As much as I love and respect many of the people at Mozilla, and the project itself (I spent 5 years of my life volunteering in the early years), this has been a systemic problem all along, pretty much from day one. Certain types of decisions get made by a very small group of people who somehow acquire a tone-deafness when it comes to outside criticism. Then, when the decisions become public, the negative reaction is not only not understood, sometimes it's not believed, or not taken seriously, and simply serves to retrench the decision makers in their choice and they go radio silent. Then after a while, they may or may not reevaluate that without any form of communication as to what's going on inside. Then, a year or two later, it'll happen again.

I am NOT insulting people, there's no malice in that process, no lack of intelligence, no evil intents. I use the phrase "tone deafness" purposefully because I feel it conveys the idea that these bad decisions come simply from some acquired inability to perceive and understand. They're all god, smart people, but something happens in the Mozilla culture where communication with the outside world becomes difficult and of lessened importance. It's odd.