ressources to create their own homemade
deployment and patching solutions and have similar needs to end-users.
Those people would like to switch to Firefox but can't
* Because people use at home what they use at work (MSoffice...)
* Because people also work remotely and are forced to use IE at home
even if they don't want to because of the extranet being IE only
* Because it's good for Mozilla as a platform
* Because of IE7 that will also ship with Vista upgrades in enterprise
deployments, i'd rather see people keeping their XP and installing
Firefox than Microsoft using the new IE7 capabilities as a big selling
point for Vista
* because of Thunderbird ligthing and it's shared calendaring
capabilities which is clearly targetting a networked environment
* Because when i say Corporate i also think administration, I know that
maintenance difficulty (particulary distant patching) is seen as a big
"con" for FF/TB in several big French administrations that have already
moved to Oo and would like to go further.

If Firefox/Thunderbird at the entreprise/university/administration is no
longer an objective and we only focus on the home user, actually I'd
like to know, because I receive a question about it almost everyday. In
this case I would just put a faq item online saying that deployment
tools aren't even considered.

Pascal

Rafael Ebron

unread,
Jun 29, 2006, 2:41:02 AM6/29/06
to
A couple things:

* Is the end deliverable really an MRD and not a PRD (product
requirements document) a document which would outline what everyone
believes Firefox 3 will be and from there we track bugs against those?
We worked off a PRD for Firefox 1.0, not so much for 1.5, and there's
somewhat of a PRD for 2. Was there push back for having one for Firefox 3?

* I struggled with "competitive analysis" for a corporation that's owned
by a non-profit foundation. Very easy to do the actual document but a
comp analysis against IE, Opera, or Safari, that just feels weird.
Maybe "product comparison analysis"? I don't know. Take it another
step further and do you publish marketing "silver bullets" against these
products? Probably not.

* It should be clear whether insertion of these tools, MRDs and PRDs are
for driving decisions and consensus and not for "product management" to
take over as the "owner" or final decision maker. Is the product
management role the arbiter/consensus builder? Traditionally, Product
Managers are supposed to be thought of as the CEO of their product and
I'm not sure that's going to fly in the mozilla.org world though
decisions have been made that way (and need to be made that way?).

* Those activities you outlined could easily be filed as individual bug
reports or done via the wiki right?

* It would be great to outline what the full product development process
via Mozilla Corp looks like. Introducing just this component of the MRD
or PM activities seems piecemeal. Does the MRD kick-off the product
development process, is there something before then, do we have to wait
until all the marketing activities are done? What if what we want to
work on something that isn't even close to being on there?

* Tinderbox, Cairo, reflow branch, you have to ask and pick that stuff
up. You know better than that. Also, do we think that marketing 101
should be a requirement to contribute to Mozilla?

-Rafael

Axel Hecht

unread,
Jun 29, 2006, 3:20:18 PM6/29/06
to
pascal chevrel wrote:
> Le 23/06/2006 12:54, Gervase Markham a ecrit :
>> pascal wrote:
>>> - we don't have any market share in arabic countries because there is no
>>> official arabic mozilla portal nor any arabic online resources about
>>> mozilla.
>>
>> What makes you think those are the two main reasons?
>
> Because if you look at the languages/countries where we are strong,
> these are the languages where we have end user support and online
> presence, that's the chicken and egg problem. Even when a localized
> version doesn't exists many people use it in English because they know
> that in case of doubt they can have help forums in their language and a
> minimum set of information in their language, having official pages in
> your languages also says to these people that they are not second-class
> net-citizens, that the project is also for them even though their
> community isn't as organized yet as the western one. Of course there are
> other reasons to poor market share like gecko CSS rendering bugs in RTL
> languages, but if I am arabic and see that there isn't even a download
> page in my language, I will probably not even consider downloading it.


I don't buy that. I doubt that anybody can set up a community site
without a community. And we won't be able to find the right way to
approach a arab community from a cultural point of view anyway.

>
>>
>>> - we need corporate deployment and *maintenance* tools to get into the
>>> enterprise.
>>
>> Why is getting into the enterprise a goal?
>
> * Because convincing one system administrator of installing Firefox on a
> 5000 seats company means convincing a few people, while convincing 5000
> individual users with lots of different motivations is harder

I doubt you need to convince one sysop, but all the management to not
fire him for that.

> * Because lots of people all over the world only have web access at
> their office and not at home, specially in poorer countries where
> internet access is very expensive for an individual

I don't think that that's a market we really need to target. Given all
the other users we don't have converted yet.

> * Because lots of web sites and software targetting the enterprise world
> are IE-only just because we don't have a significant corporate market
> share, that's bad for open standards defense
> * Because there is a big demand for that, especially among smaller
> organisations who don't have the ressources to create their own homemade
> deployment and patching solutions and have similar needs to end-users.
> Those people would like to switch to Firefox but can't

The nice thing is, we had a breakout session on the topic at the onsite
yesterday, and it seems that we're in much better shape than almost
anybody in the room thought.
See http://wiki.mozilla.org/AllHands/2Q2006/Corporate_Deployment for
more, but the main piece is Mission Control Desktop, and we have
volunteers to add docs to devmo for that.

> * Because people use at home what they use at work (MSoffice...)
> * Because people also work remotely and are forced to use IE at home
> even if they don't want to because of the extranet being IE only
> * Because it's good for Mozilla as a platform
> * Because of IE7 that will also ship with Vista upgrades in enterprise
> deployments, i'd rather see people keeping their XP and installing
> Firefox than Microsoft using the new IE7 capabilities as a big selling
> point for Vista
> * because of Thunderbird ligthing and it's shared calendaring
> capabilities which is clearly targetting a networked environment
> * Because when i say Corporate i also think administration, I know that
> maintenance difficulty (particulary distant patching) is seen as a big
> "con" for FF/TB in several big French administrations that have already
> moved to Oo and would like to go further.
>
> If Firefox/Thunderbird at the entreprise/university/administration is no
> longer an objective and we only focus on the home user, actually I'd
> like to know, because I receive a question about it almost everyday. In
> this case I would just put a faq item online saying that deployment
> tools aren't even considered.

The general idea as I understood it in the meeting is that we don't have
the resources to make a commitment to corporate needs. We do want to set
up a central point for interested parties to coordinate and communicate
and share their experience. If that leads to folks contribute patches,
those will be luckily taken, but we're not going to make market analysis
or dedicate management folks to any tasks in the area.
From an engineering point of view, I think that most of use
underestimated by far how well things can work, and we'll try to convey
that message a bit better overall.

Axel

pascal

unread,
Jun 29, 2006, 5:00:42 PM6/29/06
to
Axel Hecht a écrit :

> pascal chevrel wrote:
>> Le 23/06/2006 12:54, Gervase Markham a ecrit :
>>> pascal wrote:
>>>> - we don't have any market share in arabic countries because there
>>>> is no
>>>> official arabic mozilla portal nor any arabic online resources about
>>>> mozilla.
>>>
>>> What makes you think those are the two main reasons?
>>
>> Because if you look at the languages/countries where we are strong,
>> these are the languages where we have end user support and online
>> presence, that's the chicken and egg problem. Even when a localized
>> version doesn't exists many people use it in English because they
>> know that in case of doubt they can have help forums in their language
>> and a minimum set of information in their language, having official
>> pages in your languages also says to these people that they are not
>> second-class net-citizens, that the project is also for them even
>> though their community isn't as organized yet as the western one. Of
>> course there are other reasons to poor market share like gecko CSS
>> rendering bugs in RTL languages, but if I am arabic and see that there
>> isn't even a download page in my language, I will probably not even
>> consider downloading it.
>
>
> I don't buy that. I doubt that anybody can set up a community site
> without a community. And we won't be able to find the right way to
> approach a arab community from a cultural point of view anyway.

You think that there was a community when I created the first Spanish
web forums years ago? There wasn't any at this time and I started alone,
it worked. As for the cultural point of view, we obviously don't live in
the same culture since I even started learning arabic at university
which is pretty common in France where you can start arabic lessons in
many secundary schools as a second language and where the aïd el kebir
is almost as celebrated as christmas...


>
>>
>>>
>>>> - we need corporate deployment and *maintenance* tools to get into the
>>>> enterprise.
>>>
>>> Why is getting into the enterprise a goal?
>>
>> * Because convincing one system administrator of installing Firefox on
>> a 5000 seats company means convincing a few people, while convincing
>> 5000 individual users with lots of different motivations is harder
>
> I doubt you need to convince one sysop, but all the management to not
> fire him for that.

Please, try to open your mind just as second and stop taking points at
first degree. The point is that big chunks of the browser market do not
depend *at all* on the end-user, they are not those who control the
software on their machines, therefore either we decide that large chunks
of the browser market are IE only, or we don't.

>
>> * Because lots of people all over the world only have web access at
>> their office and not at home, specially in poorer countries where
>> internet access is very expensive for an individual
>
> I don't think that that's a market we really need to target. Given all
> the other users we don't have converted yet.

Strange reasonning, as if some users would explude others...

>
>> * Because lots of web sites and software targetting the enterprise
>> world are IE-only just because we don't have a significant corporate
>> market share, that's bad for open standards defense
>> * Because there is a big demand for that, especially among smaller
>> organisations who don't have the ressources to create their own
>> homemade deployment and patching solutions and have similar needs to
>> end-users. Those people would like to switch to Firefox but can't
>
> The nice thing is, we had a breakout session on the topic at the onsite
> yesterday, and it seems that we're in much better shape than almost
> anybody in the room thought.
> See http://wiki.mozilla.org/AllHands/2Q2006/Corporate_Deployment for
> more, but the main piece is Mission Control Desktop, and we have
> volunteers to add docs to devmo for that.


Good news.

>
> The general idea as I understood it in the meeting is that we don't have
> the resources to make a commitment to corporate needs. We do want to set
> up a central point for interested parties to coordinate and communicate
> and share their experience. If that leads to folks contribute patches,
> those will be luckily taken, but we're not going to make market analysis
> or dedicate management folks to any tasks in the area.
> From an engineering point of view, I think that most of use
> underestimated by far how well things can work, and we'll try to convey
> that message a bit better overall.

Thats all I was asking, thanks.

Pascal

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