Wrangler Doodles, green.

Building a Better World through Technology

co-founder Mozilla

( from the LizardWrangling Archive )

Category: Mozilla

  • Firefox 4 — More Than a Great Browser

    Firefox 4 is here! If you’re not using Firefox 4, go grab it and see how exciting the web can be.

    Firefox is a great browser. Fast, sleek, and full of features that make the online life better — App Tabs, Panorama, Sync, Do Not Track, HTML 5 features, and more — all focused on respecting individuals.

    Firefox is also much, much more than a great browser. Firefox is a big part of how we build a web that is fun, powerful, trustworthy, and fundamentally about empowering individuals to shape our own lives. Firefox is created by a non-profit community precisely to build these values into the fabric of the Internet. Firefox marries public benefit, non-profit goals with great product and technical advances.

    Firefox is also a community; a community dedicated to building the web the way it should be. A community ensuring that technical excellence serves individual empowerment and public benefit.

    Firefox represents a state of mind; a state of mind that asserts that people matter, that individuals can make a difference, that we can create as well as consume, that we can build a part of the Internet that belongs to all of us.

    And of course, Firefox brings open source, cutting-edge technology and great user features to hundreds of millions of people in over 80 languages, based on openness, transparency, and empowering local communities. Check it out and get involved!

  • Open Letter to Mozilla Contributors in Japan

    Dear Chibi-San, Dear Mozilla Contributors, Dear Mozilla Japan

    We are only a few hours away from launching Firefox 4 on our desktop platforms, and a few short days away from launching Firefox 4 on our mobile platforms.

    I know that you have worked hard to get Mozilla ready for this day, and that you would be among our most excited and active participants were it not for the recent catastrophic events. You are part of our global launch and I hope that you know that we know this. Your role in Mozilla, in Firefox 4 and in the launch is not determined by the activities you engage in on launch day. Your role has been built over the years.

    We’ll support whatever activities, if any, you think make sense for the launch. We’ll also keep looking for ways to support our community in Japan as the rebuilding process gets underway.

  • Revised Mozilla Public License — Beta 1

    In March of this year we kicked up a process to update the Mozilla Public License. We recently released the first beta of the MPL 2.0 and we believe that this beta is now feature complete, meaning that it addresses all major known issues. Of course if there are policy changes that come up and need to be made we will address them. We’ve kept both OSI and the FSF appraised of our efforts. We’ll be submitting the final versions for approval, and we believe that the MPL 2.0 meets all requirements for approval of these organizations.

    When we launched this process I said the goals are to

    make the MPL easier to use and incorporate a decade’s worth of experience. In particular I’m hoping to modernize and simplify the license while still keeping the things that have made it and the Mozilla project such a success.

    Here’s what we’ve done:

    • Simplified and shortened, reducing the MPL by about a third (Luis tells me that specifically this draft reduces the length from 3702 words to 2289)
    • Made the notification requirements dramatically simpler and easier to fulfill
    • Modified patent language to be more in line with other major open source licenses, while still maintaing the patent defense clause
    • Improved compatibility with other licenses, making it easier to incorporate Apache code into Mozilla, and modernizing language regarding (optional) GPL compatibility
    • Improved globalization, including removal of many US-specific terms and concepts
    • Removed “Original Software” and “Initial Developer” concepts.

    You can find detailed information on the beta 1 draft and how to participate at our MPL update website. We welcome general discussion through the governance-mpl-update mailing list, and specific comments through the co-ment web commenting tool.

    Now is also a good time to distribute the Beta elsewhere. If you know of other MPL users who have not heard of the process, please reach out to them and let them know what we’re doing.

    We’re eager to make the MPL the best it can be.

  • Mozilla Decision-Making Process

    Last week the Wall Street Journal issued a correction of a factual error central to a story about Mozilla. It’s good to have the official correction for obvious factual errors; this is a mark of journalistic integrity. However, the correction is flawed itself: it notes a key error in the factual underpinnings of the article, but does not reassess the article. Even with the correction, the story still conveys an incorrect impression of the Mozilla decision-making process. I’d like to address this so that everyone touching Mozilla — the thousands of people choosing to build Mozilla products like Mozilla Firefox, the hundreds of millions of users of Mozilla Firefox, and anyone interacting with Mozilla — understands how mistaken this suggestion is.

    The story stated that Mozilla removed a feature we believed to be good for users because of pressure from an advertising industry executive. This is not accurate in any shape or form. It’s not accurate about any particular company. It’s not accurate about the particular executive named. It’s just wrong.

    Decision-making at Mozilla is based on the criteria in the Mozilla Manifesto — the set of values that underlie all work of the Mozilla project, including Mozilla Firefox. Sometimes people think we’re naive — or even lying — when we say these values are what drive us as we build consumer products. However unusual it may sound, these values are the foundation of our work. Mozilla is a public-benefit, mission-driven organization that uses our products to move our mission forward. We use our products and our development method to increase individual empowerment and give each of us more ability to be in control of our online lives. Our decision-making process reflects this. This process may be difficult to understand, since most software organizations base decisions on maximizing profit. Our challenge is to explain this better.

    Our decision-making process may be different from what people expect. That’s fine — Mozilla is an unusual organization. Hopefully, the future will see more public-benefit organizations sharing some Mozilla traits, and hopefully our goals and decision-making process will become less unusual.

  • Please Participate in the “State of Mozilla” Survey

    Recently we posted our annual “State of Mozilla” which describes what we have been working on and plans for the immediate future. I want to make sure that the plans laid out in the State of Mozilla reflect and inspire the people who identify themselves with Mozilla and our mission. I am asking that you help me make sure of this.

    We’ve put together a short survey. I hope you will take 15 minutes and help me understand how well the State of Mozilla reflects your view of Mozilla. (If you’ve already received the survey through via email please respond to the email request.)

    The survey has a place to write your thoughts as well as respond to specific questions to make things easy. If you prefer to send your thoughts separate from a survey or leave comments here then feel free to do so. But please don’t let that prevent you from completing the survey now. And if for some reason the survey is difficult for you, it would be great if you could simply jump to the second to last question (if there anything else you’d like to say) and let us know about the difficulty.

    The survey does not ask for your name. The survey does have an optional place for you to put any information you want us to know — your locale, your main roles within Mozilla, your name, or anything else you’d like us to know as we look at the responses.

    Please help us make Mozilla the best we can be!

    Thank you, Mitchell

  • State of Mozilla and 2009 Financial Statements

    Mozilla has just filed its audited financial statements for 2009. This is the perfect time to look at the state of the Mozilla mission, our successes, our opportunities and our challenges. This year we’re trying a different format to better reflect the scope of Mozilla and to make better use of video and visual information. We’re hosting this year’s State of Mozilla and Financial Statements at our main website rather than at this blog. Please take a look!

  • Welcome Gary Kovacs

    I’m very excited to introduce Gary Kovacs, who is joining Mozilla as our new CEO for the Mozilla Corporation. As I mentioned in my last post describing the search, we’ve been looking for someone with a broad range of skills:

    • great executive skills — able to cause us to get things done, to get the right things done, and to get them done effectively and efficiently
    • able to lead in a complex strategic environment
    • collaborative, good at making others better
    • great technology sense
    • and of course, phenomenally attuned to the nature of Mozilla — who we are, why we do things, the centrality of the mission and the community building it

    A number of people were involved in the search process. We talked to a lot of people, and Gary stands out for the way he bridges these skill sets. He melds the fundamentals of a good executive with a powerful understanding that Mozilla’s non-profit, public benefit mission drives everything we do, including those activities which might look like “business as usual” to a casual observer. Gary brings a deep understanding of the mobile space and rich media from his time at Macromedia / Adobe and Sybase. Both of these areas are critical to the future of the Web. He’s also been deeply involved with building broad platforms, also highly important to Mozilla. Gary also brings a focus on a collaborative work style and the centrality of empowering others. At Mozilla we often speak of “poetry and pragmatics” as fundamental to the nature of Mozilla, and Gary understands both these are critical for Mozilla to thrive.

    Less formally, but equally important — I found working with Gary to be both effective and comfortable. It may not be obvious, but a lot of time and effort goes into getting to know a CEO candidate. This is partially about technical issues — how much does s/he understand about our space, our mission, our identity. It’s also about personal and approach issues — how will we work together, what’s it like to work through a difficult topic, what is a candidate’s style under stress, how does s/he make decisions, what’s his/her leadership style, how does s/he get things done.

    When we entered into sensitive areas I found it possible to raise potentially contentious issues, find some common ground, get to the heart of the matter and push some hard topics around until we both felt we’d reached a good place. I found Gary to have a great understanding of the different perspectives of the situation, an ability to be clear where we already had agreement, and a give-and-take process when we had disagreements that I think is fundamental for someone to be effective at Mozilla. Actually, I found Gary to focus a bit more on areas of agreement before diving to the heart of potential differences than is common at Mozilla — a trait I hope to learn from 🙂

    Mozilla has great opportunities and great challenges ahead of us. We have tremendous assets. We must be our best, and demonstrate what the Internet can be. The stakes are high, and every person who cares about a trustworthy and participatory Internet is essential. Gary is an immense asset. He’s also a human being I expect each of us will respect immensely and enjoy working with.

    Please join me in welcoming Gary to Mozilla!

  • Some Mozilla History, dmose, Hockey

    I’ve known Dan Mosedale a long time. He was already at Netscape working in the browser realm when I arrived in the fall of 1994. In fact, of all the people working on Mozilla and browsers in the world today, I think Dan was probably the first. Not the person with the longest continual history (Dan has taken some breaks), but the first chronologically.

    I got to know Dan well when we both joined Mozilla full time in 1999. We had both been working on Mozilla part-time since before its founding, Dan on the IT/infrastructure side and me on the MPL and organizational aspects. We both joined Brendan at Mozilla full time at the same time in early 1999, as did Mike Shaver. In that era the very small group of us managing the project were known as “mozilla.org staff.”

    In the next few years mozilla.org staff (which also came to include Myk, Asa and Marcia) made a number of decisions about the Mozilla project that we know put our jobs at Netscape/ AOL at risk. Each time we would all look at each other and make sure we understood what we were doing. We would plan how to keep mozilla.org up and running. In this we had support from many other long time Mozilla contributors who are with Mozilla today, including Chris Hofmann who ultimately became the liaison between mozilla.org staff and Netscape/ AOL after our decisions did cause me to be fired (technically “laid off”).

    A couple years ago I mentioned to Dan that I had decided to learn to ice skate, since there’s a skating rink near my house. Dan suggested I try hockey, that despite its appearance it can be much less risky and worrisome than figure skating. I recall vividly his comment that once he has all his gear on, falling became mostly irrelevant. I’ve remembered this each time I’ve fallen without pads — the ice can be hard. Not every fall hurts, but the idea of falling is inhibiting.

    Saturday night was Give Hockey a Try Day, with a session at the local rink. The Northern California Women’s Hockey League, a volunteer organization focused on getting women to play and enjoy hockey, takes this seriously. Members donate their gear for the session. They invite women of all skill levels and all ages. (One current coach had no idea how to skate when she started.) Members come with their gear, members come to help neophytes get dressed, member coaches come and get everyone out on the ice. In two hours you go from never having worn hockey skates or held a hockey stick to passing and scrimmaging. Poor quality scrimmaging for sure, but also sometimes hysterically funny as a result. The great thing is that once you’re thinking about the puck, you stop worry about the skating.

    In Dan’s honor I rammed myself into the wall to make myself fall. He was right — it was barely noticeable, and not remotely inhibiting.

    The NCWHL folks were universally positive and supportive. They end the event with a gear sale so that newcomers can get somewhat worn-out gear for very little money and get started in league play without a lot of expense. I travel too much and have far too little time to add anything structured to my life but still love the sense of racing around the ice not worried about knees and elbows and jaws.

    The evening also reminded me of how astonishing people can be when they love what they are doing. As Esther Dyson keeps reminding me, a vibrant civil society is an awesome thing.

  • Civil Society, CrisisCamp

    Almost every time I talk to Esther Dyson about Russia, she speaks of the importance of building civil society, of developing a world where people don’t look to government and formal “non-governmental organizations” for all the answers. Here’s a paragraph she wrote about civil society in an article about the Feb 2010 US State Department Tech Delegation to Russia:

    Civil society is not just politics: it is a restaurant giving unused food to the poor. It is a for-profit company such as Twitter providing its service free to rich and poor alike (even though advertisers will focus on the rich). It is successful entrepreneurs mentoring start-up entrepreneurs, and NGOs engaging not just with the government, but also with commercial outfits to get support for activities that will address vexing social problems such as maternal and infant mortality.

    I was reminded of Esther’s focus on civil society at the CrisisCamp event Friday night.

    There are a lot of barriers to helping from a distance when a disaster strikes. Today information technology, the marvels of the Internet, and new tools focused on crowdsourcing and crowd-sourced data provide some new mechanisms. And so there are groups of people trying to develop actionable data out of the heartbreaking SMS messages (a partial example: “village of 200 houses, 100% destroyed. 100% crops destroyed. Village still flooded.”)

    There’s no official government involvement. There’s not necessarily any direct connection between the people working at this and the villages or individuals affected by the floor. There is however civil society in action: see a problem, do something. Form an association (Ben Franklin formed a surprising number of associations), virtual or formal. Build a tool — or a product. Reach out. Don’t wait for government to set up a special official organization — plunge in and do things.

    The degree to which citizens believe they can, can, and do affect their own lives and the lives of others is a pretty potent marker of the nature of a society.

  • Pakistan Floods — What to Do?

    I’ve been asked a few times what I think Mozilla can do to respond to the suffering caused by the floods in Pakistan. The answer is that I don’t know. I don’t know what particular expertise Mozilla has that can be put to use in a way that actually helps people. CrisisCommons works to develop technical solutions so that people can help, particularly to enable information sharing:

    CrisisCommons is a global network of volunteers who help people in times and places of crisis. If you can use the Internet, a word processor, a cell phone or any other kind of technology, you can help. Right now virtually online or during one of our many CrisisCamps around the world!

    CrisisCamps are held to bring focused attention on particular disasters. There’s one tonight in Silicon Valley focused on the Pakistan floods. Here’s the description:

    Non-techies with laptops are needed do Pashtun translation, data entry, blogging, text editing, classifying messages, user-interface testing, collating web-based news updates, etc. We will also create technical tiger teams to provide Silicon Valley-located expertise to CrisisCommons projects managed by camps around the world. These projects involve mapping, databases, crowd-sourcing, coding, user-centered design, etc. This requires techies with laptops. Range of coding skills (python), geo-, and user interface skills are required.

    I plan to go — anyone else?