Mozilla

Slightly revised “Firefox” goal for 2010

December 15th, 2008

Goal: Reinforce Firefox mindshare and marketshare momentum

I think this goal stays as is, other than changing the verb from “continue” to “reinforce.” Today Firefox is by far the biggest lever we have to make our values and other goals real. If this were our only goal it would be a problem; Firefox is not an end in itself. Similarly leaving the health of our most powerful tool out of the goals would be odd.

If you feel the need for subpoints to parallel the other goals let me know and we can work on those.

6 comments for “Slightly revised “Firefox” goal for 2010”

  1. 1

    Chris R said on December 15th, 2008 at 6:51 pm:

    I recommend having a browse through this website:

    http://www.weaselwords.com.au/index3.htm

  2. 2

    Zak Greant said on December 15th, 2008 at 11:27 pm:

    Chris: Concrete suggestions to improve the wording of the goal are more helpful than links to a gallery of textual nonsense… or perhaps this is just spam?

    Mitchell: Perhaps “Build Firefox mindshare and marketshare momentum” is a more engaging and direct way to state our intent?

  3. 3

    Michael said on December 16th, 2008 at 1:24 am:

    Even with all those noble goals Mozilla is missing one great opportunity IMHO. There’s always talk about just how important the open web and free software mindshare is. But in the end, what does Mozilla provide? Sure we have, a great free browser which is packed with open web technologies. But what do people use it for? Mostly proprietary, closed source, non free sites and web-apps like Twitter, Flickr, Google Apps etc. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that those sites don’t depend on Flash or Silverlight but use open standard technologies advocated by Mozilla among others. But this is only part of the problem. With the growing importance of Web apps like the ones mentioned above it becomes vital to provide free alternatives to the user.

    In the case of Twitter, we now have Identi.ca, which is completely free software, offers most (if not all) of the features of Twitter and even offers interoperability with Twitter. What about the others?

    I truly think Mozilla should use its power to support (maybe through Labs?) the creation of great _free_ web apps using open web technologies, starting with a nice framework to built on. The nice side effects:

    a) This would surely motivate some web developers (which is traditionally a different group of people to those working on HTML engines and bowsers) to spend time on free software => new developers!

    b) It would be very easy to provide mobile integration of those new web apps as Mozilla would control both the backends (public API etc) and frontends (special mobile-centric UI).

    c) A possibility to integrate nicely with other Mozilla products (e.g. Firefox) to build a nice “package” for the user. Flawless interaction and integration is key.

    Other browsers are slowly catching up, so having more user value than just the browser application itself is always a good idea.

  4. 4

    Eddy Nigg said on December 16th, 2008 at 5:43 am:

    And don’t forget free digital certificates from https://www.startssl.com/?app=1 to secure private and public sites. Not sure how high this is on your agenda, but I (obviously) believe that security and privacy should be part of the open web. It’s not “free” in the same sense of software or movement since certification has hardly much to do with freedom really, but by providing this service for free it gives to many Mozilla users the freedom to truly rely on trusted certificates and enjoy privacy where desired and security where needed.

  5. 5

    Mitchell Baker said on December 18th, 2008 at 11:51 am:

    open source web – apps, that’s a big idea. I don’t think that will make it into this set of goals, but I’m definitely going to think about it.

  6. 6

    Pingback from about:mozilla - 2010 goals, Thunderbird 3, Labs meetup, updating add-ons, Foundation report, Impact Mozilla, and more… | Bits & Pieces

    […] Revised drafts of the proposed goals have been posted to Mitchell’s weblog, including the “Firefox” goal, the “data” goal, the “mobile” goal, and the “centerpiece” […]

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