In an earlier article on the Mozilla Summit 2010, we mentioned that some long time community members like Robert Kaiser were not getting invited to the Summit 2010.

On that topic, Kaiser has written a blog post about why he won’t be attending. From the post:

But my invitation didn’t arrive. I tried to ask back with the person in charge of invitations but didn’t get an answer, so I mailed Mark and Mitchell, the heads of Mozilla. And Mitchell, who I hold in high respect due to her openness among other things, did reply – though unfortunately a bit differently than I had hoped. Apparently some inherently stupid remarks of mine, some passionate tries to prove some arguments back in the days when I was so frustrated (see above) did go as far as to break the trust in me with a number of powerful individuals in the Mozilla community. Enough that they apparently vetoed my being invited.

His post is interesting on a couple of levels. First, the Mark identified is his post is Mark Surman, a relatively new Mozilla community member and the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation (MoFo). In a meritocracy, it usually takes more time for such employees to become a “head.”

Second, while Kaiser never linked to the “stupid remarks” he made, it’s not clear what remarks could get you kicked out of the Mozilla community. The Summit is supposed to be for all active community members and Kaiser, who is very outspoken, is one of the most active community members in Europe. He’s also one of the few non-localization community members who’s not employed by a Mozilla entity. Losing the trust of the “heads” of Mozilla shouldn’t be an easy thing and shouldn’t have happened just because he fired off remarks. If that’s all it took to veto a person from attending, there are a number of Mozilla Corporation employees in the Toronto office that shouldn’t be attending.