I’m often frustrated with Chris because we have clients and bills to pay of our own, but he continues to spend a great deal of ‘mind space’ and energy on Firefox (as well as his disappointment with Flock). Each hour he spends thinking about this stuff is an hour we can’t bill for.

I kept running into this problem, too: I would (and still do) spend tons of time on projects that I cannot bill for. So much so that I have begun to organize my business more around the projects I am working on, and people I am working with and trying to find a way to create wealth around those (which is where Open Business Models and barcampbank, P2P money, etc come from).

So, maybe Chris could be creating a whole new business around OSS browser technology? I don’t know. Bet he’d make something pretty awesome…

To many people Firefox has become a religion. You can’t criticize someone’s religion.

I certainly understand from the MoFoCo peeps point of view of “Hey, here’s this guy who thinks we have an obligation to the community, who seems to think that what we’re doing isn’t as worthwhile as these 10-15 things he outlined. We’re busy okay? Why don’t you take up the fight for these things that you so strongly believe in? We’ve got our hands full, thank you very much.”

But at the same time, I also agree with many of Chris’s points. I think that despite what Mozilla and Co think their obligation to the community is, the community obviously has a different perception. Chris simply stepped up to say what many people I’m certain were thinking. Mozilla took millions of users under their wing, offering a “Better, More Secure Web Experience”, and while they’re giving away their product for free, they still have to support their customer base, and part of this (as Chris described) is to keep the web open and free by stepping up to the challenge of proprietary and closed frameworks such as Apollo, Silverlight and Java FX. By failing to do so they fail the millions of people they liberated from closed proprietary products such as IE that they worked so hard to free people from.

Also, they may be a particularly progressive organization, but they need to do a better job of reacting to such criticisms. Especially when paid employees who are supposed to foster community around their product react negatively to community feedback. Yes, I’m talking specifically about Asa Dotzler. Instead of saying “Messina, no free lunch here.” he should be saying “Okay, we hear you, would you like to help us reach these goals? What about others who feel the same, is there enough interest in the community, or is this an important enough issue that we need to start forming a community strategy around it?”