Mozilla ten year anniversary party

A few people have asked me "WTF! Why isn't there a Mozilla party at DNA??" Well, there was going to be. In a nutshell, here's what happened:

I offered them the club rent-free, and offered to do the legwork of booking entertainment, once they told me what their entertainment budget was. I got them several price quotes. Weeks went by, and their budget turned out to be "some spare change we found in the couch." Also, they intentionally didn't publicize it at all, because they decided that they didn't actually want the public showing up. "There are a bunch of reasons for this", they told me. I don't know what those reasons are.

A huge nightclub like DNA Lounge is the wrong place for something like that. So, they're having their low-key insiders-only mixer somewhere else. My understanding is that if you don't already know about it, they don't really want you to know where it is.

Oh well.

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27 Responses:

  1. mc_kingfish says:

    I would never belong to a Mozilla party guest-list that would have me as a member.

  2. jmtd says:

    With the whole .org -> .com $$$ and the iceweasel nonsense, this seems like the kind of thing you'd expect from the project touted as a F/OSS model of success.

    • gryazi says:

      If you think this is a clusterfuck, wait until you see what they did to the GUI in Firefox 3.

      • I'm waiting for Version 4. Version 4 is always the abomination in browser versionings.

      • strspn says:

        Now that the address bar tells me what I want to see, I no longer need to think.

      • stu_hacking says:

        This is to say nothing of the hideous Frankenstein's monster they made from the combined bookmarks/history browser. Need to know where you've been in the past few hours? tough!

      • cym3n says:

        Any annoyances with the GUI in v3 are far overshadowed by fixing the sluggish speed and high memory consumption of v2. I am using the 3.0pre nightly builds and it is blisteringly fast. I don't like the new icons for forward/backward arrows especially with "Use Small Icons" enabled but I can live with it. Firefox v2 was getting very tiring.

        • gryazi says:

          In fairness, that is true. (And the location bar search would be fine if it were a separate feature with its own search box, rather than a punch in the face.)

  3. deathcircle says:

    Some of us web-born would love to go to this sort of thing.

    Too bad.

    >:(

  4. ghosthacked says:

    are they worried that they'll be identified as card carrying members of the Mozilla Party?

    I'm noticing this meme btw in alot of the geek parties as of late, going back into those info @415.YOU.WISH days..

    Sigh.

  5. remonstrare says:

    Wasn't their reasoning "it's a 21s-and-over venue, so some key Mozilla contributors can't go. Because they can't go, nobody will go"?

  6. omnifarious says:

    That project has never really seemed all that open to me and this attitude on their part just adds to my impression.

  7. mozpkim says:

    jwz: i'm sorry it didn't work out to have the party at DNA, as you know from emails with me and mary here at mozilla. here's why we chose a different venue.

    1. we wanted to keep this a smaller and more low key event. the main reason is that we are still working on a major release and we didn't want to host a blowout party that would cause developers and contributors who couldn't travel to feel like they'd missed out.

    2. rather than focusing on just 3/31, we're doing a series of events over the year to commemorate the tenth anniversary of mozilla, all over the world. more details to come at mitchell baker's blog this week: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com

    3. we didn't learn how big DNA was until after we'd initially connected with you in the public bug on organizing the party: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=392686. and you're right, DNA was the wrong place for a small event. we're sorry for creating any extra work for you in getting estimates.

    we've been promoting the party on mozilla.org and by reaching out to local mozilla community members. the invite's been live here for a few weeks: http://www.mozilla.org/party/2008/

    take care.
    - paul kim

    • rapier1 says:

      lame lame lame

    • dustout says:

      That is silly, Paul Kim. It's the 10 year anniversary. It should be a fun time with a big party! Why do you hate fun?

    • It's interesting that when you're responding, you're using damage-control-speak. I guess that happens even with open source! It's like a press release!

      "connected with you"

      "reaching out"

      Etc.

      I'm not criticizing, I'm just sayin', going forward, what's on Mozilla's plate next month?

    • pyrop says:

      A corporate drone with the title "VP of Something" attempting damage control?

      What is this, news?

    • >> [blahblah] the main reason is that we are still working on a major release and [blahblah]

      This was the bothersome part. Shouldn't they always be working on a major release?

      • vsync says:

        It never used to stop them. From the mists of time:

        I've just noticed that there's still purple ink on the inside of my right wrist spelling the word VOID: the hand-stamp from a concert that I went to last week. I left work, went to the show, and came back to work immediately afterwards. I've been here since.

  8. evan says:

    The new party location is on the Mozilla bug:
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=392686#c26
    It's where most tech parties I've heard about are these days.
    http://www.111minnagallery.com/about/

  9. bonniegrrl says:

    wow... that's lame.
    The only reason I would have ever even attended is if:
    1. You were there.
    2. It was at DNA

    oh well...