Mozilla and Pocket

Posted Jul 23, 2015 10:50 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Mozilla and Pocket by ewan
Parent article: Mozilla and Pocket

> it's clearly reasonable for people to ask why, and it shouldn't be a difficult question.

Unfortunately, if the questioner doesn't like the answer, the discourse often becomes unreasonable. That's an unfortunate fact of life - in ALL walks thereof.

That is the problem, and that is what the grandparent was alluding to. And just because you might be reasonable when some software developer says to you "sorry, I don't agree, I don't have time to talk about it", doesn't mean everybody else is (and no, he is not lying when he says he doesn't have time, he needs to work, and sleep, and have a private life, and can't afford 36 hours a day just to discuss with J Random Punter who doesn't contribute to his paycheck).

Cheers,
Wol

Mozilla and Pocket

Posted Jul 23, 2015 17:12 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]

And so what happens is that Mozilla people use this idea for an excuse to not have the discussion at all, prejudging all inquiries as eventually and inevitably hostile and shifting blame for their own non-communication onto people who've not even had the chance to fuck up to begin with. Exactly as the systemd cabal failed in its own PR, trivial criticism could be answered with a FAQ list; difficult criticism can be answered individually and then added to said FAQ list; and the nutter who just keeps going around in circles can be told that they are doing so, and to have a good day. There's no effort wasted in doing any of the three, so any stated reason not to pony up is just another bloody excuse.

They won't answer because they don't know. They won't engage in an attempt to find out because proper answers would make Mozilla look bad -- which to adults is only a consequence of fucking up, itself following from inevitable imperfection. They'd rather non-answer to a choir of their faithful and be assured of a supportive, cheering, back-patting, "we're convinced that you did your best" response. From what's been reported of Mozilla and its innards, I'd go as far as to suggest that they're unable to think in ways that'd even remotely contradict Mozilla consensus and thus erode Mozilla's Open Source halo.

They could answer by simply following the steps that username `ewan' outlined in the grandparent comment. Instead they have excuses. Unfortunately this is not in any way equivalent to not having fucked up at all, to having made the mistake and then learned from it so as to not make it again, or even to saying that what was done wasn't a mistake at all: rather, it's at most a glib apology for having been caught.