Thoughts on Mozilla using Closed-Source Software

I want to be short because is a long discussion that we had often inside many group in Mozilla.

I am the first one that want to use open source but we had to admit a fact that not all the open source solution suites for our needs as community in a short time with a real support and Mozilla doesn’t have the resources to put developers to create specific suites.

About Google Forms is a long discussion already done on Discourse (Activate Mozilla - new unified impact form and Tech Speakers activity).

About blogs I am for WordPress (I am a contributor in that project) but I understand that medium is the actual trend and is very easy to promote and we have to no forget that mozilla have already many wordpress websites.

About nextcloud for documents is not the mainly problem but all the docs. Collabora actually doesn’t have all the features in google docs like the comments and the multiple editing.

About Slack (Internal chat structured for a community) so this discussion was already done we need only to reuse or look on discourse for discussion that have points about it.

The same discussion is also for Vidyo, there is an open source alternative that support phones, channels and let to have in a channel 60 people with an easy to use software for user and administrator and that registers the calls? Actually not so much.

I say that and I am a vice president of an Italian association that do promotion of open source for companies so I know about what I am talking. Open source cannot fit everything we need as community and we cannot do so much without lost months behind a project to let that to be suitable for us.
Maybe if we had more developers that contribute on that project the situation can change. I don’t know how many people look on the page about contribute in Mozilla and doesn’t say to contribute only to Mozilla but also to projects that Mozilla use like WordPress and Django. I don’t know how many people follow the Moss project but in the past helped with donations to introduce features that Mozilla needs.

So Mozilla is working in that direction as we can as foundation, volunteers, employee. Also we have to not forget that Mozilla is not so strong as number of employee like the competitors that in the same time is involved in too many projects that are not only about software.

In few words Mozilla is doing what is possible but we need to help (as already suggested https://wiki.mozilla.org/ParticipationSystems/CoCo_Tools_List) where we can in the other projects and explain case by case. As an example with Google form there was the issue of localizations so there is people that is working on an alternative so guys keep an eye on discourse because this discussion already happen there!

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