I just read this quote from my colleague, Firefox product manager Mike Beltzner:
Quote of Mike Beltzner:
it turns out we don't work *for* you, we work *with* you.
I think that says a lot about our spirit in Mozilla about how we work on our products. Nobody pays us to produce products like Firefox, Thunderbird, or SeaMonkey - even if some of us might earn money for doing it, that comes through indirect paths, and not from those using our products. And we're nothing more than community members, just that we're playing a certain role in the community, but we're still parts of it, and we are just as much users as we might fulfill other positions. On the other hand, every user has a chance to work with us to improve the products - we're open for (constructive) feedback and help. We even give you access to the code, and accept patches very much - with the result that some features we ship in our products get developed completely by people not earning a cent for working on it, but being 100% volunteers. This is how open source / free software should work.
Still, we have a lot of dreams of where we want to go, and our teams are always too small to fulfill all those dreams at once, so that help is not just appreciated but very much needed. As Mike goes on:
Quote of Mike Beltzner:
While we appreciate your input and designs, we would appreciate it more if you could help us find people to contribute implementations. Our time is more limited than our interest.
Feedback is good and often helpful, but very often things only happen if someone steps up and takes matters into his own hands (a lesson I sometimes think I have learned too well).
We need you to help us to become even better. We need you to work with us, just like we are working with you.
