Official Web FWD discussion thread

[pascal]

Question or comments about Web FWD - here's the place to discuss
it. :)

- The Web FWD team

[Ya Knygar]

Hello!

I live in Ukraine/Russia area, do you have any plans
to open Mozilla offices here,
so people here - could participate?

[pascal]

Hi,

Sorry - we don't have specific plans to open offices in Russia or the
Ukraine at the moment. But we will bring this program to Europe (UK,
Germany) so hopefully we can find a way for you to participate there.

Warm regards
P

[Ya Knygar]

Hi,

Thank you,
but It's very disappointing - that Eastern Europe doesn't have any
actual Mozilla or
at least W3C Offices (except one Hungarian, as i know)

Ukraine has around 13 million of Internet users (33% of population),
among them 8.7 millions (age 15+) use it every day,
(http://www.radiosvoboda.org/archive/news/20101006/630/630.html?
id=2177917 - Ukrainian lang only,
but - i think - accurate data)


http://netindex.com/value/2,8/Ukraine/?tab=0
shows the cost ratio, that promises the rapid growth,
on 5th place of the cheapest, comparing to GDP it
isn't so nice but it's another story.
Mobile internet is, also, far more affordable than
in EU.

but -
http://clear.com.ua/projects/ee_browsers/?ukraine
and
http://clear.com.ua/projects/ee_browsers/?russia
shows, and this is, as you may know - historical coincidence
That Opera is more popular, particularly in Ukr/Rus area,

compare it to http://clear.com.ua/projects/ee_browsers/?poland
or http://clear.com.ua/projects/ee_browsers/?bulgaria
for example --
significant difference.

Despite from what you may heard - Russia is IT growing country,
and - http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2007/11/Russia_Fastest_Growing_European_Internet_Population
(pretty old, but)
about a 43% of population now, i think,
it is - 59,700,000 users.

Both Russia and Ukraine have a strong open-source community,
but it doesn't effect "an average" users since Opera is Free,
Firefox is Free, not many see the difference, really.

What i, personally suggest, maybe to wrong line, but -
promote here that you'r Open-Source, not just Free to use,
you are unique,
explain the difference between Open and Free, or kind of.
Translate and pin manifest(mission) into a right place.
It's a former Soviet Union, in the end.

Or make a best Vkontakte web-app, use it with your OpenApps
add-on
and go social, it's so hard and
from what i'v seen it could be more effective than
embedding Firefox to Yandex.


Given that Firefox is !very heavily! promoted by largest East European
proprietary
search companies - Yandex and Rambler, and looking at results -
Mozilla isn't doing well in this area.

http://mozilla-russia.org/ have "non-canonical" design, awful, that's
bad.
http://mozilla.org.ua/ - has 1 news item per month, doesn't inspire.


What i want to point out - this area, i have asked about,
are the place where the big battle is, as Ukraine and, especially,
Russia has a real cultural impact on Asia.

According to that map - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/wiki/%C1%F0%E0%F3%E7%E5%F0
(middle-right)
all is ok, but from what i see - Opera is leading among non-
experienced users and Chrome is rising really fast,
so that map shows only -
here is a very hot area for innovations, and, definitely a good place
for Mozilla Offices.