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Building a Better World through Technology

co-founder Mozilla

( from the LizardWrangling Archive )

Category: Mozilla

  • The Open Web and Firefox Focus

    The Mozilla Foundation’s Statement of Direction describes two complementary techniques for advancing the Open Web. One is to nurture a broad set of technology and community building efforts, centered around the Mozilla platform and values. The second is to focus more precisely on those areas with the greatest leverage for change. Today, this second technique translates into a focus on Firefox, the platform technology that underlies Firefox, and the Firefox ecosystem.

    It is extraordinarily difficult to create the kind of impact that Firefox and the Firefox ecosystem now enjoy. The Mozilla community has done this, and the Foundation feels an acute responsibility to live up to the opportunities this creates. We have a rare point of leverage and must not let it slip away.

    Because Firefox has such leverage today, the bulk of the Foundation’s resources are devoted to promoting Firefox, the Firefox ecosystem, the underlying technologies that make modern browsing possible, and the various communities that participate in these efforts. In more concrete terms this means:

    • Focus most where we have the greatest impact — Firefox and “browsing” broadly defined — that is, browser-based access to web content and applications
    • Focus on the XUL platform that underlies Firefox to keep the Open Web competitive against closed/proprietary platforms
    • Assist other Mozilla participants and projects, but not equally with Firefox and not at significant cost to Firefox
    • Be exemplary Mozilla participants (this has historically been explicitly not doing whatever people ask for, but providing evaluation, review, module ownership, etc., with a focus broader than a single product)

    Clearly these expectations are very broad — what does it mean to “focus on the XUL platform that underlies Firefox?” How much is specific to Firefox? To what extent are more general platform needs incorporated as “assist other Mozilla projects, but not equally with Firefox and not at significant cost to Firefox?” This level of detail should generally be worked out by the technical leadership through the module ownership system.

    And clearly there are a range of other activities which the Foundation could undertake to promote the first goal above — encouraging a broad set of Mozilla-based participation, whether or not any particular effort becomes a global general consumer product. As noted in the Statement of Direction, the Foundation intends to do so. There will be more on this topic before too long.

  • The “Open Web” as Platform

    We often talk about the “platform” or “a platform” or the “Mozilla platform.” It turns out people use the concept of “platform” to mean different things. There’s the platform for creating web-enabled desktop applications known as XULRunner. (There’s an earlier version of the platform known as “Gecko.”) There’s Firefox as a platform, both for people creating additional features through add-ons, and for web developers. Each of these has value, yet all of them are but parts of a whole.

    The basic platform is the Web itself. The most important thing Mozilla can do is to help create a Web that is open, inter-operable, portable, innovative, decentralized, participatory and competitive with closed systems that operate on the Web. I’ll call this the “Open Web.” Everything we do should be evaluated against this goal.

    The ability to impact the Open Web should be a constant factor in determining our priorities. Firefox, XULRunner, Thunderbird, other projects — both as products and as platforms — are important as projects themselves. But their long term viability and strategic value lie in their ability to enhance and promote the Open Web.

    The Web itself is the great prize, the fundamental platform that determines the degree to which the Mozilla vision can be realized.

  • Welcome Thunderbird 2!

    Today the email experience for millions of people gets even better. Mozilla’s prize-winning Thunderbird email client celebrates the release of Thunderbird 2 today.

    New features. Improved security and privacy. Open Source. Available in more than 30 languages thanks to the efforts of our amazing localization communities. Personalizable. Customizable with extensions. Access to web mail services.

    Thunderbird 2 has arrived. Try improving your email experience today!

  • Mozilla Foundation Executive Director

    One of the great strengths of the Mozilla project is the dedication of its participants. Many people participate over a period of years — sometimes as volunteers, sometimes as employees — figuring out new ways to contribute.

    Frank Hecker is one such participant. Frank has been active in the Mozilla project since the very beginning, helping with the project’s launch in 1998. He then participated as a volunteer for many years. When the Mozilla Foundation needed an Executive Director, Frank agreed to take on that role, becoming an employee of the Foundation. Frank has just noted his desire to change his role, to remain active with the Mozilla Foundation, and to help the Foundation identify its next Executive Director.

    On behalf of the Mozilla project I want to thank Frank deeply for serving as the Foundation’s Executive Director and providing a much-needed anchor. The Mozilla Foundation would be far weaker without Frank’s dedication and efforts, which represent much of what is great about the Mozilla project. I am looking forward to working with Frank in the future. I suspect he will continue to do much of the same work he has been doing, particularly in the accessibility and grants area where he has been leading such great efforts.

    The Mozilla Foundation has engaged an executive recruiter to help us identify good candidates and to conduct a healthy process for identifying, evaluating and ultimately deciding on the right person for its next Executive Director. We haven’t yet mapped out exactly what that process will look like, but we know it will be open, public and highly interactive.

    Our recruiter for this selection process is Eunice Azzani, who has a great deal of experience in recruiting both non-profit and for-profit leaders. She specializes in finding “out of the box” individuals that want to make a difference and have a strong passion for the work they do.

    Eunice has interviewed Mozilla Foundation and Corporation Board members, and is talking with a few other long-time and active contributors to get a general idea of a job description. We hope to have that description drafted shortly. The job description will be posted for public review and input. From there, we’ll figure out what’s a good process to make sure candidates are identified and evaluated in a way that represents the Mozilla communities. The Executive Director is responsible to the Foundation Board of Directors in an organizational and legal sense; and to the Mozilla community in a leadership sense.

    If you have suggestions about how to run an effective, open process please raise them in the mozilla.governance newsgroup (available via newsreader or mailing list, or via the browser). For example, one early step I’ve been thinking of is to set up a method — IM, podcast, conference call, whatever — for community members to talk with Eunice directly. If you have suggestions about candidates or specific questions for Eunice, you can reach her at: Eunice [dot] Azzani [at] kornferry [dot] com.

    The Mozilla Foundation has an enormous opportunity to improve online experience for tens of millions of people. The Executive Director we seek will have internalized the possibilities and bring both expertise and passion to achieving the Mozilla vision.

  • Project-Wide Activities

    A couple of weeks ago, I informally asked Mozilla Corporation employees what types of work they do that are “project-wide” or not related to Firefox. Here’s a summary of the results.

    • IT Support and Build
      • Hosting of tinderboxes for all Mozilla projects, including Thunderbird, XUL, etc. This includes both application and server support.
      • Support, hosting and maintenance of basic infrastructure — IRC, Bugzilla, CVS, etc. for all Mozilla projects.
      • Provision of ftp services for many of the other projects — often a large amount of traffic that would be cost prohibitive to any of the smaller projects.
      • Support of the community giving network, which hosts infrastructure (Bugzilla, localization) for a range of projects, including Seamonkey, Camino, etc. Build, development and production machines as well as network capabilities are hosted, in both the San Jose and Amsterdam locations. For example, in Q1 2007 the build team spent a good deal of time to get community build Macs set up for each of the Seamonkey, Camino, and Sunbird/Lightning teams.
    • Thunderbird: build, release, QA, marketing, PR and a range of other activities.
    • Web Services: addons.mozilla.org supports extensions for Firefox, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, and Sunbird.
    • Talkback support for Thunderbird, Sunbird, Camino and Seamonkey. This includes the creation of reports for new releases as well as server and symbols management work.
    • The Community Giving program has provided support to the calendar and Bugzilla projects as well as the Oregon State Open Source Lab.
    • The Mozilla Developer Center includes content and documentation for a range of technologies; including XUL platform documentation to help XUL developers.
    • General module owner activities relating to code review and patch management.
    • Mozilla Store operational support.

    I doubt this is a conclusive list. Even so, it gives an idea of the types of activities beyond Firefox that happen on a daily basis.

  • Mellon Foundation Awards for Open Source Projects

    The Andrew Mellon Foundation sponsors awards of $50,000 and $100,000 for “not-for-profit organizations for leadership in the collaborative development of open source software tools with particular application to higher education and not-for-profit activities.”

    The deadline for this year’s applications is April 16th. The requirements for these awards are rather specific. The core requirements are below; more details on the requirements can be found here.

    If you think you or any organization(s) you know of meet these criteria, and could make use of the grant, please visit the Mellon award site or contact: Christopher J. Mackie at [email protected] (for full disclosure, I am a member of the Awards Committee).

    The overview of criteria for these awards is that the organization “must have contributed its own financial and human resources to a software development project which meets all of the following criteria:

    1. Is in public release (not just development) as an open source project, with source code actually available.

    2. Provides a direct and demonstrably significant benefit to one or more of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s traditional constituencies. These constituencies are: higher education, with a special emphasis on the arts and humanities; libraries and scholarly communications; performing arts; conservation and the environment; or museums and art conservation.

    3. Meets the Foundation’s strict standards for excellence.

    4. Includes the development of intellectual property that is freely available to the academic community under one of the approved open source licenses.”

  • Demographic Moment #2 — Blizzard Comes to Visit

    Chris Blizzard was in town last week and came to dinner. Chris has been active with the Mozilla project since the very early days. He somehow convinced Red Hat to pay him to work full time on Mozilla way back in 1999 and has been involved since. Chris stopped working on code a while back; he was one of the original Mozilla Foundation board members, and is now a Mozilla Corporation Board Member.

    Chris is also deep into the One Laptop Per Child project, working primarily on software aspects. Red Hat supports Chris in this work — kudos to Red Hat!

    Anyway, Chris was in town so he joined us for dinner one night. Here’s what it looks like when Chris comes to visit:

    BlizzardsComputers.jpg

    Yup. That’s 4 people (including one 8 to 10 year old) and six — count ’em, six — computers around the dining room table. As you can see, the OLPC sample was warmly received.

    (For those interested, here is demographic moment number 1.)

  • Mozilla Foundation Statement of Direction

    One major set of goals for the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors is to articulate a crisp Statement of Direction for the Mozilla Foundation, to engage in a dialog with the Mozilla community about direction, and to define the overall scope and increase the visibility of Mozilla Foundation activities.

    The first iteration of the Statement of Direction is below. It is intended to be one step more specifically focused on the Mozilla Foundation than the Mozilla Manifesto. I expect to end up with (a) a statement of principles regarding the Internet we hope to see that many groups can use to verify our activities are on the right path — the Mozilla Manifesto; and (b) a Statement of Direction from the Mozilla Foundation as to how the Foundation itself will advance the Manifesto. And then we can turn to the specific actions to be undertaken.

    1. The mission of the Mozilla Foundation is to create and promote the Internet as an open platform that supports the principles set out in the Mozilla Manifesto.

    2. As described in more detail in the Mozilla Manifesto, an open Internet is one where:

    • People can participate at all levels, with low barriers and without the need to “buy into” a centralized agenda, data source, hardware or software system
    • Open standards are the basis of key technologies
    • Open source software is available for key activities
    • Open alternatives for key Internet activities are competitive with closed, proprietary offerings and with desktop-centric offerings
    • Heterogeneous environments are possible – we don’t all need to use the same hardware, software or data sources
    • People can make and implement decisions about their online experience and their data

    3. Building an open Internet requires many actors. The Mozilla Foundation will focus on the areas of our particular strength and expertise.

    • The Mozilla Foundation’s DNA is in building software and building communities; in essence we are building part of the Internet itself.
    • We build (software, communities, the Internet we dream of) by empowering people to help themselves and to work together in a loosely coupled way with maximum transparency.
    • We work primarily in areas that touch individual people. We can think of this as the “user experience” aspect of the Internet.

    4. The Mozilla Foundation seeks to effectuate these goals both by building broadly-used products that impact Internet development as a whole, and by empowering people to act in highly decentralized, experimental ways. The work of creating general consumer products that influence broad aspects of Internet development is currently handled through the Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation plans to increase its direct involvement in other activities which enable people to participate in the development and enjoyment of the Internet in a decentralized, self-directed manner.

    5. The Mozilla Foundation can do this through any number of programs: grant making, supporting other projects, being the “voice” for users, increasing its operational activities, etc. We’re not yet sure which of these is the right thing, though there is a very strong interest in grant-making, prizes, etc.

    6. The next steps are refinement of this statement, and putting the relevant resources in place to develop more specific plans and then to execute well.

  • Firefox in All the Right Places

    Not long ago, I got a ticket while driving my son to school. He was mad about being a few minutes late to school, but I knew much more time would be required on my part 🙂

    In California one can attend “traffic school” for a variety of traffic tickets. My infraction was stopping for a stop sign beyond the stop line rather than before the line, so I fell into the category of people permitted to attend traffic school. Doing so takes somewhere between six and ten hours, and prevents the long-term markers being placed on one’s record and a rise in insurance costs. The schools are independent businesses certified by each court system. Some are better than others.

    California now authorizes a lot of schools to provide online courses, so I chose one of these. Fortunately, I chose a good one. They had thought of all the likely issues (such as — I need to finish in 24 hours — how do I do that?), had good customer support and a reasonable price.

    Best of all, the website worked flawlessly. I was astounded. There are something like 14 chapters to read, four “security questions” to help make sure the student actually read the material, four quizzes and one final exam. Each section is timed, the time is displayed, and completing one automatically makes the next available.

    At the end, I had to call the school to change where they send the completion certificate (after one completes the course this can’t be done online). Certificate delivery requires a signature, so I want it sent to work where there will be someone around to sign for receipt. Otherwise a trip to the post office is required.

    Of course, customer support needed the address. I started with my name, and then “c/o Mozilla Corporation.” I spelled “Mozilla” very slowly and carefully because it confuses so many people. Not this time. The customer service representative perked up, “Mozilla? You work for Mozilla?” I replied “Yes, I do” and he continued “We all use Firefox here.” After some discussion he added “We support Firefox and, eh, Internet Explorer. But our webmaster and all of us use Firefox.”

    Send that man something special!

  • The Mozilla Manifesto

    Here is the Mozilla Manifesto I described in my last post. I invite you to provide input through the Mozilla “governance” newsgroup.

    You can also read a set of past comments and participate through the “mozilla.governance” Google Group.

    The Mozilla Manifesto

    Introduction

    The Internet is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives.

    The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet. We have worked together since 1998 to ensure that the Internet is developed in a way that benefits everyone. We are best known for creating the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

    The Mozilla project uses a community-based approach to create world-class, open source software, and to develop new types of collaborative activities. We create communities of people involved in making the Internet experience better for all of us.

    As a result of these efforts, we have distilled a set of principles that we believe are critical for the Internet to continue to benefit the public good as well as commercial aspects of life. We set out these principles in the Mozilla Manifesto presented below.

    These principles will not come to life on their own. People are needed to make the Internet open and participatory — people acting as individuals, working together in groups, and leading others. The Mozilla Foundation is committed to advancing the principles set out in the Mozilla Manifesto. We invite others to join us and make the Internet an ever better place for everyone.

    Principles

    1. The Internet is an integral part of modern life — a key component in education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole.
    2. The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.
    3. The Internet should enrich the lives of individual human beings.
    4. Individuals’ security on the Internet is fundamental and cannot be treated as optional.
    5. Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet.
    6. The effectiveness of the Internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.
    7. Free and open source software promotes the development of the Internet as a public resource.
    8. Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability, and trust.
    9. Commercial involvement in the development of the Internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial goals and public benefit is critical.
    10. Magnifying the public benefit aspects of the Internet is an important goal, worthy of time, attention and commitment.

    Advancing the Mozilla Manifesto

    There are many different ways of advancing the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto. We welcome a broad range of activities, and anticipate the same creativity that Mozilla participants have shown in other areas of the project. For individuals not deeply involved in the Mozilla project, one basic and very effective way to support the Manifesto is to use Mozilla Firefox and other products that embody the principles of the Manifesto.

    Mozilla Foundation Pledge

    The Mozilla Foundation pledges to support the Mozilla Manifesto in its activities. Specifically, we will:

    • build and enable open-source technologies and communities that support the Manifesto’s principles;
    • build and deliver great consumer products that support the Manifesto’s principles;
    • use the Mozilla assets (intellectual property such as copyrights and trademarks, infrastructure, funds and reputation) to keep the Internet an open platform;
    • promote models for creating economic value for the public benefit; and
    • promote the Mozilla Manifesto principles in public discourse and within the Internet industry.

    Some Foundation activities — currently the creation, delivery and promotion of consumer products — are conducted primarily through the Mozilla Foundation’s wholly owned subsidiary; the Mozilla Corporation.


    Invitation

    The Mozilla Foundation invites all others who support the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto to join with us, and to find new ways to make this vision of the Internet a reality.

    (v.0.9)