To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: mailto:shyboy2@DOMAIN.HIDDEN (shyboy2)
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 22:13:25 +1000
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: ?
Resent-date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 05:17:48 -0700 (PDT)
Resent-from: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
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The requests here by members of the general public (vs programmers) for
digestable news of the progress of the various Mozilla versions - and the
paucity of the information available to them, highlights a growing danger:
right now, beyond the hot little dome of programmers, Mozilla's marketing
to the general public is looking as lumpen and low-testosteroned as
Netscape's.
All the best intentions by the best coders will be to naught if there is no
combined MARKETING effort by the participating platforms. That's the bottom
line. Crap marketing results in crap mindshare!
If this was MICROZILLA, there would be pages even now for the average
consumer at mozilla.org, revving them up on the COMING GLORY (you can
almost taste it!), with come hither graphics and easily digestable prose.
What was that which one blinded reviewer wrote about IE4? "This was a
browser my mom would use." There you have it EXACTLY. The marketing pitch
needs to get that real (oh horror, we have to STOOP?!) to grab market
share. So for God's sake, somewhere, some little creative team needs to get
Photoshop humming and their copywriting program pumping. Where, pray, is
the PR? I've barely seen any articles on Mozilla pitched to Joe Public in
mags or newspapers. Time is a'wasting! Them colorful IE5 beta graphics and
breathless prose at www.microsoft.com are looking, oh, ever so dandy.
Anyone agree?
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: "leaf (Daniel Nunes)"
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 22:35:27 +0000
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: The Mystic Knights of Mozilla
References:
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The point of mozilla.org is *not* to distribute binary products. The
point of mozilla.org is offer any and all who wish to work on the
Mozilla source code the chance to do so. The mozilla.org organization
is not directly concerned with end-user market share; developer
involvement is a related, but different, thing. Read the Mission
statement of mozilla.org (http://www.mozilla.org/mission.html).
There are plenty of places to get binaries; mozilla.org is not one of
them.
As far as acting as code integrators and custodians, mozilla.org is
doing a fine job. The demographic mozilla.org needs to satisfy *is* the
developer community.
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: Jon Gunderson
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 08:35:37 -0500
In-reply-to:
References:
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I think it is useful to have information on what is being developed to keep
the general public informed of what to expect in future releases of mozilla.
Jon
At 10:35 PM 7/9/98 +0000, leaf (Daniel Nunes) wrote:
>The point of mozilla.org is *not* to distribute binary products. The
>point of mozilla.org is offer any and all who wish to work on the
>Mozilla source code the chance to do so. The mozilla.org organization
>is not directly concerned with end-user market share; developer
>involvement is a related, but different, thing. Read the Mission
>statement of mozilla.org (http://www.mozilla.org/mission.html).
>
>There are plenty of places to get binaries; mozilla.org is not one of
>them.
>
>As far as acting as code integrators and custodians, mozilla.org is
>doing a fine job. The demographic mozilla.org needs to satisfy *is* the
>developer community.
>
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820
Voice: 217-244-5870
Fax: 217-333-0248
E-mail: jongund@xxxxxxxx
WWW: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund
http://www.als.uiuc.edu/InfoTechAccess
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN, mailto:mozilla-wishlist@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Feedback from my "Mozilla: The Gentle Art of Failure" post!
From: mailto:shyboy2@DOMAIN.HIDDEN (shyboy2)
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 22:15:15 +1000
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general, netscape.public.mozilla.wishlist
Organization: ?
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Thank you to all those who took the time to post or email me regarding my
post Mozilla: The Gentle Art of Failure (appended).
The responses so far have ranged from qualified to total enthusiastic agreement.
With one exception.
Daniel Nunes of mozilla.org has rightly pointed out that his group have
done a commendable job serving the developer community. Daniel, you're not
only correct, everyone there deserves saluting!
However, Daniel also states:
"The point of mozilla.org is *not* to distribute binary products. The
point of mozilla.org is offer any and all who wish to work on the
Mozilla source code the chance to do so. The mozilla.org organization
is not directly concerned with end-user market share; developer
involvement is a related, but different, thing. Read the Mission
statement of mozilla.org (http://www.mozilla.org/mission.html)."
All well and good. But it doesn't address the problem I raised. Mozilla.org
has built a fine bridge to the developer community. But who is to build
the bridge from the developers to consumers? The coders? The developers?
Truly beautiful ravishable, people they are, as one knows, but you could
count on a leper's hand the number who are good marketers.
From where I stand (no where, but vaguely interested) I get this uneasy
feeling that when Netscape released the source, they hadn't really given
much consideration to the end part of the equation - how Mozilla's hybrids
would market themselves. Or is it a case of "We want them to be successful,
but heavens Jim, not THAT successful!"
Is the marketing of the Mozilla's to consumers to be this rag-tag disparate
effort scattered across cyberspace, or would it better served by a central
site with a degree of co-ordinated PR? As Netscape's own site serves both
developers AND consumers - what's the tainting horror about www.mozilla.org
also serving as a focal point for Mozilla consumer marketing or promotion
from various disassociated groups? You could let them create subset
marketing sites within it such as Geocities. Whatever. But the attitude (so
prevalent amongst developers) of 'all we need to do is release it and
they'll discover it in time cause it's a perfect shining thing' needs a
dunking.
This is not lotus-eating leisurely Linux land we're talking about here.
This is a breathless fight of a few months to ensure that no single party
- OK, Bill - controls that browser key to the Internet. Sure functionality
will count. That's no1. But it's also going to be won by ( no2) consumer
inertia ("IE's integrated, why fuss with anything else?" Remember,
Microsoft has always won on the coding front by producing not outstanding
software, but software that is perceived as 'good enough') AND (no3)
marketing, marketing, MARKETING! So where the fuck is our consumer
marketing, or the structure to create it?
Or have I got it all wrong. Is Mozilla simply all about creating toys for geeks?
Then again, perhaps someone has a spare PR chick under their desk...
-------------The original post---------------------------------
The requests here by members of the general public (vs programmers) for
digestable news of the progress of the various Mozilla versions - and the
paucity of the information available to them, highlights a growing danger:
right now, beyond the hot little dome of programmers, Mozilla's marketing
to the general public is looking as lumpen and low-testosteroned as
Netscape's.
All the best intentions by the best coders will be to naught if there is no
combined MARKETING effort by the participating platforms. That's the bottom
line. Crap marketing results in crap mindshare!
If this was MICROZILLA, there would be pages even now for the average
consumer at mozilla.org, revving them up on the COMING GLORY (you can
almost taste it!), with come hither graphics and easily digestable prose.
What was that which one blinded reviewer wrote about IE4? "This was a
browser my mom would use." There you have it EXACTLY. The marketing pitch
needs to get that real (oh horror, we have to STOOP?!) to grab market
share. So for God's sake, somewhere, some little creative team needs to get
Photoshop humming and their copywriting program pumping. Where, pray, is
the PR? I've barely seen any articles on Mozilla pitched to Joe Public in
mags or newspapers. Time is a'wasting! Them colorful IE5 beta graphics and
breathless prose at www.microsoft.com are looking, oh, ever so dandy.
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN, mailto:mozilla-wishlist@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Feedback from my "Mozilla: The Gentle Art of Failure" post!
From: Mike Shaver
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 21:34:19 -0400
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general, netscape.public.mozilla.wishlist
Organization: Mozilla Dot Weenies
References:
Resent-date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 18:37:58 -0700 (PDT)
Resent-from: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
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shyboy2 wrote:
> From where I stand (no where, but vaguely interested) I get this uneasy
> feeling that when Netscape released the source, they hadn't really given
> much consideration to the end part of the equation - how Mozilla's hybrids
> would market themselves. Or is it a case of "We want them to be successful,
> but heavens Jim, not THAT successful!"
Well, Netscape will certainly market its Mozilla hybrid (called
Communicator).
And I think that other producers of Mozilla-spawn should market them,
too. Both the Cryptozilla and QtScape (poorly named, but whatever) have
done a decent job getting their products in the limelight.
I don't however, think that mozilla.org should perform that
marketing/publicity function. mozilla.org is about making sure that
developers are interested and enabled and all that other good stuff.
We're not about selling shrink-wrapped things to consumers, although
we're certainly about making the production of those shrink-wrapped
things possible.
> Is the marketing of the Mozilla's to consumers to be this rag-tag disparate
> effort scattered across cyberspace, or would it better served by a central
> site with a degree of co-ordinated PR? As Netscape's own site serves both
> developers AND consumers - what's the tainting horror about www.mozilla.org
> also serving as a focal point for Mozilla consumer marketing or promotion
> from various disassociated groups?
I could be sold on a having http://www.mozilla.org/spawn/ area owned by
some external people. (Not that I'm the one who needs selling.) You're
seeing this as a place for people to put pages about things they're
building, right? mozilla.org has its collective hands full with tool
and site maintenance right now, so someone outside would probably have
to maintain it. Are you willing to step up?
(We also need a new-things-in-mozilla area, but that's another issue,
and since it involves describing geeky things, I don't think you'll be
terribly interested.)
Mike
--
878385.13 753069.91
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: What's the Progress? (was Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure)
From: mailto:petrich@DOMAIN.HIDDEN (Loren Petrich)
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 00:37:11 GMT
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: Netcom
References:
Resent-date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 17:47:26 -0700 (PDT)
Resent-from: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
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Sender: mailto:petrich@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
In article <199807101336.IAA00330@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jon Gunderson wrote:
>I think it is useful to have information on what is being developed to keep
>the general public informed of what to expect in future releases of mozilla.
Even after visiting http://www.mozilla.org a few minutes ago (as I
write this), I have *no* hint of what progress has been made in
developing a working, stable, end-user-read version of Mozilla 5. None
whatsoever :-(
It does not seem too difficult to have some page which lists the
progress in various areas; the Mozilla project is broken up into modules,
and each one could have a brief description of progress made and work
that needs to be done.
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@xxxxxxxxxx And a fast train
My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: What's the Progress? (was Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure)
From: Mike Shaver
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 00:47:43 -0400
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: Mozilla Dot Weenies
References:
Resent-date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 21:53:19 -0700 (PDT)
Resent-from: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Resent-message-id: <"ofVzYC.A.6xB.WKZq1"@gila.mozilla.org>
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Loren Petrich wrote:
> It does not seem too difficult to have some page which lists the
> progress in various areas; the Mozilla project is broken up into modules,
> and each one could have a brief description of progress made and work
> that needs to be done.
I agree, that'd be nice. We need someone to step up and co-ordinate,
that, though. We've seen that just waiting for people to publish
updates when they feel like it doesn't work; people are very busy, etc.
Someone needs to take ownership of the mozilla-status stuff. Loren?
Mike
--
1076204.12 765959.53
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: no_spam
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:41:04 -0400
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
References:
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Absolutely, all the effort and quality products are worthless without
the Microsoft style marketing. get with it, or a year or two from now
Netscape will be sitting around with other previous inovators - Borland,
Apple, Corel, the list is endless - saying "so what if we;re broke, at
least we have our integrity". meanwhile the "sensation new IE5" will be
crashing everywhere, using resources and the average consumer will be
fooled into thinking its just great. hurry Netscape, you can't affort to
lose one day on this one.
shyboy2 wrote:
>
> The requests here by members of the general public (vs programmers) for
> digestable news of the progress of the various Mozilla versions - and the
> paucity of the information available to them, highlights a growing danger:
> right now, beyond the hot little dome of programmers, Mozilla's marketing
> to the general public is looking as lumpen and low-testosteroned as
> Netscape's.
>
> All the best intentions by the best coders will be to naught if there is no
> combined MARKETING effort by the participating platforms. That's the bottom
> line. Crap marketing results in crap mindshare!
>
> If this was MICROZILLA, there would be pages even now for the average
> consumer at mozilla.org, revving them up on the COMING GLORY (you can
> almost taste it!), with come hither graphics and easily digestable prose.
> What was that which one blinded reviewer wrote about IE4? "This was a
> browser my mom would use." There you have it EXACTLY. The marketing pitch
> needs to get that real (oh horror, we have to STOOP?!) to grab market
> share. So for God's sake, somewhere, some little creative team needs to get
> Photoshop humming and their copywriting program pumping. Where, pray, is
> the PR? I've barely seen any articles on Mozilla pitched to Joe Public in
> mags or newspapers. Time is a'wasting! Them colorful IE5 beta graphics and
> breathless prose at www.microsoft.com are looking, oh, ever so dandy.
>
> Anyone agree?
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: Pat Gunn
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 19:10:12 -0400
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: None
References:
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Someone or another from citw.com wrote:
>
> Absolutely, all the effort and quality products are worthless without
> the Microsoft style marketing. get with it, or a year or two from now
> Netscape will be sitting around with other previous inovators - Borland,
> Apple, Corel, the list is endless - saying "so what if we;re broke, at
> least we have our integrity". meanwhile the "sensation new IE5" will be
> crashing everywhere, using resources and the average consumer will be
> fooled into thinking its just great. hurry Netscape, you can't affort to
> lose one day on this one.
1) What do you suggest? What specific example of Microsoft style
marketing are you advocating?
2) IE5 will affect very few of your audience here, I suspect, as
we are the people who 'know better'.
--
---------------------------------------------------
Pat Gunn, moderator:comp.sys.newton.announce
comoderator:comp.os.os2.moderated
"You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." -- Dr Who
http://junior.apk.net/~qc
------------------------------------------------
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: mailto:shyboy2@DOMAIN.HIDDEN (shyboy2)
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 19:39:26 +1000
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: ?
References:
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>Pat Gunn, moderator:comp.sys.newton.announce, wrote:
>1) What do you suggest? What specific example of Microsoft style
> marketing are you advocating?
Anything (which would be a step forward from the present) and everything.
Whatever it takes.
>2) IE5 will affect very few of your audience here, I suspect, as
> we are the people who 'know better'.
Sorry, but I just got this sudden vision of someone on a lonely mountaintop
with a Newton, Mozilla, and the shreds of their dignity, while the whole
dumb world below gets down and IE's. Methinks that big friggin' lizard
better start wiggling its tits...
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: Mike Shaver
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:52:04 -0400
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: Mozilla Dot Weenies
References:
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shyboy2 wrote:
> Sorry, but I just got this sudden vision of someone on a lonely mountaintop
> with a Newton, Mozilla, and the shreds of their dignity, while the whole
> dumb world below gets down and IE's. Methinks that big friggin' lizard
> better start wiggling its tits...
mozilla.org has enough on its hands doing the job it signed up for:
helping developers develop with the Mozilla source. If you can't take
on the additional work of creating a marketing-and-propaganda wing of
mozilla.org, what makes you think that we can?
Mike
--
1195164.39 765959.53
To: "'Pat Gunn'" , mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: RE: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: Sandeep Hundal
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:43:43 +0100
Resent-date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 01:45:16 -0700 (PDT)
Resent-from: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
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I think the first thing to do would be to put some more content on the
website aimed at the non-developer/programmer community.
That way if some person just gets a link from a news site about mozilla.org,
they can go to the site out of interest and see the immense amount of work
that is taking place and how the future versions of Communicator are
improving... So if its a newbie who's stuck with IE4 (bundled) which
typically crashes all the time, they'd think 'Hey, why not try this browser
which has so much work being done on it to make it more stable. And the
features sound cool'. And then not only would they spread the word, but also
we'd get some people 'converted' to use NC after they see the community
behind it.
I think this whole thing also works as a democracy i.e. people working
together to improve their own. That will appeal as well and they'll get
tempted to download a FSF kinda program.
Thats the intial and most important step I think.
Sunny
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pat Gunn [SMTP:pgunn01@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 1998 12:10 AM
> To: mozilla-general@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
>
> Someone or another from citw.com wrote:
> >
> > Absolutely, all the effort and quality products are worthless without
> > the Microsoft style marketing. get with it, or a year or two from now
> > Netscape will be sitting around with other previous inovators - Borland,
> > Apple, Corel, the list is endless - saying "so what if we;re broke, at
> > least we have our integrity". meanwhile the "sensation new IE5" will be
> > crashing everywhere, using resources and the average consumer will be
> > fooled into thinking its just great. hurry Netscape, you can't affort to
> > lose one day on this one.
>
> 1) What do you suggest? What specific example of Microsoft style
> marketing are you advocating?
> 2) IE5 will affect very few of your audience here, I suspect, as
> we are the people who 'know better'.
>
> --
> ---------------------------------------------------
> Pat Gunn, moderator:comp.sys.newton.announce
> comoderator:comp.os.os2.moderated
> "You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." -- Dr Who
> http://junior.apk.net/~qc
> ------------------------------------------------
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: Jamie Zawinski
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 04:37:15 -0700
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: the mystic knights of mozilla, http://www.mozilla.org/
References:
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Resent-from: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Resent-message-id: <"7CmMlC.A.6UE.wL0q1"@gila.mozilla.org>
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Sandeep Hundal wrote:
>
> I think the first thing to do would be to put some more content on the
> website aimed at the non-developer/programmer community.
If you think that mozilla.org should include that content, then you
misunderstand the mission of mozilla.org. This organization does not
exist to get Mozilla executables onto as many desktops as possible; it
exists to facilitate development of the source code. The customers of
mozilla.org are not end users, they are developers. The customers of
*those developers* are end users, and therefore, the responsibility for
end-user handholding, and marketing, belong to those developers.
One of the developer groups that is a customer of mozilla.org is the
Netscape Client Product Development group (the group that produces the
end-user product known as Netscape Navigator, which is composed, in
large part, of the Mozilla source code.)
Netscape CPD does lots and lots of marketing, and end-user handholding,
and burning of CDs, and distribution of binaries.
Other groups of developers who which to focus on end users are welcome
to do the same.
mozilla.org does not do that. It is not mozilla.org's charter.
> That way if some person just gets a link from a news site about
> mozilla.org, they can go to the site out of interest and see the
> immense amount of work that is taking place and how the future
> versions of Communicator are improving...
mozilla.org does not exist to entertain end users by showing them
previews of what they might be able to download months from now.
mozilla.org exists in service of developers.
> So if its a newbie who's stuck with IE4 (bundled) which typically
> crashes all the time, they'd think 'Hey, why not try this browser
> which has so much work being done on it to make it more stable.
There is no browser available on mozilla.org for that user to run.
mozilla.org does not distribute binaries, because mozilla.org does not
deal in end-user materials.
If you don't think that the job of marketing or distributing the web
browser is being done properly by those who are already doing it (e.g.,
Netscape CPD) then you should feel free to do it yourself. I'm sure
everyone involved would appreciate the help.
This is the kind of thing that is pretty firmly in the charter of groups
that do integration and distribution -- for example, OEM vendors, or the
folks who put together Linux distributions.
However, the fact remains that Mozilla isn't even at beta level yet, so
for those folks to hype its merits to end users would be seriously
premature, since there is not yet anything that a non-developer really
ought to be trying to use.
And it will remain the case that mozilla.org is not the organization
that ought to be doing this proselytizing: it should be done by those
organizations which interact directly with end-users, and which
distribute binaries to end-users. mozilla.org does not do that.
mozilla.org distributes source code to developers. That's very
different. The two jobs have almost nothing in common.
--
Jamie Zawinski http://people.netscape.com/jwz/ about:jwz
To: Jamie Zawinski
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: "Edward S. Marshall"
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:55:49 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
In-reply-to:
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On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Jamie Zawinski wrote:
> This is the kind of thing that is pretty firmly in the charter of groups
> that do integration and distribution -- for example, OEM vendors, or the
> folks who put together Linux distributions.
I just need to interject a note here: Linux is a very poor example,
because Linux is not even close to an end-product; a distribution (like
Debian or RedHat) is. Joe User (generally) can't use a raw kernel. Joe
user -can- use a browser.
While I can see your point of Netscape being one user of Mozilla, and
the developer community being another, I don't think it's unreasonable for
a free software project to be supported by the community developing it
(ie. the developers, Netscape, and whoever else is contributing) as an end
product for the users for whom it is presumably being developed.
I'd draw a comparison more with the BSD camps (if we're doing OS
comparisons; they provide a complete distribution with their development,
thus making it something Joe User -can- use) or other open-source
application projects such as GIMP and Apache. Which all have both
developer and end-user oriented portions of their sites, and binaries for
download.
Putting a user-friendly face on mozilla.org isn't all that difficult, and
it avoids creating market confusion with a divergent site/project as you
suggest. Keeping it all together simply makes good sense, in terms of PR,
and avoids branding multiple spins of Mozilla produced by the development
community at large. Sure, commercial spins will happen, but that's beyond
the scope of the core development community. End-user support of Mozilla
by the developers should be a singular effort.
All MHO, of course. :-)
--
-------------------. emarshal at logic.net .---------------------------------
Edward S. Marshall `-----------------------' http://www.logic.net/~emarshal/
Linux labyrinth 2.1.108 #4 SMP Mon Jul 6 14:49:37 CDT 1998 i586 unknown
9:45am up 7 days, 18:42, 3 users, load average: 0.07, 0.09, 0.18
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: Jamie Zawinski
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:59:32 -0700
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: the mystic knights of mozilla, http://www.mozilla.org/
References:
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Edward S. Marshall wrote:
>
> Putting a user-friendly face on mozilla.org isn't all that difficult, and
> it avoids creating market confusion with a divergent site/project as you
> suggest.
Then go do it. Put together a web site extolling the virtues of
Mozilla-the-end-user program, organize a virtual staff, and update it
regularly for a while to convince us that you and your volunteer
marketing department are actually going to *be* there. If you design
the thing and it looks like it won't interfere with mozilla.org's main
mission (in other words, your pages help and do not hinder) and, most
importantly, if you convince us that you're *doing the job* and will
continue to do so on an ongoing basis, then we could consider moving
your pages to the mozilla.org site.
But we've said this before, and it bears repeating:
We've got enough to do with the task we've already signed up for.
We don't have the resources to sign up for an orthogonal task.
If you want this task to get done, you're going to have to do it
yourself. Or you're going to have to get your company to donate the
money so that we can hire some more people to do it. Or something.
But we simply don't have the resources to do it, even if I thought
it was an appropriate thing to do. So the point is moot.
--
Jamie Zawinski http://people.netscape.com/jwz/ about:jwz
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: "Simon P. Lucy"
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:02:41 +0100
In-reply-to:
References:
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At 04:37 14/07/98 -0700, Jamie Zawinski wrote:
>Sandeep Hundal wrote:
>>
>> I think the first thing to do would be to put some more content on the
>> website aimed at the non-developer/programmer community.
>
>If you think that mozilla.org should include that content, then you
>misunderstand the mission of mozilla.org. This organization does not
>exist to get Mozilla executables onto as many desktops as possible; it
>exists to facilitate development of the source code. The customers of
>mozilla.org are not end users, they are developers. The customers of
>*those developers* are end users, and therefore, the responsibility for
>end-user handholding, and marketing, belong to those developers.
>
The confusion comes I think because many of the developers are either
prosyletisers by nature or by enthusiasm. There is a tendency also to
think of mozilla as a product which it isn't. This does not mean that
developers should not prosyletise or encourage users or anything else which
they believe promotes their own efforts. Just don't do it on mozilla.org
or any of its organs.
This is a project in progress. In some cases, slow painful progress :-),
but be grateful there is no overriding marketing pressure to get out the
door half baked code and ideas.
Simon
To: "'Simon P. Lucy'" , mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: RE: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: Sandeep Hundal
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 17:07:05 +0100
Resent-date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:08:25 -0700 (PDT)
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> At 04:37 14/07/98 -0700, Jamie Zawinski wrote:
> >Sandeep Hundal wrote:
> >>
> >> I think the first thing to do would be to put some more content on the
> >> website aimed at the non-developer/programmer community.
> >
> >If you think that mozilla.org should include that content, then you
> >misunderstand the mission of mozilla.org. This organization does not
> >exist to get Mozilla executables onto as many desktops as possible; it
> >exists to facilitate development of the source code. The customers of
> >mozilla.org are not end users, they are developers. The customers of
> >*those developers* are end users, and therefore, the responsibility for
> >end-user handholding, and marketing, belong to those developers.
> >
>
> The confusion comes I think because many of the developers are either
> prosyletisers by nature or by enthusiasm. There is a tendency also to
> think of mozilla as a product which it isn't. This does not mean that
> developers should not prosyletise or encourage users or anything else
> which
> they believe promotes their own efforts. Just don't do it on mozilla.org
> or any of its organs.
>
> This is a project in progress. In some cases, slow painful progress :-),
> but be grateful there is no overriding marketing pressure to get out the
> door half baked code and ideas.
>
> Simon
>
No one said anything about pushing the product out to the public, or ideas.
The marketing concept that we're pushing out here would be one to show Joe
Public how the Mozilla code is being improved on. Obviously there would be
comments detailing that its a slow process and ideas might take time, but
its the whole *concept* that we're promoting.
Not long ago I didn't even know there where such huge and greatly working
applications on the internet which were being worked on by thousands of
developers, and the product was available for free.
This whole idea has to be marketed to Newbies who will then hopefully dump
IE when they see the amount of work being done on this (eventually we can
put up the success on the net no ?).
Now, I'm not saying the developers do it, but firstly we need the consent
and the backing of the mozilla community, and secondly a framework has to be
put in place so that people can let the martketeers know whats happening.
Kind of a Linux International weekly.
Sunny
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: RE: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: "Simon P. Lucy"
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 17:32:56 +0100
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At 17:07 14/07/98 +0100, you wrote:
>
>> At 04:37 14/07/98 -0700, Jamie Zawinski wrote:
>> >Sandeep Hundal wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I think the first thing to do would be to put some more content on the
>> >> website aimed at the non-developer/programmer community.
>> >
>> >If you think that mozilla.org should include that content, then you
>> >misunderstand the mission of mozilla.org. This organization does not
>> >exist to get Mozilla executables onto as many desktops as possible; it
>> >exists to facilitate development of the source code. The customers of
>> >mozilla.org are not end users, they are developers. The customers of
>> >*those developers* are end users, and therefore, the responsibility for
>> >end-user handholding, and marketing, belong to those developers.
>> >
>>
>> The confusion comes I think because many of the developers are either
>> prosyletisers by nature or by enthusiasm. There is a tendency also to
>> think of mozilla as a product which it isn't. This does not mean that
>> developers should not prosyletise or encourage users or anything else
>> which
>> they believe promotes their own efforts. Just don't do it on mozilla.org
>> or any of its organs.
>>
>> This is a project in progress. In some cases, slow painful progress :-),
>> but be grateful there is no overriding marketing pressure to get out the
>> door half baked code and ideas.
>>
>> Simon
>>
>No one said anything about pushing the product out to the public, or ideas.
>The marketing concept that we're pushing out here would be one to show Joe
>Public how the Mozilla code is being improved on. Obviously there would be
>comments detailing that its a slow process and ideas might take time, but
>its the whole *concept* that we're promoting.
Why will they care? Unless its productised its a bit hard to market to end
users, unless those end users are developers and mozilla.org addresses
them. There's a kind of grey area where advocates will present to IT
management or product marketing in some software company the use of mozilla
as a vehicle for whatever their own particular foibles are.
That's partially what I do as well as any actual direct development or
project management and yes such people need to be made aware of the
possibilities. I think though that until mozilla struggles up to at least
a beta state its better leaving to developer advocates rather than not.
>Not long ago I didn't even know there where such huge and greatly working
>applications on the internet which were being worked on by thousands of
>developers, and the product was available for free.
>This whole idea has to be marketed to Newbies who will then hopefully dump
>IE when they see the amount of work being done on this (eventually we can
>put up the success on the net no ?).
End users are pretty much immune from infection by that kind of marketing
though until and unless there is a product for them to use. Once there is
a beta release and whoever decides what a product based upon mozilla is
(and more than one product is likely), then it can be stood up against
whatever competition there is at that time. Only after the initial release
will the Bazaar's beneficial side effects be seen by end users by giving
them a continuously evolving and flexible family of products.
>
>Now, I'm not saying the developers do it, but firstly we need the consent
>and the backing of the mozilla community, and secondly a framework has to be
>put in place so that people can let the martketeers know whats happening.
>Kind of a Linux International weekly.
That kind of fills me with dread and loathing, if only because premature
marketing of the concept can kill it stone dead in the eyes of the market.
It will become known as Bizarre ware rather than Bazaar ware.
Simon
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: Jon Franz
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:28:40 -0400
Organization: RWC networking dept
References:
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Hrm.. lemme put this spin on it...
How would having a few thousand N5/mozilla banners/buttons on various
web pages across the net hurt?
By keeping the idea in the public eye, we keep their curiosity up so
they'll actually give the browser a try when its done... M$ did this
for months before releasing IE4... We could have maybe one page on the
mozilla web site, or even off the site but pointing at the site, that
has a description of planned features and maybe a brief synopsis of
progress and a screen shot or two, then all of us working on the code,
and all of us who want to but can't, put the banners/buttons on our
personal web sites and point at that page.
Public awareness is the key... NeXtstep and Win95 are perfect examples
of how to fail and succeed in the marketing arena... the gurus knew of
NeXtStep, and some used it. Everyone knew of 95 for a YEAR before it
came out... I'm not saying we should licensee a rolling stones song or
anything, but having a few thousand "N5 - the lizard is coming"
banners/buttons could at least keep us in the press and public's eyes...
I think I repeated myself, so I'll shutup and go now...
I'm already working on artwork for banners/buttons, and I emailed Jamie
asking if Netscape had any prelim artwork we could use... Any
help/ideas/feedback would be appreciated.
~Jon (who wants to code more, but is too busy and underknowledgable)
To: mailto:mozilla-general@DOMAIN.HIDDEN
Subject: Re: Mozilla: The Gentle Art Of Failure
From: Jamie Zawinski
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:58:54 -0700
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Organization: the mystic knights of mozilla, http://www.mozilla.org/
References:
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Jon Franz wrote:
>
> Hrm.. lemme put this spin on it...
>
> How would having a few thousand N5/mozilla banners/buttons on various
> web pages across the net hurt?
Here is how it would hurt:
Because *today*, the mozilla.org site is geared totally toward
developers. If a non-developer finds their way onto mozilla.org, or
onto these newsgroups three things happen: that user becomes confused;
the developers here have their time wasted by having to read some random
tech support question; and finally, that user goes away frustrated.
(I'm not guessing about this, it already happens every day to some
extent.)
That's no good for anyone.
If mozilla.org was set up to cater to non-developers (which it is
not) then trying to drive end-user traffic to it would be the right
thing; but right now, that's exactly not what we need.
> Public awareness is the key... NeXtstep and Win95 are perfect examples
> of how to fail and succeed in the marketing arena... the gurus knew of
> NeXtStep, and some used it.
And Netscape is nothing like NeXT. Stop assuming that nobody is
marketing Mozilla. Netscape is -- the company that put this executable
on sixty million desktops. Those people haven't just dried up and blown
away, you know.
I'm not saying that Mozilla the end-user product should not be
marketted. I'm saying that mozilla.org is not the organization
chartered to do it. Netscape CPD is. If you want to take on the
task as well, feel free.
--
Jamie Zawinski http://people.netscape.com/jwz/ about:jwz