Interview w/ Mozilla Foundation

Wanted to share some thoughts from an interview with Mozilla:

• Mitchell and John noted that business partnerships that Mozilla has entered into (e.g., Google) have been successful and acceptable to the community largely because they have chosen partners closely aligned with Mozilla’s mission.
• John also noted that Mozilla's business deals do not impose a large number of obligations on the Foundation.
• Both also noted that many of the business agreements that arose came out of community desires. (For example, the community asked for a Russian search engine, and now, that search engine is the default instead of Google in Russian language builds.)

Please take a look at the notes for additional details, and let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you for this. Can we say then that the important thing is:

• Chose partners on the basis of mutually held principles between the organisations.
• Make obligations clear, and with a time-limit
• First find the need, then find the partner (not the other way around)?

"Business agreements that arose came out of community desires": very important, we can never forget the communities.

certainly, but I find it unlikely that the community will ever actually come to a decision that "we need to make a business deal with a telecom company" (or equivalent). Rather, it the community might decide "we need more people to see WP in Latin America" - It would be up to the WMF to decide what the most appropriate deal for that outcome would be.

Makes sense to choose partners on the basis of mutually held principles between organisations. Perhaps a way of identifying partners is to search for organisations that are undertaking a similar goal or project for example: to archive digital material, and then to set up a partnership with clear objectives and sign off on a timeline, and share resources to achieve all goals.