This is from May, but I like what comes through here. Mitchell Baker (my new crush object) is talking about a piece of software, but the experience she's relating is the "soft" core of the cultural revolution that's taking place online -- a difficult-to-define experience that is both individual and social. I know it's not her subject, but I can't help but sense its animating presence. What If Your Business Plan Was Love?
...so we ended up or started down this path of people really loving Firefox and sometimes I think it sounds funny to describe how much people actually love a piece of software and how excited they get and how much people are willing to do to help other people adopt that and to build it, and create it. But it actually happens [laughs].
So we saw our user base grow, we saw the level of excitement -and another overused word -- ‘passion' -- related to Firefox - extend beyond our core development community to unbelievable numbers of people and that is an asset that's priceless. And there is that sense of trust that yes it's a great browser and it's better than I had before, but I also trust it.
But that is the most fundamental aspect I think of Firefox and partly it's because the product is great, partly for those that know it's because we are a public benefit organisation and we are not trying to maximise our revenue and we're not trying to generate massive private wealth for a few people. The asset is owned by the public.
I think that many people don't know about the open source nature or how it is built, but actually somehow feel that in the product, that the end result reflects how it's made and it is made in a very community‑based, very user focused way and that comes through somehow.
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