Category: Mozilla

The Mozilla project uses the Mozilla Public License for much of its code, including that of Firefox and Thunderbird.   In 2010 we started the work of updating the MPL (The current version was written in over a decade ago.)    The process incorporates a number of  techniques we use for code:  we’ve released alpha and beta versions; we have a public comment tool, newsgroups for discussions, plus detailed feedback from a number of contributors, including both lawyers and developers.

Release Candidate 1 is now available, together with explanatory material.  I expect that the Mozilla project will adopt the MPL 2.0 for all our code that currently uses the  MPL 1.1.  The discussion about adoption and migration is also underway.

As the module owner for the MPL I am extremely fortunate to work with a group of interested and committed experts on this project.  The revision would not have occurred without this group, and the results would not be anywhere near as good without their leadership.   Therefore, I’m making the four people listed below peers of the MPL module.  Each of this group has deep knowledge about the goals of the license and the update process, the rationale for the changes we made, and our approach to thinking through the complexities.

• Luis Villa.   Luis holds the drafting pen for this version, and is intimately familiar with every word, every piece of punctuation, and  every decision.  Luis  spent a year as a Mozilla employee while starting this, and continues to contribute as a volunteer now that he’s moved to law firm life.
• Heather Meeker.  Heather is an attorney who has been a Mozilla contributor for over a decade.  She is a key part of the revision process.  She brings deep expertise in how licenses are used and what problems arise, along with a keen sense of balancing priorities and risk analysis.
• Harvey Anderson.  Harvey is the General Counsel for Mozilla’s product group.  Harvey launched the MPL revision project, created a setting where Luis could devote himself primarily to the MPL for the starting phase, and has been intimately involved in the drafting.  Harvey was a key sounding board for me when I wrote the initial version of the MPL.  He is also the person who suggested the idea of a  patent defense clause in the MPL 1.1.  To my knowledge that is the first patent defense clause in a FLOSS license.  (If you know of an earlier  one, I’d love to hear about it.)
• Gervase Markham.  Gerv is the non-laywer among the group.  Gerv has been deeply involved in Mozilla licensing discussions for at least a decade.  Gerv is leading the discussion about the migration of Mozilla code from 1.1 to 2.0  Gerv is also the key person in implementing changes such as the migration.

Mozilla’s mission is to bring openness, interoperability and user sovereignty to Internet life.  We should do this in the apps world.   We should embrace some aspects of the current app model as a complement to the browser model.   We should also provide an alternative to aspects of the current app model that aren’t so open to interoperability and user sovereignty.

There’s no reason why “apps” can’t incorporate the characteristics that are important about the web.  They don’t today because Apple didn’t build them that way.  There’s no reason Apple should; Apple has a different view of the world.  But we can.  In fact, Mozilla is one of the very few organizations that can do this.  We have reach, scope, and we are part of the infrastructure of the Internet already.  Only a few organizations in the world have this position.  And Mozilla is unique among them.  We are organized as a non-profit precisely so canmake  user sovereignty and interoperability central.

What’s Important About “the Web?”

What are some of the things about “the web” that we want to see alive and well in an open web apps model?  Here’s a starting list of characteristics:

• “plug and play”  — interoperable at many levels
• direct access between consumer  and developer
• innovation without permission
• easy to go from consumption to creation
• heterogeneous — works on multiple devices, operating systems, platforms, data types, languages, technologies, browsers, clients, etc.
• linkable
• decentralized
• the browser provides a locale of “user-sovereignty” that the app (and mobile models) lack

What do people love about “apps”?  Here’s a starting list of characteristics:

• convenience and fun
• task -based — quick and effective
• sense of ownership and being “close at hand” – icons, apps have a home on my device
• discoverability
• lots of innovation
• distribution channel for developers
• monetization channel for developers

What are some drawbacks of the current app experience?

• Apps are often device specific, platform specific
• Devices are the center of the world, not the person using them
• Little if any interoperability across devices or platforms
• System is implemented in a highly centralized model
• Difficult for app and content creators to reach people without approval of gatekeepers
• Requires permission at many levels — centralization allows a few App Store owners to control business model, pricing, relationships
• Learned helplessness:  if there isn’t “an app for that” then it’s not worth trying to do something
• Apps and web experiences live in separate silos

A Better World:  What Would an Open Apps Ecosystem Look Like?

A better world will marry the convenience and enjoyment of apps with the power of the web.  We will be able to:

• take our apps cross-platform and cross-device, so when we update our phones we can take our apps with us whatever device we select.
• bridge our contacts and social graph from different providers
• share “leader boards” and other multi-player game elements across the web
• control the access that apps have to our information; e.g., only allow apps to share information directly with our permission
• discover apps in open and flexible ways just as we discover other content on the web
• buy apps from multiple providers, who may add value through bundling, support, or services
• interact directly with apps creators if we choose to
• unify management of apps and website applications.

In this world both the browser and apps connect us to a universally accessible, interoperable Internet that encourages innovation without censorship.

This is a world worth building.

Today we access the Internet in many ways, with phones and tablets and new devices becoming more prevalent.  These devices have new operating systems, new business models, and new opportunities.  They also bring new challenges to interoperability and user-sovereignty.  How should Mozilla respond?  Should Firefox and Gecko be our only tools?  Or should we develop other tools?

I believe it is imperative we develop additional offerings.   We need open, open-source, interoperable, public-benefit, standards-based platforms for multiple layers of Internet life.

Where is the open source, standards-based platform for universally accessible, decentralized, customized identity on the web?  Today there isn’t one.  There should be.   Mozilla should build it.  When we do, it will complement the commercial offerings.  If it’s widely adopted then it will help drive the overall state of this part of life towards a more open, interoperable, user-controlled version.

Where is the open source, standards-based engine for universally accessible, decentralized, customized, user-controlled management of personal information I create about myself?  Today there isn’t one.  There should be.   Mozilla should build it.

Today many Mozilla contributors don’t think of these things as “engines” or “platforms” of Internet life.  These areas don’t necessarily handle javascript or CSS or the DOM.  We don’t even have standards or even an obvious web standards body for them yet.   They may be built primarily as server software or as applications separate from the browser.  But each of these — and others we’ll identify over time —  has the potential to be an “engine” or “platform” with power and scope analogous to that of Gecko and Firefox today.  They have the potential to move the Mozilla mission forward as a complement to the browser.   If people choose to use a device or operating system where Gecko and Firefox can’t reach, we can still offer one or more platforms for standards- based interoperability and user sovereignty.   And when used in combination with Firefox these engines will have the potential to create “defense in depth”  for user sovereignty.

Will additional offerings reduce our impact?  I think not, for several reasons.

1. Firefox will cause a number of people to pick a cell phone / tablet that runs Firefox well and we will work hard to make this an easy choice.   But it won’t cause everyone to do this.  We know this from the iOS.   iOS users tell us regularly that they would like Firefox on their device.  But they are still using those Apple devices, and Apple sales are strong.   If we can solve problems for people with Gecko-based offerings, that’s a tremendous win.  If we provide platforms in addition to Gecko for different layers of Internet life, that’s also a tremendous tool for our mission.
2. Requiring all innovation to fit inside a specified container — even an immensely powerful one like Gecko — puts immense strains on that container.  Instead, we should figure out what are the most important things for the Gecko platform and equip the platform team to pursue those tasks whole-heartedly.
3. People who love a new Mozilla offering may well be drawn to try Firefox and Gecko.

The discussion about iOS and systems like it remind me of discussions we used to have about Linux vs. Windows.  Windows is a locked down operating system compared to Linux.  One is proprietary, one is free software.  In the early days some Mozilla contributors urged that we should care only about Linux.  They felt our mission would be better served by limiting our offering to platforms that align well with  the Mozilla mission.  We choose a different path.  We chose to take our values to where people live.  People were living on Windows, so we went there.  We made it easy for people to switch from Windows to Linux by providing key functionality across platforms.  If we hadn’t, the web would be a very sorry place today.

We should bring Mozilla values to where people are living today.  We should do so at multiple layers of Internet life. Some of these will be Gecko and Firefox based.  Others may be available across browsers.  This gives us multiple engines of interoperability and user sovereignty.  It provides multiple ways for people to choose Mozilla.

This future has immense challenges.  It offers huge potential rewards for Internet life.

To fulfill the Mozilla mission, Mozilla  needs offerings on new operating systems we find on phones, tablets and elsewhere.   These new operating systems and their ecosystems are quite different from the desktop operating systems we’ve been accustomed to.  They bring new challenges and new opportunities.  To meet these, Mozilla needs to do adapt our current product offerings and to do some new things as well.

As a starter, we need to make Firefox available for a host of  new devices.   We may make products based on the Mozilla platform that underlies Firefox, known as “Gecko,” that may not have the “look and feel” of a traditional browser.   I believe we should also develop new offerings in addition to Gecko-based products.   I’ll talk about the last in the next post; here I want to focus on the importance of Gecko-based products.

There are very, very, very real reasons for wanting Gecko to remain strong.  Reasons that have nothing to do with Mozilla, and everything to do with the future development of the Internet.  The prevalence of Gecko on the Internet is a big part of what allows Mozilla to make the Internet better.  This isn’t necessarily intuitive or immediately clear to the majority of people who use Firefox, so I’ll spend a minute on this.

As I noted in a previous post, the “browser” has a few different layers of software.  The engine or platform –“Gecko” for Mozilla, (Trident for Microsoft, differing versions of “webkit” for Apple and Google) is the part of the browser that interacts with web servers and translates the response to our PCs, phone and other devices.  It’s the part of the browser that negotiates the exchange of information in a machine-to-machine conversation.   (The “application” layer is the part that allows a human to interact with the content.  The “user-sovereignty core is the part of the browser that allows you to control what’s happening.)   Because so many people use Firefox and thus Gecko, the number of servers on the web that want to be able to talk to Gecko is very high.  And because of this Mozilla has been able to do two very important things:

1. Increase interoperability dramatically.  Before Firefox, web applications wrote their code to work in Internet Explorer only.  Firefox is the reason web applications began to return to the use of identified, open-standards, created by a legitimate standards body and implementable by all browsers.   This is why you can use a number of browsers today and see most sites render correctly.  Firefox, and in particular the Gecko platform layer, has caused the web to be much more interoperable, and thus much more open to competition and innovation.
2. Bring new capabilities to the web.  Again because Firefox / Gecko is so prevalent, we can make new things like video on the web realistic.  When we implement a new standard in Gecko, it reaches huge number of people through Firefox.   Application developers don’t want to implant new features until enough of their audience has software that can respond to it.  (In the past other browser vendors have periodically not implemented new standards, preferring that their own proprietary technologies outpace the web.)   These features include innovations such as video, our new initiative to develop web APIs for the capabilities (such as phone access) of new devices, and user sovereignty innovations such as Do Not Track.

No one, no one is focused on interoperability among all the giant ecosystems of the web the way Mozilla is.  Gecko is a very powerful tool for making the web both interoperable and capable.   The more places we can offer Gecko the more interoperability and user sovereignty we will be able to offer.

This means being creative.    It means thinking about what Firefox can do on these new devices.  It means looking at Firefox in a “chromeless” mode, where the entire Firefox application is on the device with a different user interface.  It means looking at new ways Gecko can be effective on these devices, such as the very early stage “Boot To Gecko” initiative.

Gecko is a powerful tool that we must continue to invest in.

In my last post I wrote about Mozilla creating more than a browser. There are many topics in that post to be explored further. I’d like to start with a discussion of the various aspects of Firefox that are important to bringing interoperability and user sovereignty to the Internet. Then we can think about how we make these various aspects effective in changing settings.

Let’s think for a minute about what the browser does. My particular focus in this post is item 4 below, but it takes a bit of context to get there. A browser:

1. finds, accesses and transmits information to a web application or website and translates the response to a user’s device
2. renders that content on the user’s device in a way that people can respond to
3. provides a UI so people can interact with content from a web application
4. provides mechanisms for people to customize the way they interact with the web and web applications.

Items 1 and 2 above are generally lumped together and identified as the “platform” or “rendering engine” or “back-end” or “infrastructure” part of the browser. In the Mozilla world this part of the browser is called Gecko. The engine is incredibly important and I’ll post something on this specific topic shortly.

Item 3 is generally called the “browser application layer.” If one thinks of the URL bar, back and forward buttons, the dialog boxes asking about password management, security warnings — these are all element of the “application layer” of the browser.

Item 4 is generally overlooked. We don’t have an accepted industry-wide term for this part of the browser. I think of this as the “user-sovereignty core.” The browser causes things to happen on my behalf in order to tune the Internet to the experience I want. For example, in Firefox the Do Not Track feature broadcasts my preference to be left alone across all websites I visit. The Pop-Up Blocker allows me to control pop-up windows from across the Internet as well as for individual sites. The Permissions Manager (under development now) allows me to manage how web applications interact with me — location, passwords, cookies. The “Awesome Bar” makes my browsing history across multiple websites available to me, for easier navigation. (In the Mozilla case we do this without making my history available to any one else.) For those of us with poor eyesight, the browser can increase fonts sizes for all the web applications I use, even if the web application does nothing itself.

The user-sovereignty core is not overlooked at Mozilla. It is a fundamental product criteria.

 

User-sovereignty spans all aspects of our offerings, from the platform layer to the browser application layer to everything else. Firefox has been the pioneer in many now common user-sovereignty features. Without the user sovereignty core the browser is a tool for websites to deliver content to people, but not a tool for individual human beings to control their overall experience.

The user-sovereignty core of the browser allows people to:

• explore
• integrate
• filter
• manage
• interact
• change
• control

their experience in a unified fashion across all the many applications we use. This is how we create a unified experience unique to me that applies across multiple applications. Mozilla has a unique ability to put user sovereignty first. We’re organized as a non-profit precisely so that this is our key focus. Our stakeholders care about the values we build into the Internet, not the economic value we create for ourselves.

We have a powerful force for user sovereignty advocacy in Firefox, and through Firefox across vast portions of the Internet. We need to continue this with Firefox. We also need to make sure this exists for other aspects of Internet life, from the mobile world to data to apps. Bringing user-sovereignty to the different ways people use the Internet is a key to fulfilling the Mozilla mission.

 

Upcoming Posts::  The App Model and the Web, Let’s Talk Gecko

Mozilla’s mission is to build user sovereignty into the fabric of the Internet. We work to ensure that the the Internet remains open, interoperable and accessible to all. To do this we build products, we build decentralized participation worldwide, and we build the ability for people to create their own experiences in addition to consuming commercial offerings.

Internet life is undergoing immense changes. The mobile revolution has huge implications, from new devices to operating systems to user expectations. The social experience means a lot of personal data about me becomes central. The increasingly ubiquitous nature of computing devices (phone to tablets to microwaves to lights and electric meters) means the amount and kinds of data being generated are changing dramatically.

Since the Internet experience is changing, that means Mozilla must change too. The products and tools we use to fulfill our mission need to expand and change. When we started the key roadblock to true user sovereignty was the sorry state of the browser. At the time the browser was the near-universal way people accessed web content. It was so universal people somewhat forgot about it and assumed that what the commercial world provided was enough. With Firefox, we won this first round of the fight for user sovereignty. We have a great browser, it helped spawn vast amounts of innovation and a new generation of capabilities. The browser remains incredibly important. Indeed, it’s so important that other organizations are building their own browsers to build the web they way they want it.

The browser is necessary but it is no longer sufficient. There are a number of reasons the Firefox experience needs to expand to fulfill the Mozilla mission.

For one thing, even if I use Firefox, I use it today to create information about myself that lives in multiple data silos (or “websites” or “apps” or “services”). These are often inter-operable, subject to different rules, and usually difficult or impossible to combine. Access to information I’ve created about myself is fragmented. The set of values that we have built into Firefox is not yet present in this information / data layer.

Secondly, the browser is no longer the only way people access the Internet. People also use more focused “apps” to do discrete tasks, and often feel a strong sense of attachment to the apps and the app model. This is an exciting addition. Mozilla should embrace some aspects of the current app model in addition to the browser model. I think of apps as a new “form-factor” for the web. Focused, with a sense of discovery and ownership. Today apps are also platform specific, sometimes device specific, and don’t provide many of the attributes we associate with the web.

Thirdly, mobile devices mean the entire hardware and software stacks are changing. As a result, the computers many of us use are more closed than they have been in our lifetimes. At the same time, the range of new possibilities and experiences is exploding. Mobile computing needs a strong infusion of Mozilla values. This means Firefox and other software on the new platforms, it means apps and it means bringing the Firefox experience to data and services as well.

Mozilla has a unique ability to put user sovereignty first in all of these areas. We’re organized as a non-profit precisely so that this is the only thing that matters. Our stakeholders care about the values we build into the Internet, not the economic value we create for ourselves. We’ve done this with Firefox. We had a vision of how the world could be, and we created a product to make that vision real. Now the vision seems obvious. It’s been widely adopted and has become a competitive aspect of the mainstream.

It’s time to expand the Firefox experience to encompass the changing face of the Internet.

We have a number of initiatives underway that can form a piece of this expansion. Discussion is underway on a Firefox vision document that points to some of these issues. We now consider Android as a first tier platform; and have begun explorations into providing parts of the Firefox experience on multiple platforms with Firefox Home. There is architecture, protocol and implementation work underway for the apps ideas and identity.

Your thoughts and comments welcome here.  Please stay tuned for more detailed discussions on all these topics.  And most importantly, please jump in, get involved, and build the Firefox experience throughout our online lives.

A couple of weeks ago Brendan wrote a post about delegating authority for the JavaScrpt module to dmandelin. It’s a beautiful post, combining an official change in authority with history and humor. (And of course, being Brendan, some film references.) If you haven’t read Brendan’s post and you want a sense of history and a personality who’s been at the center of Mozilla since its beginning, check it out.

Delegation of authority is a key concept in the Mozilla world. Members of the Mozilla community earn authority and leadership for particular areas of code or activities through our Module Ownership System. The first time I saw Brendan delegate authority was in 1999. Mozilla was not yet remotely successful. Blogs weren’t yet in use, Internet forums not invented. It was a long time ago, in Internet time. This delegation of authority was far less formal, but effective none the less. It was the moment I became committed to Mozilla as my main thing.

Mozilla was created in 1998 within the walls of Netscape, the company that made the first commercial browser and set the World Wide Web on fire. Brendan has been involved with the Mozilla open source project full time since its beginning. By 1999, just a year after its founding, Brendan was not only the technical center of Mozilla, but also its acting general manager.

At the time I was bored. I had been working as a lawyer at Netscape since 1994. By 1999 much of the legal work was no longer new. Netscape was different of course, and soon to be acquired by AOL. But more importantly, the World Wide Web had become mainstream. The number of times we made things up because they had never been done before was much smaller. We even found case law and precedent and law review articles related to our work.

I had experienced cutting edge innovation and I wanted more of it. Mozilla looked interesting to me. I was doing Mozilla work part time and could tell that things were definitely unformed and really new. Netscape’s CEO and my then-boss the General Counsel were both big supporters of the idea of me joining Mozilla full time. I knew however that Netscape management wasn’t the important decision-maker about Mozilla. Netscape could say whatever it wanted but I knew that the Mozilla contributors needed to accept me. That meant Brendan.

So I went looking for Brendan. Then, as now, it’s not that easy to find Brendan physically. He wanders about a bit. He often has a favorite work-spot that isn’t his cube, or his desk, or anyplace official. His timing is his own. These days I can ping him and it’s easier to get together. But then my question wasn’t really one to launch via email. (Remember, IM, IRC, forums, Skype, and social media were all rudimentary or unknown in those days.) It took me days and multiple trips to the part of the world where Brendan worked, but eventually I found him. It felt odd to raise my question — what would he think of me joining Mozilla full time in a general manager type role? I knew he was filling this role at least temporarily, in addition to providing technical leadership. I suspected he didn’t care much for the management part of his role, but had no way to b sure until I asked him. It would also mean that –in the official Netscape worldview — I would become Brendan’s official manager and he would “work for me” in the eyes of Netscape and AOL. (That’s not how things are in the open source project part of the Mozilla world; more on that later.)

Brendan can be decisive. He listened to me and asked a few questions. After about 30 minutes he looked me in the eye and agreed. By doing so he delegated part of his role to me, and gave me room to create my contributions to Mozilla.

We have never revisited this decision in any way. We split final decision-making within the Mozilla open source project into two pieces. If a question is technical Brendan is the ultimate decision-maker. For other project-related things I am. We have also created a range of new roles, from the Foundation and its Board of Directors, Executive Director, CEO and a range of product responsibilities not tied exclusively to code. Along the way Brendan and I have each tried to delegate as much as possible, and to be clear that new roles and owners have real authority of their own. We’ve agreed on most things. We’ve disagreed on a few, and had some awkward and difficult moments. Far fewer than I would have thought.

I never could have imagined where that 30 minute conversation in 1999 would lead. One thing was clear though — the ability to pass on authority, to allow others the room to lead — is critical to making Mozilla a long-term success.

The number of women participating in open technologies is lower than in technical fields in general. Why is this and what can we do about it? One response is to support the The Ada Initiative , a new effort formed by Mary Gardiner and Val Aurora, two women with deep technical experience in open source projects and a commitment to making environments where other women are more likely to be successful. (Full disclosure — I’m part of the advisory group.)

The Ada Initiative recently launched the Seed Campaign, its initial funding effort. Open for 100 initial donors at either of two levels of support. Currently 37 donor spots remaining. Take a look!

The Web has changed a lot in the last few years.  One of the big changes is how much we now use the Web for messaging, communication and social interactions. We post messages on social networking sites, we tweet, we get messages (often known as “notifications”) from applications, we use Web-based mail systems.  The pace and importance of innovation in this space is enormous and growing.

Mozilla has been exploring new ways to put people in control of their online communications and social interactions for a couple of years now. We currently have two teams.  One is the team at Mozilla Messaging, which produces Thunderbird and messaging innovations such as Raindrop and F1.  The second team is within Mozilla Labs, and has been working on identity, contacts and related topics.

We intend to combine the two teams to increase our effectiveness.  Practically this means we’ll be integrating Mozilla Messaging with Mozilla Labs.   David Ascher will lead a new innovation group within Mozilla Labs focused on online communications and social interactions on the Web. After the teams merge into Mozilla Labs we will dissolve Mozilla Messaging.  This simplifies our overall structure.  I’d like to offer deep thanks to Marten Mickos and Chris Beard for serving on the Mozilla Messaging Board of Directors, along with David Ascher.

The Thunderbird team will continue to develop and release Thunderbird from its new home within the combined organization.   David Ascher will  continue to oversee our Thunderbird product.  Thunderbird users and contributors should see no difference in their experience.  Email is a solid and foundational technology which retains immense value.  The Thunderbird team has re-made Thunderbird into a modern email client. Thunderbird now has a more modular architecture, vastly modernized codebase, effective add-on mechanisms, a vastly improved user interface, and incremental innovations that continue to evolve and move the product forward. We intend to continue our work with the Thunderbird email product to meet this need.

The innovations occurring today in online communications and social interaction are astonishing. It’s a wildly vibrant time.

Please join us as we put more concentrated focus on our efforts in these areas.

If you’ve got an Android phone, grab yourself a copy and see how much better mobile brewing can be! Firefox for Android and Meamo is built usage the same great technology as Firefox on desktop platforms, so it’s fast, sleek and full of features that make mobile browsing better. For example:

• safe and easy synchronization and access to history, bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form data across desktop and mobile devices
• share page, save to PDF and other features to minimize typing
• unprecedented customization capabilities
• HTML 5 capabilities for developers to build rich and interactive websites and Web apps.

It’s currently available in 13 languages today with more to follow.

Firefox for Android and Maemo platforms is also more than a great browser. Like all Mozilla offerings, this product is about putting human beings at the center of the internet. It’s built by a global community of contributors who dedicate time and effort into making the Internet better. We build our products so that the more you know about them, the more we hope you trust them. That way individuals have the ability to control our lives online.

Firefox answers to no one but you.