20 Feb 2025
Building a Better World Through Technology
I am driven to build a better world through how we build technology that promotes opportunity, agency, and public benefit. I have pursued this mission through Mozilla for more than 25 years – first as a Netscape employee, then as a volunteer leader of Mozilla, then as the co-founder and leader of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation. I am still driven by this mission, which is as important as ever. I will of course always be the co-founder of Mozilla but going forward I will pursue this mission outside of Mozilla.
I’ll share more details on my next steps soon. Today I want to focus on how I’ll be approaching this mission outside of Mozilla.
Mozilla’s upcoming era will have a focus on managing its portfolio of organizations, and the work described in Mozilla’s recent blog post. My personal approach going forward will be quite different. I’m aiming for new incarnations of the heart and spirit that built the open source movement and created Mozilla.
As Mozilla has grown I’ve experienced the opportunities and challenges in operating a $1 billion+ organization that is also a global technology platform and the flag-bearer for so many aspirations for a better internet. It’s a wildly valuable experience, and quite rare in the “open must win” world. I increasingly feel the pull to connect these experiences to new grassroots entrepreneurs, builders and movements. If I had had access to this experience when we were starting Mozilla it would have been a huge asset.
I have another creative burst or two in me waiting for the right opportunity. I know that the ethos of “open” and the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto are each increasingly important in the world today. There are only a handful of people who have lived through the explosion of “open” into the mainstream, who have developed that into a successful consumer product based on values, and then led an organization and a community through global scale and impact. I am one of this very small group and I feel compelled to use this experience to support others working in related fields. I want to find other people who are building things because those things need to exist in the world first, and then figure out how to generate revenue and build sustainability. I’m looking to immerse myself in opportunities that generate true creativity and breathe life into something new.
I’m learning exciting things these days. It has become even clearer to me that both “open must win” and the passion that has driven my leadership of Mozilla remain a clarion call for me. I will continue to explore my contribution to these areas in the next phase of my work through a broad range of contexts. In addition, the ability to represent this perspective in the public discourse is an honor and a responsibility to which I remain committed.
By “building a better world through how we build technology” I mean:
- Offering more opportunities to more people to participate in creating our world, independent of educational pedigree or job title.
- Internalizing “open” and open source as both a means and an end in itself.
- Using open source to offer a “trust but verify” approach to how our technology operates and how it impacts individual sovereignty and our society.
- Using private initiative to build public good – building business as a tool for public benefit.
- Deepening transparency and individual agency.
- Creating technology through combined efforts and shared assets.
I think of this approach as advocacy through building technology, using an “architecture of participation.” Many of us think of it as the ethos of open source. The possibility of this approach is hard to internalize until one experiences this directly, and is wildly powerful once one has. It’s the power that made Mozilla successful. Personally, it’s the power that kept me going whenever the work was really hard. And it’s the power that drives me to want to continue building and working on the “open must win” ethos.
The inspiration and impact of Mozilla are beyond anything I could have imagined. Words cannot express my gratitude to every one of you who chooses Mozilla, supports Mozilla, volunteers, chooses open, works for the public benefit, and resonates to the ideals we captured in the Mozilla Manifesto. I’m humbled by each of you who has chosen me as your leader, allows me to represent you in the world, and gives me the support to bring the best of our shared work into the world. This is a level of trust and commitment that I am proud and honored to have earned. It’s my deep hope to build on that in ways that reflect the core principles that have brought us together.
You can reach me on Mastodon or BlueSky or Linkedin or here at [email protected] where I’ll provide updates. Mozilla email should forward to me for the next few months. Those of you who know me well enough to have my personal contact info, or to know someone who does, please do feel free to contact me. I may be slow to respond, but I’m driven by community and inspired by Mozillians, so don’t be shy!