Category: Mozilla

After I posted the ISOC piece, I got an unexpected message from an old, old friend.  Apparently he was part of the Internet Society Hall of Fame process.  This brings back so many memories. The person in question has been deep in IETF related topics for many years.  In addition, he was one of the most generous people I’ve ever known about sharing his understanding of technology and his resources.  Many years ago when I was in grad school he gave me keys to his office, set aside an old piece of technology for me to use and provided the basic support I needed.

As a result, my graduate school notes were all taken on an old, otherwise-decommissioned CP/M machine with 8″ floppy drives.  As it turned out, my preferred study partner in grad school was also using such an ancient machine, and it mean we could share notes.  My study partner was used to preparing “briefing books” for governor – level public officials, our our law school notes increasingly took on the look of briefing books as years went by.  He was also the only other person I knew in my class to took 4 years to complete law school, so we both started together and finished together.   (I spent the extra year living and traveling in China, he spent it getting an additional Master’s degree.)    That extra year was pivotal for me, changing by worldview in so many ways.

Today the near-ubiquity of the network means it’s hard to imagine being far, far way from global communications systems.  My time traveling in China (including Tibet, Taiwan and Hong Kong), Burma, Thailand, and Nepal, before cell phones and before the Internet is something I treasure.    I came back from my longest trip to find both of us in our 4th year of law school (imagine being proud of that 🙂 ).  And to find the greatest measure of success:  we had each learned each other’s most effective techniques.  When a question came up, we would find him reasoning from the principles he remembered, and me leafing through the briefing book to find the materials we had already prepared.  This was one of our finest moments: we had taught each other a whole new set of tools.

And then I’d bicycle through Berkeley back to “my” office.  Sometimes I’d be alone there.  Sometimes my friend would have given a set of keys to others and I’d find new people there.  (If you happen to know “gumby” you’ll know what I mean.)    We were above the pizza parlor and the California Girls massage studio, where bats appeared each  evening off the fire-escape.    I saw my first Mac in this office.   I first came across email here (gumby, again!).  I first encountered the IETF (long before the Web) here.  I learned what an extraordinary place MIT is, especially at night during finals.  At some point the office moved to slightly more upscale setting (no pizza, no massage).    People came and went though, each bringing something.

I’m still not as generous as this friend with my personal space.  I need more privacy that he did.    But office space, and sharing resources, and connecting people, and wanting people to build on whatever resources I can bring to the party — I learned a lot about this from the friend in question.    It’s not what people think of as a “law school education.”

I went to grad school at Berkeley Law (known as Boalt Hall School of Law in my day); one of the great legal institutions in the US.  I was fortunate; the University and the State of California invested in me.   I’m proud of being a UC Berkeley grad.  I’m a little stunned by what I’ve been able to achieve with it.    And there, generally unseen but critical nonetheless, I learned to share.  In some ways this is the most rewarding.

I’ve found that sharing — sharing wildly, sharing boldly, and reveling in what others do with the sparks I send their way — is liberating.  It’s powerful.  And it makes me part of a community of people that gives me hope for the future.

A couple of weeks ago the Internet Society started a Hall of Fame at its 20th anniversary gathering.

The best part of the event for me occurred at the Gala dinner.  That’s when they got the groups of Hall of Fame members on stage.  Most importantly, they started with the Pioneers group. A few of the pioneers are no longer with us, Bob Kahn couldn’t make it, and there were undoubtedly a few people who could have been included but weren’t. Even so, it was a visceral moment for me.  There, on stage together, was the greatest concentration of the designers and creators of the Internet that we’re likely to see together.

The Internet has proved to be a revolutionary technology.  And everything we’ve built with the web sits on top of the Internet.   The principles of decentralization, freedom at the edges, the ability to innovate, leadership by action rather than status are all reflected in the early work of this pioneer group.  Not to mention the development of the key technologies.    I feel very fortunate to have been in the audience at that moment.  I’m very grateful to Walda Roseman of the Internet Society for not letting me miss the event.

The Hall of Fall Induction Ceremony was also fun.  I am of course very honored to be included in the initial class of people included in the Hall of Fame.  It’s a great honor and reflects all that we’ve achieved with Mozilla as well as whatever particular talents I bring.    The Hall of Fame induction ceremony was invitation-only I believe, and much smaller than the dinner.   Not every member of this class of Hall of Fame members was there, but a bunch of us were.  (Here’s a photo of most of us who were at the event.) Each of us was asked to give 1 to 2 minutes of comments.  Most spoke for longer.  I think Brewster gets the award for the closest to 1  minute 🙂  I don’t know if these comments were recorded. I’ve looked a bit online but haven’t found these.  I did find a set of pictures of most of us as we made our remarks (scroll down a few rows to find these).   Many of the speakers described what it was like in the early days and how they came up with their inventions.  Steve Crocker talked about the RFP process and its relationship to the development of standards.  Randy Bush talked about the people — in particular the women of Africa and Asia — who weren’t represented in this class.    Tim Berners Lee and Vint Cerf talked about the organic nature of the web and the internet, respectively.  Vint told some jokes as well.

Nancy Hafkin and Elizabeth Feinler both accepted the award only on behalf of groups they had worked with, identifying the women they though should be there with them.    This interested me a great deal.  There were 3 women in the Hall of Fame group; I’m the third.  I had thought about accepting the award not solely for myself but ended up talking about the Web and our goals for building openness and opportunity instead.  (For some reason I was the first of the Hall of Famers to speak at the ceremony.)  I spoke  about how the Internet was always there — available, decentralized, open to exploration and innovation — as we began to build the World Wide Web.  Both the other women were quite explicit that they were accepting on behalf of a group.

I almost didn’t get to these events.  I first heard about the event in February, when Walda asked to speak at the event opening on Monday morning.  I declined because I was at MozCamp LatAm for the weekend before and that was too important to miss, even for something else very special.    In February I also heard about the Internet Society’s planned Hall of Fame.  I had missed the public call for nominations, so I immediately started lobbying for someone (not me) to be included.    Eventually I was told it was too late for this year, I should submit my nomination during next year’s process.   The Internet Society folks suggested I speak at the closing event on Tuesday, and we managed to make that schedule work.  It was only later that I learned that I had been included in the Hall of Fame and that the ceremony as well as the talk would be so special.

I gave a 15 minute closing keynote. I followed Francis Gurry, the director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization.  In turn, I was followed by Vint Cerf, who closed the entire event.

Mozilla is on the cusp of changing our policy about our use of video codecs and making use of a format  known as “H.264.” We have tried to avoid this for a number of years, as H.264 is encumbered by patents.  The state of video on the Web today and in mobile devices in particular is pushing us to change our policy.  Brendan has written a post detailing why many of us have come to support this position.  I’d like to emphasize one point that’s implicit in Brendan’s post and which I think would be useful to call out more specifically.

One key value at Mozilla is giving our users a great experience.  We want to build products that people love and that build openness and user sovereignty into the Web.  “Products that people love”  is a key part of this sentence.  It’s not a throw away phrase.  It has meaning.  It is a demanding goal and it must drive us — just as the latter part about openness and user sovereignty drive us.

For the past few years we have focused our codec efforts on the latter part of this sentence.  We’ve declined to adopt a technology that improves user experience in the hopes this will bring greater user sovereignty.  Not many would try this strategy, but we did.  Brendan’s piece details why our current approach of not supporting encumbered codec formats hasn’t worked, and why today’s approach regarding existing encumbered formats is even less likely to work in the future.

Given this, it’s time to shift our weighting.  It’s time to focus on shipping products people can love now, and to work on developing a new tactic for bringing unencumbered technology to the world of audio and video codecs.  It always feels better when we can build exactly the product we want and people love it.  It’s possible to fall into the view that the only way to live up to Mozilla values is to ship the product we think people should want.  This aspect is one element, but it’s not the only one.  Another critical element is shipping products that work for people now so they can love them.  This makes our values something people can want, not medicine that one takes because one should.  This element is a key part of Mozilla’s mission.

Our first approach at bringing open codecs to the Web has ended up at an impasse on mobile, but we’re not done yet.  We shouldn’t beat ourselves up for somehow failing to live up to Mozilla’s values.  We’ll find a way around this impasse.  We have some of the world’s most creative and dedicated people working on open video and video technologies.  We’ll rebuild the maze if we have to.  We’ll  keep working hard to bring unencumbered codecs to the Web.  We’ll be more effective at building products people can love as we do this.  We should do so proudly.

Monday night I attended an event celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Girl Scouts in the US. A couple of unexpected things happened. First, I received a lesson in how role models and believing in people and providing roles models makes a difference.

Here are some statistics I found stunning:

 . . . 80% of women business owners were Girl Scouts, 69% of female U.S. Senators were Girl Scouts, 67% of female members of the House of Representatives were Girl Scouts, and virtually every female astronaut who has flown in space was a Girl Scout.  (Marina Park, CEO of Girl Scouts of Northern Californa)

The Girl Scout organization attributes this to girls growing up with women leaders, in an organization that believe in girls and women and works to build “courage, confidence and character to make the world a better place.”

The second unexpected thing was how emotional the evening was for me. I attended because I was honored as one of the 100 women of Northern California selected to receive the “Greening the Future” award and to represent what’s possible. I went knowing that I had been a Girl Scout, but not thinking much about it. The statistics above struck me personally. Anytime I find a demographic that I fit into I’m interested, since I’m so often the only one of my kind in a room (e.g., the only woman, or the only person who studied China rather than technology, or the only person who can be equally happy watching either football or classical ballet, or the only person who . . . . . .)

I was also struck — viscerally — by the memories. The evening’s talks started off with a discussion of Girl Scout camping. I realized I had related my strongest memory of Girl Scout camping to my son literally 2 days before. That was a shock that suggested Girl Scouts may have had more impact on my life than I have thought.

A few women wore their sashes with achievement badges. Af first I thought this was fun and interesting — mine was lost unknown years and moves ago. Then during the award ceremony I stood next to a woman wearing hers. It made me gasp. I recognized the general pattern, the wings, the troop badge and some of the actual badges. “I had that badge, and that one , and that one too!” I haven’t thought of these in some times. Yet they instantly reminded me of hours spend figuring out what I wanted to learn about, and what I was going to do to learn and demonstrate my accomplishment.

I guess maybe being a Girl Scout taught me more than I knew at the time.

ACTA (“Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”) is a proposed new international law establishing international enforcement standards against counterfeit goods and pirated intellectual property items. ACTA was negotiated as a “trade agreement” which means that it was negotiated in private without open involvement of all the stakeholders. There has been no formal opportunity for input from people other than those who were lucky enough to be invited into the private discussions.

This is a bad way to build Internet policy. The Internet is a fundamental platform for communication and interaction. There are many stakeholders. The voices of human empowerment, human rights, and competing economic interests must be heard. These voices must have a place at the table when policy is debated. ACTA was not created through such a process.

Here are some examples of of how closed the ACTA negotiation process has been:

• Try to find the notice EU Notice regarding ACTA being “ready” for signing: Hint: it’s 2 paragraphs on page 43 of a document titled Agriculture and Fisheries;
• General Secretariat of the EU denies access to ACTA documents;
• Access to ACTA documents denied again, this time to Dutch foundation Vrijschrift;
• In the US, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge filed suit demanding that background documents on ACTA be disclosed, but dropped the suit in 2009 when it became clear there was little chance of success.

ACTA is extremely controversial. That controversy has become focused in the last couple of weeks as net-savvy citizens across Europe have made their deep concerns known.

• 15 thousand People on the streets in Poland on Jan 25;
• Public opinion forces suspension of ratification process in Poland, Czech Republic, and Latvia;
• Germany postpones signing;
• Large numbers of additional protests planned for February 11.

One aspect of the controversy about ACTA is the closed process where only a tiny subset of people affected by the law were allowed to participate. Another great controversy is about the actual content of ACTA. We know that the goal of stopping unauthorized access to digital content can lead to very dangerous results. The proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation in the U.S made this abundantly clear. This is an area where even good intentions can lead to imbalanced and dangerous results.

European citizens are now evaluating how ACTA language affects life in their jurisdictions. Deep concerns are developing. These are exacerbated by the fact that the discussions over the content of ACTA are procedurally closed, and the involvement permitted to citizens is a “yes” or “no” response from their representatives. The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on whether or not to ratify ACTA sometime later this year, perhaps as early as June.

Building a healthy Internet takes all of us. It cannot be left to private, invitation-only process that excludes most of us. Some  links for more information are below, and there is a great deal more information available. Please consider learning more and making your voice heard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number10.1/whats-wrong-with-ACTA

http://rfc.act-on-acta.eu/fundamental-rights

I’ve been sort of invisible online for a few weeks. Sunday night we finally got moved out of our old, beat-up house. By “beat-up” I mean foundation damage, and water and silt flowing into the downstairs rooms, making them uninhabitable. It’s a wreck, but it’s big. So we had a decade of stuff crammed into a zillion storage spaces. I though getting ourselves moved into the temporary living spot during remodeling was the big job, but then my husband started pulling stuff out from the truly hidden storage spots, and that took another week of evenings and weekends to finish up.

Now we’re living in a space about 1/3 the size, with tons of stuff in storage (do we even want it back)? and am back to the normal focus on Mozilla, online life, etc. Funny have the luxury of a stable life well above subsistence level leads to the accumulation of so much stuff that seems meaningful at first but then becomes a burden.

More shortly.

Congress is considering the most talked-about copyright legislation in a decade, known as Protect IP (PIPA) in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy (SOPA) in the House. Today, Mozilla announced that we’ll join with other sites in a virtual strike to protest PIPA/SOPA.

SOPA makes all of us potential criminals if we don’t become the enforcement arm of a new government regulatory and policing structure. SOPA does not target websites serving up unauthorized content. SOPA does not target people accessing those websites. SOPA targets all the rest of us. These costs are significant, wide-ranging and long lasting. To understand more clearly what SOPA does and the range of consequences, it’s helpful to use an analogy from the physical world where we all have many years of experience.

Assume there’s a corner store in your neighborhood that rents movies. But the movie industry believes that some or even all of the videos in that store are unauthorized copies, so that they’re not being paid when people watch their movies. What should be done?

SOPA/PIPA don’t aim at the people trying to get to the store. SOPA/ PIPA don’t penalize or regulate the store itself. SOPA and PIPA penalize us if we don’t block the people trying to get to the store.

The solution under the proposed bills is to make it as difficult as possible to find or interact with the store. Maps showing the location of the store must be changed to hide it(1). The road to the store must be blocked off so that it’s difficult to physically get to there(2). Directory services must unlist the store’s phone number and address(3). Credit card companies(4) would have to cease providing services to the store. Local newspapers would no longer be allowed to place ads for the video store(5). And to make sure it all happens, any person or organization who doesn’t do this is subject to penalties(6). Even publishing a newsletter that tells people where the store is would be prohibited by this legislation(7).

This is what SOPA and PIPA would impose in the online world. It’s very different than targeting the owner of the video store directly. The obligations to make websites hard to find apply to all citizens and businesses. Each one of us is subject to punishment and fines if we don’t follow these prohibitions. And, because SOPA/PIPA create a new regulatory structure, we become subject to punishment without the due process protections citizens normally enjoy.

Supporters say they are only targeting foreign websites outside US jurisdiction. However the burden of compliance that falls on all of us is not any less because the website servers are elsewhere. And in any case, many US companies with be affected through their locally-identified sites (for example, amazon.co.uk.)

Despite their over-reaching nature, PIPA and SOPA may not even be effective at stopping online piracy. People can still enter the actual Internet Protocol address of a blocked domain name. Sites can register new domain names. Continuously sanitizing the Internet of any mention or link to bad sites is a like the infamous game of “whack-a-mole.”

SOPA and PIPA are dangerous.  So, what to do?

Legislatively:

• Reject SOPA / PIPA soundly.
• Congress must not adopt the SOPA position of protecting content AT ALL COSTS. Congress must represent all of us.
• Focus specifically on the holes in today’s enforcement tools. Why are thePirateBay.ORG or MegaUpload.COM still operating? Why aren’t they part of the definition of “foreign site” in SOPA/PIPA?
• Be very, very cautious about creating new liability because we’re unwilling to punish the people accessing unauthorized content

Philosophically:
Over time, developments in two areas are likely to make this issue recede dramatically. One will be the development of new business models that embrace technology, and consumer expectations of universal access. The second will be new technology that makes it easier for content owners to limit access. Content owners can decide if they want unlimited audiences and alternative revenue sources, of if they want potentially limited audiences and a pay-for-view revenue model. Today we are fighting over what to do in the meantime. The content industry has convinced many that “something must be done.” Even if one agrees with this (which many do not), one thing is clear.

Protecting content at all costs is a disaster.

 

Our Internet experiences involve more and more data about us. Some of this data we create ourselves.  Sometimes our friends and acquaintances create it, and sometimes the services we use create data about us. On one hand this enables all sorts of exciting new applications. On the other hand, there are some very disconcerting aspects to the explosion of personal data. The ability of big data and cloud service providers to monitor, log, store, use, correlate and sell information about who we are and what we do has huge implications for society and for individuals.

Right now there’s no convenient way for me to share information about myself and maintain control over that information. I share information about myself by putting it someplace where someone else makes all the rules. That “someone else” is the application. Most people think of Facebook or Google, but this issue is much bigger than either of them.  This is an issue of the architecture of user data today, and applies across the Internet. Think of the big recommendation / review sites, or any other application you spend a lot of time living in. Think of any social network you’ve identified connections in. The only convenient way for us to have a “home” at one of these sites is to contribute our data and have whatever control the application developer chooses to give us.

These issues have big implications for Mozilla.

First, it means we should do some new things in the user data space. To really help people with the way we use and share data today, Mozilla will also need to offer people the choice of storing data in the cloud in a way that allows services to access it with your permission.  This will be a new thing for Mozilla. It will involve new challenges.  It’s important that we take these on and address them well. If we develop an offering that handles user data in the cloud properly we will help ensure choice and user sovereignty in new areas of online life. Each of us should have a meaningful choice about where and how our data is stored and managed. No other organization have both the ability to do something totally focused on user sovereignty rather than financial profit, and the ability to have wide impact. A Mozilla presence in the cloud will allow us to to fulfill our mission in important new areas of online life.

Second, this means our approach to handling user data must be different from the industry norm. It must put you at the center, array your data around you, and let you deliver that data to any app you want, on the terms you want. It should store user data when there is a measurable benefit to the user, rather than gathering everything in the hopes that data mining will provide value to someone else. It should allow people to determine if their data is available to others. The principle of user sovereignty will affect the way we design every aspect of our offerings.  Mozilla offerings must embody the values of the Mozilla Manifesto and our privacy principles.

My colleague Ben Adida (tech lead for identity and user data and one of our resident cryptographers) has written a piece describing our thinking on how to build such products.

Mozilla is so much more than Firefox.  Mozilla is an idea, a mission, implemented through products, the market and people.  This video does a nice job of explaining how all this fits together.

We’re starting off 2012 by releasing MPL 2.0, the updated version of the Mozilla Public License.  Here are the details about MPL 2.0.  The MPL was created as part of the launch of the Mozilla project in 1998, and was updated once in 1999.  The MPL is used by the Mozilla project for much of its code, including Firefox and Thunderbird.  It is also used by other organizations and individuals.

Version 2.0 is similar in spirit to the previous versions, but shorter, better, and more compatible with other Free Software and Open Source Licenses.   We appreciate the help of the Free Software Foundation for GPL compatibility and the Open Source Initiative for assistance with compatibility and their ultimate certification of the MPL as meeting free software and open source standards.

The MPL 1.1 versions had one expert who had been involved in every word and every decision.  Even today, more than a decade later, I can still bring to mind particular phrases or section references along with the rationale behind them.  The MPL 2.0 is a vast improvement here as well.  It has 5 peers now,  instead of just one.

I also want to call out the stellar work of Luis Villa, supported by Heather Meeker.  Luis started the MPL 2.0 revision process as a new lawyer just out of law school, but with a long and deep background in free/open source software.  Harvey and I believed that his software experience and his motivation would make up for his status as a young lawyer.     We have been more than vindicated — Luis began with project management, and has come to own much of the content over time.

The MPL 2.0 will be adopted by the Mozilla project; this decision was proposed, reviewed and decided as part of the beta and Release Candidate process over the fall of 2011.  The actual update process with be managed by Gervase Markham,  who managed the update from the MPL only to the MPL tri-license many years ago.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the process.  It’s an honor to work with so many great people.