Mozpad, a Mozilla Platform User Group
I got into the office today to find Chris Messina’s “Thoughts on Mozilla” at the top of Techmeme. Naturally I fired up my iPod and brought his sprawling rant with me to the gym at lunchtime. Nothing is more conducive to a long and intensive workout than a long and intensive take-no-prisoners technology-oriented audio screed. So now I’m pumped, folks, physically, mentally and possible even spiritually.
I could write at least three blog posts about Chris’s piece, which covers a lot of ground. The most immediately relevant topic for me, however, was what he had to say about Mozilla as a platform. He echoes many of the same themes as the Paul Rouget essay that I translated and which I subsequently haven’t shut up about. No one is going to fall off their chair if I say that Chris is absolutely right about the strategic value of the platform for the Foundation, although I’m not nearly as down on Firefox as he appears to be, unless we’re talking very long term. Every platform needs a killer app, after all.
Anyway, the real point of this post is to follow up on the multitude of comments I’ve received here and by email, the gist of which is well-summarized by Doug Turner:
I think it would be up to the “all peers” of the world, to work with the foundation and other interested parties, to pool resources and make this “building application on top of mozilla technology” a priority for the foundation. Why wait on the Mozilla Corporation to do what Open Source enables you to do — take your destiny in your hands, try to collaborate with others with shared interests, and make better software!
As it transpires, I had an indepth discussion with another high-profile platform user at FOSDEM about forming some sort of user group for companies who are developing apps on top of Mozilla. This idea has been an inch or two forward of the back of my mind since then, but it took all of this hullaballoo for me to take the first steps towards getting it of the ground. So far this involves a tentative name, Mozpad (”Mozilla Platform Adherents and Developers”), for which I’ve registered the relevant domains. And this blog post.
What I have in mind is very much in the mold of the classic technology user group: a place where we can get together, compare notes and provide as much support as possible to Mozilla in advancing the platform in the service of third-party developers. If people like this idea, I’ll set up a wiki on mozpad.org and we can get things started. Please please please do contact me publicly or privately to let me know what, if anything, you like or hate about this initiative.
17 Comments »
Trackback URL RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Why wouldn’t you do this through the existing channels, like dev.xul/dev.platform/dev.extensions, MDC, wiki.mo, etc. so that you don’t have to split the communities and infrastructure? Is there something about those systems that makes them unsuitable for what you’re trying to do? If so, can you tell us what they are so we can fix them?
Comment by Mike Shaver — 5/11/2007 @ 3:45 pm
The last thing I want to do is be divisive. But as far as I know there isn’t an existing community or infrastructure to address specifically companies or other organizations who are developing major projects on top of Mozilla. In the case of dev.platform my (possibly flawed) impression is that it is mainly used by people working on Mozilla itself. And naturally the output of any user group work should end up where it belongs in the existing infrastructure: documentation on MDC, bugs in Bugzilla, etc.
I guess part of the implication of my suggestion is that even an open source community like Mozilla can grow so large and far-reaching that all aspects no longer fit under one organization. Certainly all the communities focusing on e.g. Microsoft products aren’t hosted on microsoft.com. I feel that a separate domain with a specific focus on companies who are using the Mozilla platform would greatly enrich the overall community, not divide it. But if there is strong feeling to the contrary on your side then I personally wouldn’t pursue the idea.
Comment by Matt — 5/11/2007 @ 4:41 pm
Matt, all-cheers for you (man, I wonder how often you got that pun already).
As an additional note, I do see good reasons for a platform user group to be a distinct identity, and something to indentify with. For one, it disambiguates the “we” in discussions in that group. We generally have a problem with that.
I think it’s important for that group to participate in mozilla discussion and documentation resources, but at the same time it’d be valuable for that ecosystem to form an independent identity on some level.
It’d be a great “platform” (haha) for some cooptition among those using Mozilla technologies, too.
Comment by Axel Hecht — 5/11/2007 @ 5:36 pm
You’ll get my support and active participation. As the sole author of Verbosio (a XULRunner-based application) so far, I really do care about this subject, a lot.
It might be worth asking bsmedberg what he (as XULRunner owner) thinks.
Comment by Alex Vincent — 5/11/2007 @ 7:13 pm
I’ve been the main or sole developer on three end-to-end XULRunner apps. Sounds cool to me.
Comment by enefekt — 5/11/2007 @ 7:19 pm
Very good idea !
Comment by Laurentj — 5/11/2007 @ 10:05 pm
After reading Mitchell’s post (Application vs. Platform Focus) I thought that I need to express my views about this platform thing, even if they might mean quite little in the conversation.
I’ve been following the discussion about Mozilla as a platform provider for some time now, and I started thinking about that a bit after Microsoft released Wpf. I feel that the recent blog posts are talking about two different things:
1. Should Mozilla Corporation focus on Firefox (/Thunferbird /Seamonkey).
2. Should Mozilla Corporation try to make XULRunner a good alternative platform competing with Wpf (or some other) and attract developers and companies to work on top of (and with) that platform.
Pretty much all blog posts I have read now say that Mozilla Corporation should focus on the other, but not in the other. Hardly any of them think about the two as things complementing and overlapping each other (or at least they don’t say that they should complement each other). In my view XULRunner can not succeed without Firefox, but XULRunner also needs support from other programs to make it competitor for Wpf. To make XULRunner succeed as a platform, it needs to be easy to use and fun to develop with. Tools are one critical part in that in the way that they make the fun part much easier to provide, but even if tools are available, platform must be easy to use also. I hope Verbosio and XUL Explorer will develop into those tools, they are good starts, but they still need a lot work (and in the end they need to seamlessly work together). And I hope Mozilla Corporation will make Mozilla 2 as a platform so easy to use that anyone can start experimenting with it.
Comment by p18n — 5/12/2007 @ 12:28 pm
Yes yes and yes! I wholeheartedly agree with your initiative to create a user group for platform consumer-developers. I would support this idea in any way that I can and I would not anticipate major conflict with or division from the core mozilla community. As you already mentioned, apropriate output should find it’s way into the devmo wiki and other “more official” mozilla channels.
Comment by Mukunda Modell — 5/13/2007 @ 2:40 am
One more thing - if you need help implementing the wiki or any other aspect of getting the group up and running, add my name to a list of ready, willing and hopefully qualified volunteers.
Comment by Mukunda Modell — 5/13/2007 @ 2:58 am
Matt,
We Songbirders are up for more brainstorming on the Mozpad concept.
It’s essential IMHO that this group communicates continuously with Mark Finkle, Mike Shaver, Benjamin Smedberg, Rob Strong and others at the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation.
Rob
Comment by Rob Lord — 5/13/2007 @ 10:48 am
Rob,
That’s great. I was planning to contact you guys about this. (Actually I’ve been planning to blog some stuff about Songbird for a while.)
Total agreement re: involvement of Mozilla folks.
I’ll be taking the next steps in the next few days in terms of providing some sort of forum where we can brainstorm about what this group should/shouldn’t be doing, and then perhaps we can set up some sort of discussion among interested parties and the relevant people at Mozilla, if they are amenable.
Comment by Matt — 5/13/2007 @ 11:01 am
While I share Shaver’s concerns that this should be done in existing channels, mozpad.org is in general a good idea. Sure, let’s use current infrastructure, especially for code, but mozpad.org can be a statement of intent, a gathering place, and more. Count me in!
Comment by Brian King — 5/14/2007 @ 8:32 am
This is a fantastic idea - it’s exactly what XR devs need. Please keep your blog updated with news on how you proceed with this - such a community is a necessity.
Comment by czelenak — 5/14/2007 @ 2:59 pm
I’m not sure if I can offer much, but count me in anyway.
Comment by Rob Marshall — 5/14/2007 @ 3:15 pm
+1 for sure.
Comment by Chris Messina — 5/15/2007 @ 6:50 am
Mike Shaver comes off as a real asshole in his post about Messina. Now, whining about people not using internal modes of communication so that they “don’t split the community” is the next crock of shit. The whole idea of open software and open web is, you guessed it, openness. Shaver doesn’t seem to understand this concept, and appears angry that people would share their concerns (however misplaced, as I believe Messina’s are) openly rather than within designated cloisters.
Comment by Tom — 5/16/2007 @ 4:20 am
I’m a MozDev newbie and I sure would like to see a more cohesive presentation of Mozilla’s documentation. A lot of the O’Reilly book is cut-and-paste from MozDev. A lot of MozDev is being updated to version 1.9 of Gecko without my being able to find previous versions’ commensurate documentation. I get the most help from IRC. I think this implies that what you want to do is generally a Good Thing. I say Go For It.
Comment by Colonel Nikolai — 7/26/2007 @ 4:50 pm