Apps/StatusMeetings/Content Program/Open Questions for V1 Markets

Background

As we get closer to code freeze it has become clear that there are many unresolved questions pertaining to the processes, roles and responsibilities associated with the getting pre-installed apps appropriately loaded on devices on a per market basis. This has been made a bit more complex because each market (i.e. country where a carrier does business) gets to select 4 'local apps' to be placed on screen 2 and 3 of the grid. The total number of grid and deck slots has been negotiated between Mozilla UX and Carrier UX teams. The number of global app slots has been signed off by Mozilla Product Marketing (David Slater) and Mozilla Apps & Marketplace (Rick Fant). It is also referenced in the Overarching Mozilla/Carrier ontract which is overseen by Jay Sullivan (Products) and James Murdock (Legal). The current layout for pre-installed apps for each market can be viewed by reviewing the bugs in associated with this tracker bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=815411. Karen Ward is the Content Program Manager and has responsibility for change management of the grid documents and clarification of processes needed to get the apps from the developer through Mozilla, OEMs, Telefonica on to the device(s).

To this end, we have established this wiki page and set up a series of etherpads to facilitate discussion and closure of topics relating to getting this work completed. If you have questions to add to the list below, please set up an etherpad for your the topic and edit this page to reflect the topic and a link to the etherpad.

Builds/Release Management

• Sign-off needed from: John O'Duinn Release Engineering, Johnathan Nightingale (TBC)
• For comments & discussions please use: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/Discussion-20of-20V1-20Customization-20of-20Builds
  • Who does build of the final binary?
  • Who does the regionalization for that build, (i.e. things like setting default language, default timezone, set of pre-installed 3rd party apps etc.)?
  • Whose servers do we contact to check for B2G updates?
  • Whose servers are hosting the actual B2G downloads (can be different from the server that we use to check for updates since we can do redirects)?
  • Who signs the B2G downloads?
  • Who hosts the updates for the pre-installed 3rd party apps?
    • Pre-installed apps are sourced from Marketplace. So if packaged, then updates flow entirely through Marketplace processes. If hosted, then updates are transparent to Marketplace unless the manifest is changed. In that scenario, the update will also flow through Marketplace processes.
  • Which of the pre-installed 3rd party apps are packaged vs. hosted?
    • Karen Ward owns gathering this information and it will be documented in bugs associated with pre-installed apps.

Triage for Pre-Installed Apps

• Bus Dev, Apps Review, QA and Engineering meet routinely to ensure defects blocking pre-installed apps are addressed quickly.

Requirements for Pre-installed Content

• Sign-off needed from: Rick Fant, Karen Ward, Josh Carpenter, David Bialer
  • For discussion on these topics please see: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/Discussion-of-preinstall-20requirements
  • Which, if any, of the preinstalled 3rd party apps are non-deletable.
    • For release 1.0, only Core Apps (including Mozilla Marketplace) are not deletable. Content program will submit a feature request to allow this capability for future releases.
  • Who decided and why was the decision made that all pre-installed apps should live in Marketplace?
    • The decision was made by the Apps & Marketplace teams for numerous reasons including
      • Developers must submit apps to Marketplace to provide key support information and also to accept online Terms and Conditions (legal agreement).
      • Apps Review team provides the QA function for apps upon submittal to Marketplace.
      • Ongoing updates to apps (pre-installed or not) are also reviewed by Apps Review team before being made available to end users.
      • Also, if a user deletes a pre-installed app and later decides he/she would like to re-install it, it should be in Marketplace (requirement).
    • We wanted to keep the processes for pre-installed apps consistent with any other app coming from the Marketplace.

Process Flow for Pre-installed Apps

• Karen owns documenting this with approval required from each group who is a link in the chain. (Carrier & BD, Apps Review, QA, Product Management, Release Mgmt and OEM).