> If we all, volunteers and paid employees, have the same informations > about the world and agree on the Manifesto, I don't see a reason for > having our priorities not aligned. Please tell me if you see such a reason.
There's another criterion missing here: If we all have the same information about the world, agree on the Manifesto, and think exactly the same way in all other respects, then yes, we'd reach the same conclusions. But obviously different people don't think the same way in all respects, so we sometimes don't reach the same conclusions, even given the same values and evidence. If your argument were true, then either the volunteers working on SeaMonkey (and, for that matter, Thunderbird) don't share MoCo's values or they are lacking some key piece(s) of information that MoCo has. Do you think that's true? If so, what do you think the case is -- do you think that SM/TB contributors by and large have different values than MoCo, do you think that they're lacking some information that MoCo has, or is it some combination of both? I'd say neither is the case: You and I can share a common manifesto and both have the same evidence about the world and yet we can have different priorities. Examples of this in the real world abound -- consider, for example, the myriad organizations dedicated to feeding the world's poor. These organizations don't always agree on what's the best way to accomplish their shared goal, despite all having roughly the same information about the state of the world. > If we, volunteers > and paid employees, all take part in deciding Mozilla priorities, we > will have our priorities aligned as a consequence of the decision process. Why should this be true? Suppose I took part in a decision-making process which produced a result I didn't agree with. Why would my priorities then be aligned with the result of the process? I think the fact that Mozilla cultivates groups with heterogeneous priorities is a great strength. For example, Firefox was created by volunteers who didn't agree with MoCo's direction at the time. -Justin On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 4:13 PM, David Bruant <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > At MozCampEU 2012, I think during Leadership Panel, Brian King > mentionned that Mozilla (I would guess MoFo&MoCo) and the community > sometimes have unaligned priorities. After being asked, he gave 2 > examples; one being that the community still maintains SeaMonkey which > is not a priority for MoFo/MoCo and I have forgotten the second one > (please complete if anyone remembers), but I remember it was another > valid example. > He added that he is no one to tell anyone not to contribute to SeaMonkey > and I certainly agree, but wish to provide some in-depth thoughts on > this topic. > > The common thing that MoCo/MoFo and volunteers have in common, what make > us "One Mozilla" is the Mozilla Manifesto. Ideally, every decision made > within Mozilla comes as a natural conclusion of the Manifesto read in > the context of the world at the time of the decision being made. As a > concrete example, prioritizing on mobile in the current context is a > natural consequence of defending the values described in the Manifesto. > If we all, volunteers and paid employees, have the same informations > about the world and agree on the Manifesto, I don't see a reason for > having our priorities not aligned. Please tell me if you see such a reason. > > After some time spent at several Mozilla events, I have realized that > MoCo/MoFo seems to consider volunteer contributors as sensitive birds > that should be taken with care to not scare them away. Volunteer > contributors, since they are not tied by any contract of any form are > free to work on whatever they want, the quantity they want, change > anytime and are free to go away whenever they want. > A consequence of this volatile vision of volunteers at the > organisational level seems to be that volunteer contributors do not take > part of strategic discussions to decide Mozilla priorities including > suggesting new priorities at the organization level. In a way, it's only > fair, since volunteers do not have to follow any priority, why should > they take part of the discussions to decide them? > But the situation is a bit more complicated. "Volunteers" is very very > far from being a uniform group when it comes to level of involvement, > when it comes to interest in what's going on at the organization level. > > I think there would be value in having dedicated volunteer contributors > taking part in organisation-wide strategic decisions. If we, volunteers > and paid employees, all take part in deciding Mozilla priorities, we > will have our priorities aligned as a consequence of the decision process. > Now I understand that business requirements make that all informations > to make educated decisions about Mozilla at the organization level are > not available to the general public. > > One idea would be to invite some volunteers to take part of these > decisions and having them sign an NDA. > All details of this idea aren't figured out (especially how to choose > who's invited to the discussions), but I'm starting this thread as an > attempt to propose a solution to the problem of unaligned priorities. > > David > _______________________________________________ > governance mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
