In September, we hosted our first MozCamp session focused exclusively on the Mozilla Manifesto. Co-facilitated by Mitchell Baker and Matjaz Horvat, the session attracted close to 50 Mozillians at MozCamp EU in Warsaw.
Mitchell shared her perspective on how the Manifesto came to be and why she wrote it. The Manifesto came later in Mozilla’s history; the Firefox browser was already widely used. While it was obvious in the early 2000s that the world needed a new browser, it wasn’t immediately clear that we should describe why we built it. The values and goals of the Manifesto initially struck some people as far-reaching or impractical, but in fact Mozilla was already doing them. Written as a 0.9 version because Mitchell anticipated revisions, particularly when translated into other languages, it has stood the test of time.
MozCamp EU helped validate that the Manifesto is as profound and relevant today as it was when it was written. As a whole, session participants saw very little need to change the Manifesto language.
The Manifesto recommendations we received from participants included:
- Call out privacy more specifically
- Make the Manifesto more visible and interactive
- Help the average person understand how to apply the Manifesto
- Make the Manifesto real: what does it mean to be living it?
Do you agree with these recommendations? Does the Manifesto capture what brought you to Mozilla, what keeps you here, and what we want to accomplish?
Our next live discussion will be at Mozilla Festival in London next week. Whether at MozFest, MozCamp, or in the comments of this post, we hope you’ll join us and make your thoughts heard.