Update: Dave and I have worked things out and are collaborating to improve the feedback loop so similar misunderstandings don’t occur in the future.
I just led—or tried to lead—a discussion here at Gnomedex about spreading software through grassroots means.
During the discussion, Dave Winer stood up and asked caustically why I wasn’t discussing Firefox’s future and how it will help users. The answer is simple: I wasn’t leading a Q&A about Firefox. I didn’t sense that the other 399 people in the room wanted me to use our 30 minutes reciting a publicly available Firefox 2 roadmap, particularly given the three key principles for Gnomedex 6: engage the audience in a discussion; keep the discussion on track; and avoid product pitches.
Now that we are in an appropriate forum for discussing this, I have to wonder on what grounds Dave questioned Mozilla’s transparency and its willingness to communicate with users. A Firefox 2.0 wiki has been available on the web for about a year now. The project has a public bug tracking database, video blogs, meeting notes, forums, newsgroups and chatrooms that are frequented by virtually every current Firefox developer (which I am not), most of whom have blogs. The project is inherently transparent because many key contributors are not even Mozilla employees.
Dave argued that he doesn’t care about Mozilla’s aspirations regarding Microsoft and just wants its developers to focus on users. But I began the discussion by noting that Firefox is about catering to users, not toppling Microsoft or simply spreading open source. I wrote on the same topic three weeks ago. So what prompted his complaint?
I then recalled a personal example from last year where Dave made another suggestion without any supporting evidence. Although I’d never talked with him before, Dave wrote that the new project I’m now working on is “obviously” about baking adware into Firefox. That’s a particularly stinging attack on my character given that Firefox exists to do the opposite. He says he would have ‘presented my point of view’ (on my own project) if I had shared it. That’s not an excuse for libelling someone. Dave has justifiably criticized others for attacking him without the facts, but didn’t bother to get mine.
(This is a moot point anyway. Now that the ‘correction’ has been issued, Dave still maintains that he was nearly correct and cites the Google/Mozilla relationship as evidence. Except that the original post attacked my new project, which is entirely independent of—and considerably more personal than—Firefox. Not to mention that I have nothing to do with the Mozilla Corp’s business relationship with Google, or that Firefox developers voluntarily chose Google long before Google had ever heard of Firefox, because it was the best engine for users.)
I probably erred in raising this issue during the discussion, because it gave people the impression that Dave and I have a controversial history. But as I said on stage, I’d never met or interacted with Dave until today and came here with a neutral impression of him; only once the back-and-forth started did I even remember his post last year.
Steve Gillmor, with whom I’d also never met or talked, ended the discussion by noting that I was “behaving like Microsoft” by “avoiding dicey questions” like the Firefox 2 featureset. What? That’s the world’s most innocuous topic, and everyone in the room could have found it on their laptops in seconds. I was trying to use the 30 minutes we were given to lead a useful discussion about grassroots marketing. It’s a shame that wasn’t possible.
July 1st, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Some people just aren’t nice people. Smile and walk away.
July 1st, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Why can’t everyone just ignore Steve and Dave? They remind me of the horrible political pundits on TV news shows… ugh.
I know I may be a nobody on the web, but I think MoFo and MoCo are doing a great job of publishing roadmaps and other development information. If people don’t like it, they can always fork and make their own damn browser.
July 1st, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Dave should invest some of that Verisign money in psychotherapy. Perhaps he could find a therapist that would permit him to record and publish his sessions as podcasts. Maybe then he’d stop subjecting the blogosphere to his narcissistic bullying rants.
July 1st, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Blake:
They’re sharks and they smelled the blood in the water. At the Gillmor Gang lunchtime podcast Michael Arrington mentioned (almost in passing) that their job is to “chum” the water (not his words, but hey, it’s in keeping with my shark metaphor).
Don’t take it personally, and certainly don’t engage (as much as possible); the more controversy swirling around them, the more they benefit.
You’re doing good work. Keep it up and don’t worry about what the cranky geeks say.
July 1st, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Thanks for your comment over on my ZDNet post about your presentation Blake (ref: http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=227). Yes your talk was focused on Firefox and mainstream users, so in that respect Dave was really just re-emphasizing your points. Where it got a bit heated was when you started mocking (justifiably in terms of recent browser history) how Microsoft abandoned improving the IE browser - with the ‘Wheee!’ video. I think Dave’s point was that it takes away from the user focus when you attack IE in that way. That’s where I do think he had a good point, but perhaps I didn’t word it correctly in my final paragraph in my post.
In any case, I have a lot of respect for both you and Dave - so I hate to see these discussions become so personal. Keep up the great work with Firefox! I’m a big fan and have used Firefox as my main browser for some years now.
July 1st, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Winer is a whiner.
July 1st, 2006 at 7:42 pm
There are throngs of people who had the same experience as you. (Many worse.) Don’t pay attention – there’s nothing to be had that way.
July 1st, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Richard,
Thanks for continuing the conversation. I’ll repeat what I wrote over on your blog (we should probably consolidate :):
My comments on Microsoft weren’t just arbitrary (nor, I think, were they mocking). Chris Messina asked how anyone could be persuaded to stick with Firefox if and when Microsoft achieves feature parity. Not wanting to get in a feature-by-feature debate on stage (that information is freely available on the Web), I answered that in my personal opinion, the mere fact that Microsoft abandoned users when they needed the company most was reason enough to be wary of using a product with an uncertain future–even though, as I’ve said many times, IE7 itself is a solid product.
And as I said immediately after showing it, the reason I showed “Whee” (which was produced by a Firefox fan, not by Mozilla) at all was to make the point that although many people heralded the video, it actually didn’t help Firefox in the sense of spreading the product (which, again, is what this discussion was supposed to be about).
I, too, regret what happened here today.
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:34 am
I talked with several people at Gnomedex yesterday and one reminded me of something interesting. Remember Sun Microsystems? Remember how they attacked Microsoft? That was blowing an opportunity to talk about your product instead.
I also talked with Dave and he told me about what he was thinking about. He doesn’t want one browser to have a monopoly and is sensitive about market share comparisons. Already on Channel 9 (a Microsoft Web site) Firefox usage is above 50%). So, he wants you to switch your strategy from getting market share to one of serving developers and users.
When you put slides up that say “annhilate Microsoft” he’s going to give you shit because he gave Microsoft shit when they annhilated Netscape and caused us to go into a period where there wasn’t any innovation for users.
Now that I’m outside of Microsoft I see just how important this principle of having competitors in the marketplace is. The IE team has been energized (and reinvested in) simply because of the competition in the marketplace.
What happens if Firefox gets monopoly market share? Same problem. You guys will get lazy and invest your talents elsewhere.
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:12 am
Robert,
Were you actually listening to what I was saying? Five seconds before I showed that slide, I introduced it by saying “There have been lots of misconceptions about why Firefox exists.” That’s why the room laughed: because it contained parodies of other people’s perceptions. The very next thing I said was that those those perceptions were wrong.
I really have trouble discussing something with someone who clearly wasn’t listening, so I’m going to have to stop here. Next time, listen first, perhaps even read my blog first, get to know who I am and what drives me first, and then comment.
Blake
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Blake,
I thought your discussion was informative and interesting until the ‘heat’ came about.
It is unfortunate that such an event has to occur and heads clash, but this is bound to happen again in the business world. I admire the way you handled the situation and encourage you to always defend your views without stooping to a lower level by insulting the instigator.
Best of luck in your future endeavours. Keep in touch and let me know when you launch your product.
Cheers,
Aidan Henry
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:00 pm
This is a surreal debate. Blake Ross starts the talk by saying Firefox is not about killing Microsoft, but rather, it’s about serving users. Dave hears the opposite. He says, you shouldn’t think about killing Microsoft, you should serve the users. Dave complains that the web world lost time because MSIE came to dominate, and Microsoft froze development. Blake shows a user-submitted video animation that present a metaphor of MSIE spinning place. Dave finds it offensive.
Dave wants to know what the feature roadmap is. Firefox has their requirements posted publicly in a Wiki.
“What we’ve got here, is a failure to communicate.” There’s some sub-text going on beneath what most of us in the room could hear or see. Could be an overlay of past resentments. Could be divided attention. Could be ego. Could be lots of things.
I’ll put a hypothesis out there: it’s mutual lack of respect. Blake and Dave need to go out for coffee or something.
July 2nd, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Blake — I was at your presentation. Dave and Steve were way off base, and you handled yourself well. I talked to several folks today who were as mystified as I was about where in the hell that comment came from.
Scoble — I’m surprised at you. You wrote a post today about protecting your reputation, but you come here and pile on Blake without knowing what you’re talking about. I can see your bullshit here because I was in the room when this happened. Am I supposed to trust your recollection of other events? And speculating about what may or may not happen when some company attains some level of market share is just absurd. Anything may happen, depending on any number of factors, and no one can say what will or won’t happen at some mythical future time. But let me try to restate the point that Blake has been making: Microsoft is first and foremost an operating system developer. They also have a browser product. Firefox makes a browser. That’s their business. Microsoft has demonstrated they are willing to stop development of their browser when they feel they have a sufficient lead in the marketplace. Firefox has thus far demonstrated that they are interested in developing a browser product that is community supported. Based on demonstrated past behavior, where would you put your trust?
July 2nd, 2006 at 6:22 pm
I think the whole ‘personal battle’ which apparently started because Dave wrote something about Blake at his blog and was taken forward by Blake at his presentation - was in bad taste.
I agree with Dave - it’s his blog and he is free to write his views but Blake should have replied to him either through email or at his blog - there was no need to mention that during the discussions and was unfortunate.
As others said - I hope Dave and Blake sort it out amicably. It doesn’t help anybody.
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:27 pm
I’ve always admired Scoble, and Dave has my praises for all his XML work.
However, reading both your blog posts and hearing what Dave had to say during Blake’s presentation sickens me.
Dave, you were totally off-base. I can forgive you if you actually went into the presentation thinking it was a commercial for Firefox 2.0. Sadly enough, even after the fact, your latest post shows me that not only are you blatantly trying to start a flame war for no reason, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Scoble, I expect more from you. You obviously didn’t actually listen to anything Blake had to say. Even worse you stand on the front side to attack under false information.
>What happens if Firefox gets monopoly market share?
>Same problem. You guys will get lazy and invest your talents
>elsewhere.
Who are you talking about here? The Mozilla Corporation, the Foundation, the independent developers who don’t work for either, or independent devs working for google, ibm, etc?
Saying all of these people, and any future talents wouldn’t take up the code and the resources (like flock as an example has) is a large accusation.
I think what saddens me the most is that two people I highly respect, are acting like children or worse, young inexperienced techies and the one guy who actually is coming out mature is a 19 year old geek (no offense Blake, you’re great).
Sad. Especially coming from the two of you.
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Dave and I are communicating directly now and working together to move past this and onto better things. I’ll be posting on that shortly.
July 15th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
I’m sorry, but frankly I think you’d be better off avoiding people like Dave who like to fight more than they think.
I’m sick of his chip-on-a-shoulder and I’m likewise tired of Steve’s incoherent yet insistent babble.
Don’t lower yourself to their level. Sometimes reaching consensus is a great thing, but other times you have to say, I’m sorry… you’re jackasses, and I have better things to do with my time.
July 16th, 2006 at 9:33 am
I am glad that Winer has dropped his beef with you. Winer does often seem aggressive and polarized. The Gilmore Gang including Scoble, can be just that at times, a gang. It is a bummer that your talk was somewhat derailed which does not serve their goals, only the competitions.