PLEASE READ: Important Platform Update

June 27, 2017, 11:45:43 PM PDT

Hello, SUMO Mozillians!

We have an important update regarding our site to share with you, so grab something cold/hot to drink (depending on your climate), sit down, and give us your attention for the next few minutes.

As you know, we have been hard at work for quite some time now migrating the site over to a new platform. You were a part of the process from day one (since we knew we needed to find a replacement for Kitsune) and we would like to once more thank you for your participation throughout that challenging and demanding period. Many of you have given us feedback or lent a hand with testing, checking, cleaning up, and generally supporting our small team before, during, and after the migration.

Over time and due to technical difficulties beyond our team’s direct control, we decided to ‘roll back’ to Kitsune to better support the upcoming releases of Firefox and related Mozilla products.

The date of ‘rolling forward’ to Lithium was to be decided based on the outcome of leadership negotiations of contract terms and the solving of technical issues (such as redirects, content display, and localization flows, for example) by teams from both sides working together.

In the meantime, we have been using Kitsune to serve content to users and provide forum support.

We would like to inform you that a decision has been made on Mozilla’s side to keep using Kitsune for the foreseeable future. Our team will investigate alternative options to improve and update Mozilla’s support for our users and ways to empower your contributions in that area.

What are the reasons behind this decision?

Technical challenges in shaping Lithium’s platform to meet all of Mozilla’s user support needs.
The contributor community’s feedback and requirements for contributing comfortably.
The upcoming major releases for Firefox (and related products) requiring a smooth and uninterrupted user experience while accessing support resources.

What are the immediate implications of this decision?

Mozilla will not be proceeding with a full ‘roll forward’ of SUMO to Lithium at this time. All open Lithium-related Bugzilla requests will be re-evaluated and may be closed as part of our next sprint (after the San Francisco All Hands).
SUMO is going to remain on Kitsune for both support forum and knowledge base needs for now. Social support will continue on Respond.
The SUMO team is going to kick off a reevaluation process for Kitsune’s technical status and requirements with the help of Mozilla’s IT team. This will include evaluating options of using Kitsune in combination with other tools/platforms to provide support for our users and contribution opportunities for Mozillians.

If you have questions about this update or want to discuss it, please use this thread.

We are, as always, relying on your time and effort in successfully supporting millions of Mozilla’s software users and fans around the world. Thank you for your ongoing participation in making the open web better!

Sincerely yours, The SUMO team

PS. Watch the video from the first day of the SFO All Hands if you want to see us discuss the above (and not only).

Hello, SUMO Mozillians! We have an important update regarding our site to share with you, so grab something cold/hot to drink (depending on your climate), sit down, and give us your attention for the next few minutes. As you know, we have been hard at work for quite some time now migrating the site over to a new platform. You were a part of the process from day one (since we knew we needed to find a replacement for Kitsune) and we would like to once more thank you for your participation throughout that challenging and demanding period. Many of you have given us feedback or lent a hand with testing, checking, cleaning up, and generally supporting our small team before, during, and after the migration. Over time and due to technical difficulties beyond our team’s direct control, we decided to ‘roll back’ to Kitsune to better support the upcoming releases of Firefox and related Mozilla products. The date of ‘rolling forward’ to Lithium was to be decided based on the outcome of leadership negotiations of contract terms and the solving of technical issues (such as redirects, content display, and localization flows, for example) by teams from both sides working together. In the meantime, we have been using Kitsune to serve content to users and provide forum support. '''We would like to inform you that a decision has been made on Mozilla’s side to keep using Kitsune for the foreseeable future. Our team will investigate alternative options to improve and update Mozilla’s support for our users and ways to empower your contributions in that area.''' '''What are the reasons behind this decision?''' # Technical challenges in shaping Lithium’s platform to meet all of Mozilla’s user support needs. # The contributor community’s feedback and requirements for contributing comfortably. # The upcoming major releases for Firefox (and related products) requiring a smooth and uninterrupted user experience while accessing support resources. '''What are the immediate implications of this decision?''' # Mozilla will not be proceeding with a full ‘roll forward’ of SUMO to Lithium at this time. All open Lithium-related Bugzilla requests will be re-evaluated and may be closed as part of our next sprint (after the San Francisco All Hands). # SUMO is going to remain on Kitsune for both support forum and knowledge base needs for now. Social support will continue on Respond. # The SUMO team is going to kick off a reevaluation process for Kitsune’s technical status and requirements with the help of Mozilla’s IT team. This will include evaluating options of using Kitsune in combination with other tools/platforms to provide support for our users and contribution opportunities for Mozillians. If you have questions about this update or want to discuss it, please use this thread. We are, as always, relying on your time and effort in successfully supporting millions of Mozilla’s software users and fans around the world. Thank you for your ongoing participation in making the open web better! Sincerely yours, The SUMO team PS. [https://air.mozilla.org/san-francisco-all-hands-2017-day-1/ Watch the video from the first day of the SFO All Hands] if you want to see us discuss the above (and not only).

Tomatoshadow2 8 posts

June 28, 2017, 6:24:34 AM PDT

Thanks very much for posting this!

Scribe 60 posts

June 28, 2017, 10:47:58 PM PDT

The way I read it, there is an element of hedging one's bets here. So to clarify, does this mean that Lithium is a dead duck which will never be resurrected, and I can delete all my personal Lithium canned responses - which took hours of work to create, together with all my Page Not Found Lithium bookmarks?

Or does it mean that the reprieve is just for longer than anticipated, and at some time in the future - possibly when the Photon dust has settled, Lithium may rear its ugly head again?

The way I read it, there is an element of hedging one's bets here. So to clarify, does this mean that Lithium is a dead duck which will never be resurrected, and I can delete all my personal Lithium canned responses - which took hours of work to create, together with all my Page Not Found Lithium bookmarks? Or does it mean that the reprieve is just for longer than anticipated, and at some time in the future - possibly when the Photon dust has settled, Lithium may rear its ugly head again?

AliceWyman 6154 posts

June 29, 2017, 2:10:12 AM PDT

I listened again to the beginning of the All Hands video linked above and Patrick McClard stated, We were trying very hard to make the relationship with Lithium work ... I don't think they were great partners. So, we decided to do away with that relationship and we backed out of the deal we were in. ... We're going to stick with Kitsune for the foreseeable future until we figure things out. Patrick went on to say that, as far as staying on Kitsune, ...there is no active development going on but there are people in place if things break.

To me, that means that we will not be going back to Lithium but there might be future changes to SUMO.

As vesper wrote above, Our team will investigate alternative options to improve and update Mozilla’s support ...

Maybe an admin can add more information on what those alternative options might be.

I listened again to the beginning of the All Hands video linked above and Patrick McClard stated, ''We were trying very hard to make the relationship with Lithium work ... I don't think they were great partners. So, we decided to do away with that relationship and we backed out of the deal we were in. ... We're going to stick with Kitsune for the foreseeable future until we figure things out.'' Patrick went on to say that, as far as staying on Kitsune, ''...there is no active development going on but there are people in place if things break.'' To me, that means that we will not be going back to Lithium but there might be future changes to SUMO. As vesper wrote above, '''Our team will investigate alternative options to improve and update Mozilla’s support ...''' Maybe an admin can add more information on what those alternative options might be.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer 793 posts

June 29, 2017, 4:29:03 AM PDT

[Jaw drop]

Can we extract the Lithium-only threads to some kind of archive for reference before they disappear forever? Not that there were necessarily such precious pearls of wisdom there, but it's a significant gap and occasionally it is nice to copy/paste from old threads or remind yourself about familiar issues that have come up again.

[Jaw drop] Can we extract the Lithium-only threads to some kind of archive for reference before they disappear forever? Not that there were necessarily such precious pearls of wisdom there, but it's a significant gap and occasionally it is nice to copy/paste from old threads or remind yourself about familiar issues that have come up again.

Scribe 60 posts

June 29, 2017, 5:37:22 PM PDT

Thanks Alice, it really looks as if Lithium is dead, so subject to any further admin input, I think it's safe to clear out all the lithium stuff, but maybe keep a backup - just in case the worst happens!

Safwan Rahman 43 posts

June 30, 2017, 9:08:59 AM PDT

vesper said

The SUMO team is going to kick off a reevaluation process for Kitsune’s technical status and requirements with the help of Mozilla’s IT team. This will include evaluating options of using Kitsune in combination with other tools/platforms to provide support for our users and contribution opportunities for Mozillians.

As far as I know, Mozilla will decommission its SCL3 Data center next year. Kitsune instance of SUMO is hosted there. So what about the plan of moving the infrastructure to somewhere else like AWS?

''vesper [[#post-72016|said]]'' <blockquote> The SUMO team is going to kick off a reevaluation process for Kitsune’s technical status and requirements with the help of Mozilla’s IT team. This will include evaluating options of using Kitsune in combination with other tools/platforms to provide support for our users and contribution opportunities for Mozillians. </blockquote> As far as I know, Mozilla will decommission its SCL3 Data center next year. Kitsune instance of SUMO is hosted there. So what about the plan of moving the infrastructure to somewhere else like AWS?

philipp 1280 posts

June 30, 2017, 10:34:28 AM PDT

hey safwan, moving the live site to a different infrastructure was one of the points on the todo list that became necessary with the decision to stick by kitsune & ben/giorgos will work on this. another thing that should happen is adapting the branding to bring it in line with the new mozilla logo...

Madasan 1255 posts

June 30, 2017, 10:59:12 AM PDT

Hi folks,

Sorry for replying late, as you probably know we've been attending the All-Hands this week, so we had very little time for following up on messages.

To answer a few questions:

The contract with Lithium has been closed, there are no current plans to go back. I'm not sure if there is a way to get back some kind of archive of threads from there but we can look into it.

We are still facing the issue of needing resources to be able to continue with Kitsune. We're working on figuring out how that will look like in the future. For now we have support in place if anything critical breaks but no other development resources.

The only changes we are expecting until Firefox 57 are: decommissioning of Army of Awesome (social support has been moved to Reply) and branding updates to the homepage to, as Philipp said, bring it in line with the new Mozilla logo & branding guidelines.

We have a big release to focus on and this is what we are going to focus on during the next couple of months.

Hi folks, Sorry for replying late, as you probably know we've been attending the All-Hands this week, so we had very little time for following up on messages. To answer a few questions: The contract with Lithium has been closed, there are no current plans to go back. I'm not sure if there is a way to get back some kind of archive of threads from there but we can look into it. We are still facing the issue of needing resources to be able to continue with Kitsune. We're working on figuring out how that will look like in the future. For now we have support in place if anything critical breaks but no other development resources. The only changes we are expecting until Firefox 57 are: decommissioning of Army of Awesome (social support has been moved to Reply) and branding updates to the homepage to, as Philipp said, bring it in line with the new Mozilla logo & branding guidelines. We have a big release to focus on and this is what we are going to focus on during the next couple of months.

Tim 18 posts

July 3, 2017, 11:06:25 PM PDT

Welcome news, was never a fan of Lithium.

I'm in no way a highly skilled dev but might be able to help out with some simple bugs. I'll look over the documentation and code and check out bugzilla to see if I can see anything :)

Welcome news, was never a fan of Lithium. I'm in no way a highly skilled dev but might be able to help out with some simple bugs. I'll look over the documentation and code and check out bugzilla to see if I can see anything :)

Chris Ilias 2447 posts

July 4, 2017, 2:53:20 AM PDT

Thanks to the sumo team for doing this. Being able to revert a decision after so much time and work has been invested in it is a very hard thing to do.

Thanks to the sumo team for doing this. Being able to revert a decision after so much time and work has been invested in it is a ''very'' hard thing to do.

Michal Stanke 86 posts

July 5, 2017, 1:27:28 AM PDT

I am looking forward to hear some news how will be the Kitsune development continued. I have some patched that were prepared just before Kitsune was discontinued and will be happy to reopen the pull requests once there is someone to review and merge them.

wxie 57 posts

July 7, 2017, 10:40:12 AM PDT

Thanks, Vesper.

Good to know that SUMO stays on Kitsume. I agree with @jscher2000 that we need backup the Lithium delta work to at least knowing the history.

best regards, wxie

Thanks, Vesper. Good to know that SUMO stays on Kitsume. I agree with @jscher2000 that we need backup the Lithium delta work to at least knowing the history. best regards, wxie

Paul 1079 posts

July 12, 2017, 7:01:30 AM PDT

Hi

All credit to the staff involved in the migration work and the decision to pull back, neither are easy decisions to make or work to do.

I think/hope I am pretty neutral in the pro-Kitsune / pro-something else debate, but I am glad we have the opportunity for some stability for a while.

Following on from the focus on fixing stability/security bugs (and quite rightly putting new features on hold), I hope we (the SUMO community) can use this opportunity to make sure that we better placed for any future work on this subject.

What can we do to triage the quantity of data to be migrated? Do we need questions dated prior to ESR? Do we need a KB image library of over c.10700 images? Can we come up with a MVP spec for forum UA?

I sincerely hope that should a migration happen again, the timescale is a bit longer than on this occasion, but that we are in a better place before we go into it.

But for the present, let's not let this distract from the really important work of helping users and supporting a key release in a few months time. We have the tools, we have a target, we are (probably) the hardest working group of contributors in Mozilla and we are supported by amazing staff. Just think of the challenges that users and third parties have sent us in the past that we have resolved.

Firefox 57...? Bring it on.

Hi All credit to the staff involved in the migration work and the decision to pull back, neither are easy decisions to make or work to do. I think/hope I am pretty neutral in the pro-Kitsune / pro-something else debate, but I am glad we have the opportunity for some stability for a while. Following on from the focus on fixing stability/security bugs (and quite rightly putting new features on hold), I hope we (the SUMO community) can use this opportunity to make sure that we better placed for any future work on this subject. What can we do to triage the quantity of data to be migrated? Do we need questions dated prior to ESR? Do we need a KB image library of over c.10700 images? Can we come up with a MVP spec for forum UA? I sincerely hope that should a migration happen again, the timescale is a bit longer than on this occasion, but that we are in a better place before we go into it. But for the present, let's not let this distract from the really important work of helping users and supporting a key release in a few months time. We have the tools, we have a target, we are (probably) the hardest working group of contributors in Mozilla and we are supported by amazing staff. Just think of the challenges that users and third parties have sent us in the past that we have resolved. Firefox 57...? Bring it on.

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