dr-robot

Actually I do have a suggestion. When I’m asked to do something that I think is pointless I go full nice, but rational mode. Keep asking questions as if you’re trying to understand their request. And as you keep asking why this way and not that way they may end up realising how ridiculous they sound and drop it or accept an easier alternative. It may be important to avoid gloating and to propose your preferred solution (available by phone) as a suggestion to help them save face. The way to work with crappy managers is to keep them feeling good about themselves. You can use that to your advantage. It sucks and it may not work but there’s only so much you can do.

Thanks for explaining! That sounds very different than what I had in mind (just sharing an outlook calendar of meetings) and I understand your frustration as I’d hate that too. That must really suck. Wish I could help.

Could you please explain what is naive in my reasoning?

I don’t really follow your reasoning unless your bosses have already shown they’re malicious people. At work, my work calendar is shared with the entire company to see. I like it as it lets people easily schedule meetings with me, know at which of the two locations (or at home) I am. I have a personal calendar which I don’t link to my work calendar at all. I do think that accountability is an important part of healthy work relationships with managers because (with good managers) it comes with autonomy. Why do you think your bosses will use it maliciously?

Sorry, but I don’t believe that’s realistic. Devs need to be paid. To be paid they need execs. Donations might sustain a small project, but not a web browser. Linux is developed primarily by devs employed by the big corporations. It would never survive on donations and volunteer labour. Same for Firefox. A browser is too complicated to be run as a GitHub project.

Absolutely not and is not what I said. Just that due to lack of alternatives it’s not really beneficial for privacy enthousiasts to make the only browser with privacy features dislike the community it’s working for. If NOYB has the resources for a legal complaint, it has the resources to lead this dialogue.

Okay, but what if after all this legal action Mozilla decides that it’s no longer worth serving the privacy conscious crowd? Which browser will you use then?

Things only happen in a desirable direction if there is dialogue. Linus made the decision about making Linux GPL but he is against aggressive enforcement. He thinks it’s much smarter to go and slowly convince the offending parties that it’s in their benefit.

Right, but what other browser are you going to use?

Turning the feature on by default is bad, but I don’t think that legal complaints are the way to go as well as the aggressive tone of NOYB. Firefox is the only browser developed and maintained professionally which has the potential of offering some privacy on the web. Given the importance of web browsers volunteer work just won’t cut it with the amount of features and security concerns that a browser needs.

NOYB would’ve done much better by talking to Mozilla directly and advocating for them to do the right thing going for a legal complaint as the final nuclear option. If the was the case, then good that there’s a complaint, but the article does not indicate the any of this happened.