Comments on: EC Theme: Building Firefox is the only appropriate activity for Mozilla

By: Mitchell’s Blog » Blog Archive » EC Theme: Government Should Not Be Involved.

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:08:45 +0000

[...] argument may also be a way of expressing concern over the potential remedies. As I noted in a prior post, I think it’s deeply unwise for Mozilla to sit out the remedy discussions and learn what the [...]

By: Iang

Iang — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:01:27 +0000

I wonder if the issue is bias? If you go on there saying “we can help, and we sure want a chance to put the knife in too…” this has a danger of being neutralised by the simple observation to the EC that Mozilla is biased. It might also rebound in ways hard to predict.

OTOH, if you go to the EC and offer the resources as “expert witness” and try and present an even story from both sides, this might be fairer. One way to help doing that is to develop a “position paper” or “white paper” in open forum, with consultation from the experts in the community. And specifically charge the experts with expounding on both opposing points of view.

“the only response to problems in the market” makes the big assumption that there are problems in the market. As opposed to problems with players, with products, with views, or the times. This is very hard to show, scientifically, and economics-wise, and it is even more difficult for the EC. Try this quick test: if the people in the EC are better at predicting or understanding the market, why aren’t they in it, making lots of money?

By: monk.e.boy

monk.e.boy — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:34:35 +0000

We have great faith in you and in Mozilla!

Can we try to be nice, compassionate, understanding. Maybe this will rub off on the big wigs in microsoft haha I wonder if they could commit to staying to the w3c specs and we all forgive them?

m.e.b

By: Dwayne Bailey

Dwayne Bailey — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:12:17 +0000

This topic has been quite curious to me. Most solutions I seem to think up also seem to be more the prison kinds then integrating the felon back into society.

Once I realised that it become more fun, and restating the core value of Mozilla helps solidify that.

So a suggestion:

* Standards have helped to build a more open web.
* Pay a fine and place that in a trust. The money from the trust goes to the W3C and any browser developers that suffered under the monopolistic practices.
* Have a timeline and related fines for not getting themselves back into a state of standardisation
* Be quite clear that about the statements that are allowed to be made to the press. For instance this might fall directly into the we’re focused on interoperability mantra that’s why we’re doing this, etc

I’m also dead against the idea that installing Firefox on Windows by default is a good solution. Its based on a retroactive look at a changing environment. Who knows if the desktop will be the market in the future.

I’m sure there are other patterns here that could be followed. But for me the summary would be how can this be used so that past transgressions are leveraged for future good. I think if we link that to what has and will continue to make the web strongest then everyone wins.

By: Robert Kaiser

Robert Kaiser — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:04:01 +0000

I agree that we need to look at doing whatever we can do to help the EC reach at a useful conclusion. Our goal is not to beat others with marketshare, our goal is to ensure the openness of the Internet. And it’s clear that this company did work against that, and it’s our job to help that the EC can find a way to force them to contribute to the openness of the web for once. That will help everyone out there – if we or the EC can find a way.