As soon as possible, there will be a transition plan being communicated. This is not a trivial thing to do, so we have still some work to do.
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However, transparency and decision making are different things
To me it seems clear that even with a community (paid and non-paid people) Mozilla is not a totally horizontal organization. It’s clear in it’s Mozilla Roles and Leadership and Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines
Connected Devices is not a brand we can identify ourselves externally well. How will we identify ourselves with external mediums avoiding the Firefox OS brand? Mozilla Connected Devices? Do you think we can get our point across from a Marketing perspective?
business decisions are done by Mozilla
To my knowledge, the word “Mozilla” means The Mozilla Project and The Mozilla Community, linked by The Mozilla Mission – at large.
No question here, but I hope “business decision” won’t become a stamp that we put on every decision that we fail to include the community in, in the future.
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If volunteers are just coworkers without salary, not involved in decisions.
Also the coworkers with salary weren’t involved in these decisions. Largely, at least.
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This is interesting. I’d like to know more – i have more questions than answers here 
Most of our new ideas seem to come from connected home, entertainment and such. So to your question – if the right opportunity comes, yes.
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I am currently with Arduino, but the closest thing to develop Javascript is Johnny Five, it would be interesting to use some of the WebAPIs already developed rather than relying on third-party tools.
For sure, yes because it’d be very difficult to make such decision if everyone are involved.
There is huge disappointment in Mozilla leadership going on within the community right now. Do you think the leadership team can have open office hours to facilitate answers to questions without the community raising its voice via blog posts or mobilizing itself to do so? This would solve transparency issues in many cases.
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I’m open to ideas. However, there are people who are responsible to make decisions – it is a part of their job. That cannot be a full democracy. But what I want to understand going forward, is to have the right influence, information flow and discussion with all parties that can contribute. It is important to make right decisions, and if we don’t include volunteers and community at large we will loose a lot of insight. So: transparency and consultancy and influence as widely as possible. Decision making will be always more centralized.
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I’m paraphrasing a moderator question, but what is the plan for current foxfooders? I think foxfooders would be much more valuable if they were testing fennec/flyweb because I really don’t see how we can test IoT functions on a phone we’re supposed to use as a daily driver.
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Question from mozmoderator
Why do you think we can win on the Connected Devices commercial ecosystem when we failed with Firefox OS? What’s difference?
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How do you think we can convince partners regarding connected devices when we failed to fulfill their expectations with Firefox OS? We obviously have a change of heart every few years. What differentiates us from other IoT initiatives and how do we regain our partners (and most importantly - developers) trust?
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We first have to define what it means to “win”. There are many ways Mozilla can impact the ecosystem. The most tangible way is through consumer products (like Smart TV), but we also should consider any activities successful in protecting users from a siloed, centralized, private ecosystem a win. Ways we may do this is by trolling the titans, where we impact the marketplace with our experiments, thought leadership and influence with developers.
This is much more possible when the ecosystem(s) are as immature and fragmented as they are in IoT (which was definitely not the case with smartphones). I think it is the right time to act NOW!
That being said, we do have a goal to find Product Market Fit with at least two products this year, which means our target users would tell us they’d be terribly disappointed if their lives did not have the solution they’re testing for us.
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There are different levels of involvement. There’s a difference between giving everyone a vote, and taking the time to consult people who will be affected.
For example, the Foxfooding program was only recently launched. It was a push to give volunteers real involvement. The announcement in Orlando was exciting if you got past the “we’re not going to…” because it meant that all the obstacles to really letting Firefox OS have community involvement were going to be removed.
The decision to shutter smartphones entirely was made without giving the community a chance to show potential, let alone meet it. The message really seems to be that whoever’s job it is to make these decisions doesn’t actually believe in the community, and that clearly includes employees as well as volunteers.
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As a contributor and a lead in my community, how can I gather more knowledge on IoTs Mozilla aims to connect, learn these technologies and get hands on experience and share that knowledge with other fellow members. Also how can I procure these devices? We plan to organize a Hackathon in near future.
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We gotta show progress. End user traction, innovation …
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I like your question! We’ll figure this out ASAP. We will have more stuff open as soon as we get things in order. Then you can better see what is in the thinking at the moment. I urge you to now go and study about the space – players, technologies, user adaption – in order to strat to for your ow opinion.
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We believe in community! As I said it is a unique aspect of all we do. But after all these years we saw less and less traction in our smartphone activities. We simply could not create end user traction and partners were going away. It was not that we didn’t believe – we believed and we tried – but we did not succeed. Unfortunately.
I did like to ask if there would be a different product for different market for Connected devices.
For example Firefox OS smartphone was Focused on emerging market.
Is there such a plan for Connected devices?
And then how do we shape that into ideas from volunteers on connected device.
I am from and I have a different idea on connected device for Africans.
Useful connected device in Africa would be different from iot in Europe due to different problem.
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