This is the first in a series of reports describing activities of the Mozilla Foundation; I hope to be able to post these weekly as I have time. These reports are revised versions of the reports that I prepare for the Foundation board, and are intended to supplement other blog postings that I, Gerv Markham, or Zak Greant might make about Mozilla-related activities.

Projects for the week

Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did last week:

  • FOSDEM localizers meeting. As previously noted by Gerv, the Mozilla Foundation is sponsoring a localizers meeting at FOSDEM later this month. I sent out a second round of invitations; we’re now up to more than 20 people planning to attend.

    Next action(s): Approve any final travel arrangements, help with visas, look at possible additional FOSDEM activities.

  • GPLv3 process. I’m representing the Mozilla Foundation in the GPLv3 process sponsored by the Free Software Foundation, as part of Discussion Committee A. Besides participating on the committee’s mailing list, last week I participated in a committee teleconference. My main interest thus far is in trying to get clarity from the FSF regarding GPLv3 compatibility with the MPL and similar non-GPL copyleft licenses. I also did two press interviews regarding GPLv3 and how it relates to the Mozilla project.

    Next action(s): Help with preparing public page for Discussion Committee A, continue participation.

  • Camino press release. I assisted the Camino project with preparing and distributing a press release announcing Camino 1.0. (Note that the press release itself was issued under the auspices of the Camino project, not the Mozilla Foundation proper.)

    Next action(s): Look at formulating some general policies for how we might handle future press releases for Mozilla-related projects other than Firefox and Thunderbird.

  • CA/browser issues. As I previously noted in my discussion of CAs, certificates, and the SSL/TLS UI, Gerv and I have been participating in informal discussions with CAs and browser suppliers, in particular relating to the possibility of future “extended validation” certificates that might be accorded special treatment in the browser UI. I participated in a conference call relating to these discussions, and talked to one of the CA’s about their proposals for validation procedures for extended validation certificates.

    Next action(s): Review the detailed proposals submitted thus far, keep up with activities in this area. However note that in general Mike Beltzner and others (not I) will be driving activity around the browser security UI, e.g., through Mike’s “sending the right signals” work, which takes a more general approach than just looking at the SSL UI (and rightly so, in my opinion).

  • Mozilla (re)licensing. For quite some time now Gerv has been working to finish up the Mozilla relicensing project intended to make MPL-licensed Mozilla code available under GPL and LGPL terms as well. Recently Gerv assisted the developers of the new Songbird media player in getting the licensing straightened out for their product, which includes GPL-licensed code; see Gerv’s blog post and the Songbird licensing FAQ for more information.

    Next action(s): Gerv and I are still trying to secure permissions for relicensing from the last remaining contributors who have MPL-only code in the Mozilla tree.

There were also a couple of other activites I hope to be able to blog about in upcoming reports.

Upcoming activities:

Here’s a partial schedule of events I’ll be attending and travel I’ll be undertaking for the next month or two:

This concludes the report.