It’s great to see these conversations happening; I believe this is precisely what should happen in a community when disagreement arises.

One aspect continues to confuse me¹: many of those discussing the issue seem to hold a position predicated on the assumption that Mozilla has claimed support for LGBTQ individuals or (more specifically) same-sex marriage.

I can find no documented substance to this assumption².

Not to call out the pink³ elephant in the room, but in 2008, when the California constitutional amendment involving the issue, Proposition 8, was on the ballot, a number of companies, including Apple, Google, and “numerous biotech companies“⁴ all very publicly stated their official position against the proposition^5,6.

Mozilla Corporation abdicated taking a position⁷.

It’s an open “secret” that Mozilla Foundation board member and Corporation CTO Brendan Eich donated money to support the proposition⁸.

Mozilla, last I knew, does not have any additional protections, stipulations, or benefits⁹ for LGBTQ individuals not already required by California law.

So when I read statements like…

Tim saying:

I’m embarrassed to work for Mozilla right now.

Or Christie saying:

Many members of the community, including myself, as well as members of the general public consider Planet Mozilla a Mozilla news source… . We wouldn’t allow hate-speech there and, we shouldn’t tolerate it on Planet, either. Right now, I feel unsafe and unwelcome at Mozilla.

Or Tim (later) saying:

I feel that my contributions considered less important because I’m queer. If it’s so important to Mozilla to allow speech like Gerv’s speech under the Mozilla banner that it’s worth discarding a percentage of the contributions made by queer and ally employees, then I guess that’s not my decision to make, though I would wonder why and who is accountable for making that trade.”

Or Lukas saying:

It seems like we protect our visual brand identity more than we protect what the Mozilla values appear to be when we refuse to set a minimum code of conduct for participation in our community. Who are we protecting when we do that? Who’s life is enriched by the inclusion of posts that support bigoted points of view?

Or Matej saying:

The point is that it appeared on Planet, which could easily be seen by the general public as an official Mozilla channel that supports the points of view it distributes.

Or Justin saying:

I’d never felt more unwelcome or had my trust broken in a Mozilla setting like that before. I don’t care whether it’s called “hate speech” or “a valid opinion” or whatever, I never want to feel like that again in a Mozilla environment.

Or Al saying:

One thing that I cannot abide is prejudicial actions within that community which go against its basic ethos of inclusiveness and betterment for the good of all.

Or Graydon saying:

Gerv just announced to the internet, using my company’s resources, that my mom isn’t married. And my company is now supporting Gerv’s continued use of our resources (domain name, trademarks, hardware, bandwidth) this way. What shall I tell my mom when I next visit her? “Hi mom, say, did you see that bit where my company endorsed homophobic abuse to deprive you of your marriage?

Or Gregg saying:

That this particular impoliteness carries Mozilla’s domain name and branding is the biggest bummer of all. I want to be proud of my company and my community, and I am not right now.

… I can certainly understand how they all could feel that way.

But given the above history, it’s probably worth examining the assumptions on which those positions are based, and separating out “how Mozilla actually is” from “how we think Mozilla is, and how we would like Mozilla to be.”

If we’re truly concerned about Mozilla’s level of inclusiveness, stance on civil rights, and support for LGBTQ (community) members, then I think it’s clear that a community member’s post on Planet isn’t the first place to be focusing energies.

_______________
¹ Which was hinted at in comments on my previous post
² Someone: PROVE ME WRONG. PLEASE
³ *cough*
⁴ I learned something new!
⁵ Thus, in support of same-sex marriage. Or, at least, not in support of defining marriage into law
⁶ Today, both Microsoft and Amazon publicly support marriage equality in their home states
⁷ As did the Mozilla Foundation; but there may be 501(c)(3) requirements involved there
⁸ Which, to be very clear, is entirely his right, and I am not herein stating a personal opinion on this fact; I am merely reporting it as such, and only in the contexts of inclusion with other Silicon Valley executives’ public statements in the record and one possible explanation why Mozilla may not have followed other technology companies
⁹ e.g. health coverage for domestic partners

If it wasn’t for me, planet.mozilla.org might not be an official Mozilla project module.

That’s a tall claim, so allow me tell a story: see, planet used to be managed by a single person.

It was a thankless job that, apparently, no one else wanted. As was that individual’s purview, content filtering and feed handling decisions were made solely by him. The community wasn’t involved, and there was little-to-no transparency.

This bothered me.

Mozilla was starting other governance initiatives at the time, and this seemed like a perfect example of something to transition to this new system. Asa was the first module owner.

I, being That Guy^TM who opened his big fat mouth, became a peer.

We’ve made what I believe to be the most critically important changes to how Planet is operated: more transparent, with a clear policies to facilitate the community function Planet serves.

And so I’m personally very proud of what raising my voice, via that post in 2007, has achieved: a Planet that, through our work together, has better served the Mozilla community.

Today, some advocated a return to the pre-module days.

They wanted a particular post they personally disagreed with removed.

They wanted feeds changed, so such content would never appear on Planet again.

They wanted a Mozilla community member’s¹ voice quietly silenced.

And as a Planet module peer, that is not something I will advocate for or be a party to.

Ever.

I want to make one thing very perfectly clear: I cannot express the degree to which I disagree with Gerv on this particular issue. But Planet, in its current role, has been a completely unmoderated, open forum for Mozilla community members to express themselves, and I will defend his right to say it, despite vehement disagreement with him.

But let us also be clear: advocating a particular political position in a civil tone is not “hate speech.”

It is not a “safe space” violation².

And the absolute worst thing anyone making such a claim or disagreeing with the position can do is try to censor the discourse.

History, including Planet’s own, has shown time and again: education, empathy, and understanding are not served by the use of “administrative”³ methods to silence an opinion some find unapaltable. And there is an important distinction to be made between defending such opinions and endorsing them.

Fundamentally, today’s events have raised the question about Planet’s role and purpose within the Mozilla community. That’s a fine (and necessary) discussion to have. But it wasn’t a conversation anyone today proposed having.

To anyone in the Mozilla Community who feels “unsafe and unwelcome,” I encourage you to raise your own voice and speak your own position⁴.

I’ll be right here, standing for your right to say it on Planet and in the Mozilla community, too.

_______________
¹ And I would certainly like to hear an argument that Gerv is not a Mozilla community member
² Unless, of course, you consider “safe space” to mean “a space where ideas-I-don’t like are prevented from occurring,” in which case, no: Planet is not a “safe space.” And neither is “The Open Web…”
³ Or harsher
⁴ Mozilla has, in fact, been surprisingly silent on this particular issue

Let’s put this in some perspective: Apple—user experience and design queen Apple—is to the right of Mozilla’s position on this issue!

Allow me to succinctly cut through all the cacophony on this: version numbers matter¹.

They’ve always mattered. And they will continue to matter.

Why?

Because the first question anyone asks when debugging their own software problem or helping someone else: “What version are you using?”

“Latest” (or the even more asinine “infinite!”) is not even in the universe of a useful answer (and there exist a universe of reasons why it may not even be an accurate one, either).

Version numbers help users find the appropriate release notes for the application sitting in front of them.

Version numbers help users search forums and knowledge bases, and be able to correlate others experiencing a similar problem and use the correct instructions for the version they have.

Version numbers make it possible for savvier users to help themselves, by knowing what to put into the bug database when they search.

Version numbers make it possible for users to help developers, being able to effectively communicate when reporting a bug.

Version numbers are what the press refers to, so they can communicate which feature set their review pertains to.

Version numbers are used by organizations and startups to drive PR and user buzz about new features and product families: “We just released version 2.0! You should really check it out!”

Software labeling—version numbers, as consumers know it—has been a core of communication involving the answer to “Which actual bits are running on my CPU?” since… well the beginning of packaged-and-sold software.

Anyone quoting³ “Nobody asks ‘Which version of Facebook are you running?’” is easily dismissible: it’s a great example of the fallacy of false comparison, but it’s not worth responding to^4,5.

In Mozilla’s specific case, this versioning consternation induced by their “rapid release” schedule is a direct result of versioning-as-a-concept being a proxy for something—API compatibility—in the Mozilla platform itself.

It’s important to call this out, because it’s necessary to distinguish between “rapid release causes my extensions to break every six weeks”—to users’ annoyance—and the (non-response) response of “Well, version numbers don’t matter anymore.”⁶

I see the move to obscure the version number to really be about reducing user “upgrade friction” by making the process as opaque and secretive⁷ as possible. This makes it easier to use Firefox’s user base as a lever to “move the web,” an argument I’ve previously made. This move is a consistent and logical step toward doing just that.

An interesting thought exercise to consider: what would the response be if Microsoft started updating Visual Studio on random intervals, and refused to divulge the version number installed on your machine when you tried to find it. Given that Mozilla bills the Open Web as a platform, and Firefox the tool to interact with and develop against that platform, it’s not a dissimilar example.

In any event, simply saying version numbers don’t matter anymore, and repeating it over and over like a bird you’d feed crackers to, does not suddenly make it a fact of modern software development.

It illustrates a profound lack of understanding of versioning’s (important) function in the best case.

And disingenuousness in the worst.

_______________
¹ You’d probably expect a release engineer to say that, given that version numbers and versioning as a process development area has always been a large part of my job^2
2 But that’s not why I’m saying it, entirely anyway
³ I should say “repeating the sentiment,” because I can’t find any Google record of anyone (publicly) having said that; the only reference is back to Laura Thomson’s original post, where the quotation is uncited
⁴ But I will: software which I download and run on my computer is very different than a web application
⁵ Facebook, Google Apps, and lots of other websites deploy software that’s broken all the time; people generally don’t have to answer “What version is it?” because, there often isn’t a way to meaningfully interact with those companies about issues in their (web-based) applications; you just wait until it’s fixed
⁶ In fact, this entire discussion about removing the version number from the UI is probably more acrimonious than it otherwise would be, because Mozilla has not, to date, resolved the issues raised by those negatively impacted by their “rapid [fire] release” decision
⁷ User experience people would probably choose “unobtrusive”

How does this relate to the Mozilla community, you might ask?

Some bootstraps are clearly more… ornate & complex than others…

Well, some of the core ideas behind QuickRelease actually come from an automation project Rob Helmer and I worked on back in the day called Bootstrap; you can still find it if you know where to look.

Bootstrap had a lot of good ideas², but it failed for a few reasons: its core design was based on some object-oriented patterns, and since the implementation language was Perl, that was all sorts of pain³.

Additionally, Mozilla, like many organizations at the time, was moving to Python for much of its infrastructure tools; Perl was considered gauche. Combine this with the “omg new hotness”-push in 2007 to use the buildbot-hammer to smash every problem⁴, and Bootstrap’s demise was pretty much assured.

I never thought hitching everything release engineering-related to the buildbot wagon was a particularly well and thoroughly conceived idea. In the ensuing time, it looks others have discovered the precise point I was making back then. There’s been some work on adding a layer in between buildbot and the build system… which is exactly what Bootstrap was.

And what QuickRelease is.

It’s worth noting QuickRelease is in production use, shipping others’ software, including some Mozilla-based projects.

Go give it a gander; let us know what you think.

_______________
¹ I didn’t push the initial announcement to Planet
² And in fact, one of QuickRelease’s best ideas—unit testable steps—was rhelmer’s…
³ You have to be pretty blessed in the head to do any hardcore OO-Perl…
⁴ Using unwieldy master.cfgs

I’m not exactly sure what new features Firefox 5 sports, but based on the landing page, it must have something to do with Harry Potter:

Now I’m a little slow.

Mozilla is “reinventing itself.” Got it.

But can someone help me understand what a half-page about the new Harry Potter movie has to do with Mozilla’s Mission²?

Or the Open Web?

Maybe Dumbledore knows.

_______________
¹ I put myself on the beta channel some time ago; I wanted to help test security fixes before they were rolled out to users; but with the new and improved versioning scheme, that’s not what “beta channel” means anymore.
² Maybe I mean “Mozilla’s Manifesto” here?^3
3 I’m not sure which one I really mean…^4
4 See? Little slow.

The San Francisco OFFSHORE FIVE Departure, a common departure for birds flyin’ south…

I meant to get this written earlier, but the last few weeks have been insanely busy, trying to get all the loose ends tied up to make sure things keep humming along.

It is not an understatement to say that my experiences at Songbird over the past three years have been among the best in my career to date. It was both a privilege and a pleasure to work with such talented coworkers, across the entire spectrum of the organization.

For me, Songbird represents a collection of firsts that will be etched into my memory: my first real startup; my first experience with the the myriad ups and downs that go with a true Silicon Valley startup; my first experience with sitting around with my coworkers, talking about where the company could go… and should go; my first experience with an agile software development organization.

Songbird was also the first place where I really saw the non-core engineering teams, like QA and release engineering, integrated into the software development process, not “tacked on” as an afterthought or assumed to be an impedance to shipping software. And Songbird was the first job where I found myself, quite by surprise actually, tearing up³ on the closing moments of my last day.

I’ve been working with the Mozilla technology stack for going on five years⁴ now. While it’s a great stack⁵, it’s time to work on something new.

I’m not falling off the planet entirely; I’ll be around on IRC⁶ and in (both Songbird and Mozilla’s) Bugzilla, shuffling a few last patches around and generally cleaning up any bird poop I left.

And as they say: “I’ll have more information for y’all when we reach our cruising altitude…”

_______________
¹ Or, depending on who you ask, Pioneers of the Inevitable^2
2 I always did think that was a clever name…
³ Ok, ok… crying
⁴ Depending on how you do the math; it could be as high as 13 years…
⁵ Especially if you’re building web browsers
⁶ Hi #foxymonkies!

Unlike the previously released diplomatic cables, this document was released without much fanfare or press attention.

While it’s understandable that the government wouldn’t want to publish this information¹, this document provides fascinating insight into holiday operations of the National Airspace System and of one pilot in particular; it’s too important to be kept secret in a free society:

Unlike the other leaked documents, mostly diplomatic cables, this document appears to concern a Federal Aviation Administration Defense VFR flight plan.

The pilot of november five-alpha-november-tango-four apparently files this flight plan with the agency every year on or about December 24th.

While this is the first document we’ve seen with this level of detail, this is far from the first time the government has hinted that it is working with Santa: see the NORAD Santa Tracker and the FAA-charted North Pole NDB or GPS-A approach plate.

Let us hope, for the pilot’s sake, that he isn’t subjected to the TSA’s “increased security measures” when embarking on his first stop.

For those celebrating Christmas tonight, Merry² Christmas, from me to you.

And, of course, happy holidays to all!

_______________
¹ Especially since the terror threat-level is currently something like polkadotted puce
² Please use this regex if it’s relevant to you

It’s a Firefox extension to interface with Twitter, with a very unobtrusive and intuitive UI. That, with a bunch of other nice features made it a pretty slick addon.

Until about five weeks ago.

In mid-August, Naan Studio released an update—1.9.6.5—that basically breaks any non-Mac, non-Win32, unofficial build. The supposed reason was support of forced-Twitter’s OAuth rollout, but since 1.9.6.4 had OAuth debug statements scrolling across my screen¹, there seems to be… a less obvious reason for breaking this.

In any event, I posted a comment to the review a couple of days ago saying:

I echo these comments; Twitterfox/Echofon was a great addon… until Firefox 3.6 came out, and introduced a number of really annoying focus bugs that Naan Studio decided to totally ignore.

Then there was the recent OAuth debacle, which removed all support for not-just-Linux, but any non-Mozilla Corporation build of Firefox, it was the final WTF-straw. (I would really be interested in hearing from Naan why they purposefully broke OAuth for other platforms, since it had been working just fine before version 1.9.6.5.)

Maybe it’s better that they broke their own extension; I never noticed until I started poking around the 43 kb (yes, kilo) licensing PDF in their extension that has some pretty… “interesting,” shall we say, terms…

If you thought it was an open source/community driven extension, well… go read the licensing terms, and think again.

Unfortunately, user comments on RockYourFirefox.com are moderated², and even though a comment posted a few hours earlier than mine can be seen on the post, mine seems to have gotten lost in the ether.

I’m hoping this was a mere oversight³, and that it’s not the case that only certain viewpoints are now allowed on AMO or RockYourFirefox reviews.

My hope is brightened by the fact that a number of other comments on both the review itself and Echofon’s comments on AMO from [Linux] users who had up to this point enjoyed Echofon.

The only difference I can see between those comments and mine was I did point out Echofon’s licensing restrictions might not be what most Firefox are used to⁴.

I really wish Naan Studios would unbreak OAuth for non-Mozilla Corporation-official builds; I’ve been wracking my brain trying to find a decent Linux Twitter client⁷, and I still haven’t found anything as unobtrusive or functional as Echofon used to be.

As for Rockin’ Out with my Firefox Out, may I suggest to the reviewers that they pre-screen the comments on extensions that Mozilla is willing to put their brand behind promoting.

It’s just feels wrong to see an extension with so many obviously disgruntled and angry users in recent AMO comment history, who have up to this point been totally ignored, get a nod and recommendation from Mozilla.

_______________
¹ And it continues to work fine in my copy of Firefox 3.5
² They must get a ton of spam!
³ Maybe author Elise Allen is on vacation?
⁴ Including gems like “You may not: (1) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works of the Software⁵, “Use of the Software may involve the transmission of data over the Internet to naan studio, to Twitter, and, as discussed in Section 8 above, to other third-party Services, and you may not be notified in each instance of the transmission of information from your computer,” etc.
⁵ So if you were planning on fixing OAuth⁶ in releases > 1.9.6.5 and releasing that yourself, you can screw off…
⁶ Which is, in part, a binary XPCOM component. Nice.
⁷ I’ve tried microblog-purple, gwibber⁸, Yoono, and I tried to get AIR working to use TweetDeck, but that was an even worse joke than disabling OAuth
⁸ Which looked really cool, but it so beta it’s not even funny, and looks more like an experiment in using interesting APIs than writing something functional

One of Mozilla’s most underrated contributions to the body of open source, I think, is its cross platform update system. Back in the day, I had always wanted to work on making it more generic for other projects to make use of³.

Being a Mozilla-derived project, Songbird uses these update mechanisms provided by the platform, and for the most part, they’ve served us well.

Being a XULRunner-based application, with a large number of XPCOM components, one problem we did run into when generating updates⁴ was the method in which the mar tool determines which lists of files it should pack into the mar.

The mar tool determines this list of files by having them passed in the command line to the mar tool itself. This is problematic for a couple of reasons:

• On Win32, the maximum length of a command line is laughably short⁵
• Because the paths are passed in via the command line, you have a shell involved; and when you have a shell involved with filenames, you always have quoting issues⁶

We’re apparently not the only in XULRunner App Land to have this problem⁷.

We fixed this with a series of patches in two areas:

• A patch to the mar tool itself to add the ability to specify a manifest file instead of passing the files in on the command line
• A couple of patches to the (bash shell!) packaging tools⁸ to coerce them to use this option.

The contextual details of both of those fixes are in the two (Songbird) bugs. We’ve been using the patches for a couple of releases without any problems.

Now, if other XULrunner-based projects run into this problem (or Firefox becomes big enough that it has enough files that Things Stop Working(tm) because some magical, under-documented limit was hit), they’ll be able to, at-best, yank our solution, or at-worst at least know there is a known workaround to base a solution on.

_________________
¹ It’s really been that long?! I have been writing, but I guess it’s all been about other random things…
² Lots of changes in Mozilla-land lately, so there’s plenty to say!
³ But, alas, never found the time; it’s a shame really
⁴ Of course, at release time, so this was a fun fire drill to fix!
⁵ Compared to other modern operating systems
⁶ Preed’s 43rd Law Of Build Engineering
⁷ Although, we did apparently solve it oh-so-slightly differently
⁸ Which are (being?) rewritten in python, apparently

I really want to shave.¹

I was no longer working at the ‘Co when the first #nsid occurred, but it was hard to ignore it last year. Planet was lit up with pictures of people looking all sorts o’ scruffy and seemingly lovin’ it.

We’ve been so busy at the Nest lately, that I’d forgotten that we’d come to the time of year to shrug off all facial-cutting instruments. It was Johnath’s eloquent post² on the subject, especially the new³ charity aspect, which convinced me to shave off the… half goatee⁴ I usually sport and take the plunge.

Being an #nsid n00b, I didn’t take daily photos⁵; the photos you see here are the only pictorial evidence that exists.

But participating in #nsid did teach me a few things about the world… and myself:

At the dawn of a new decade

• The complaint you always hear is the itchiness. I was surprised at how not-that-bad it was(n’t?)…
• Buuut, most people claim it goes away after a couple of weeks. At almost five weeks in, I’m itching as I write this.
• Slapping yourself sharply is a good substitute for scratching an itchy face; the main pro is it doesn’t further irritate already-itchy skin; the main con is you look like an idiot⁶, smacking the crap out of your face
• #nsid is apparently incompatible with my driver’s license, which sports a photo of a 19-year-old me: I got stopped going through airport security on my way home for the holidays. Both ways.⁷
• Late-December, I managed to snag whatever rhinovirus people were sharing at holiday parties, and I found out experimentally that #nsid and colds do not mix.⁸ Just sayin’…
• The Boyfriend started calling me “Fuzzy [His Usual Pet Name I Won't be Revealing Here].” I was not amused.
• To his credit, however, he did not invoke his constitutionally-recognized powers to call for a special session of shaving.
• If sdwilsh says he’s doing #nsid, demand a donation out of him; he’ll wuss out.
• I was having dinner with some friends, and one of them remarked “Hey! You’ve unintentionally embraced bear⁹ culture!” I threw my piece of raw salmon at him¹⁰
• Washing the whole… thing… was kinda hard. I never did really figure it out. Are you supposed to shampoo it? Use facial cleanser? Just ignore?
• After three weeks or so, it’s pretty weird catching this dark line running across the bottom of your peripheral vision; ditto feeling fuzzies when pursing your lips.
• Upon return from holiday vacation, I asked a friend what he thought; he said “Well, it’s certainly coming along,” which I note is distinctly different from “It looks good,” which prompted the question…
• Right near the end of the month, things were getting a little… squirely, necessitating this question to the #nsid judges: does #nsid imply #ntid (where t=”trimming”)? Consensus is that it does. Good thing I asked first.
• Apparently, my mustache hair likes to fraternize with my nostrils; damn the #ntid stipulation!

Now, if y’all will excuse me, I need to go find a razor blade.

A sharp, sharp razor blade… but only until next December…

_______________
¹ After you think to yourself “TMI,” you might wonder what the big deal is, since it’s obviously not December anymore. Well, I’ve been somewhat remiss in my blogging lately, so I told myself that I couldn’t shave until I blogged about my #nsid experiences…
² Which I tried, rather unsuccessfully I might add, to paraphrase on a number of occasions
³ And ingenious!
⁴ Or whatever it’s called
⁵ Truth be told, the four or so photos I did take took a lot of haranguing
⁶ Or mental patient
⁷ And I didn’t even have any explosives in my underwear!
⁸ Also? While paper towels sure are sturdier, facial tissue they are not!
⁹ These bears, not those bears
¹⁰ WE WERE AT A SUSHI BAR!