Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by smarnach 989 days ago
I don't understand. If you think a fully owned subsidiary can have a "basically ceremonial" to the parent foundation, then what kind of relationship would be "not ceremonial"?

For what it's worth, Firefox is also developed by a fully owned subsidiary of the Mozilla foundation. Do you also think the relationship between Firefox and Mozilla is "basically ceremonial"?
1 comments
cxr 988 days ago
> If you think a fully owned subsidiary can have a "basically ceremonial" to the parent foundation, then what kind of relationship would be "not ceremonial"?

One in which the latter's involvement with the former (including influence on and influence from) amounts to substantially more than letting one use the other's name. The relationship between Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation, for example, is not merely ceremonial.

> For what it's worth, Firefox is also developed by a fully owned subsidiary of the Mozilla foundation. Do you also think the relationship between Firefox and Mozilla is "basically ceremonial"?

No.

link
smarnach 986 days ago
I'm still not sure what you want to express. The CEO of MZLA technologies is appointed by, and reports to the Mozilla board of directors. Of course the Mozilla Foundation has influence on the Thunderbird project. Moreover, the employees of MZLA join Mozilla's yearly "all-hands", together with everyone else working for Mozilla. The progress of the Thunderbird project is reported at Mozilla monthly internal meetings. I have a hard time understanding what else you'd expect to call the relationship "not ceremonial". MZLA Technologies and the Mozilla Corporation are different, but their relationship to the foundation is rather similar.
link
cxr 985 days ago
Are you involved with Thunderbird (or Firefox) in any way? Alternatively: have you polled for the opinions of longtime contributors?
link
smarnach 984 days ago
Yes, I'm an employee of Mozilla Corporation, and I'm involved with Firefox backend services (some of which are also used by Thunderbird).
link
cxr 981 days ago
All right. That makes things weirder.

So, have you taken the temperature of a representative set of Thunderbird contributors?

link