This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending November 17, 2006. Most of my time this week was spent at the Firefox summit and traveling back and forth to the meeting.

Projects for the week

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

  • Firefox summit. I don’t have much to add to what others have written about the Firefox summit, two days of which I attended last week; it was great seeing people in person, especially for someone like myself who works remotely and doesn’t spend lots of time at Mozilla HQ. For more in-depth discussions of the summit, see the blog posts by Mitchell Baker, Chris Cooper, Alfred Peng (part 1, part 2, and part 3), J. Paul Reed, Robert Sayre, and Justin Scott (day 1, day 2, and days 3 and 4).

    There are also at least two sets of summit pictures, from Jay Goldman and Justin Scott.

    Next action(s): None at this time.

  • Grants and related activities. I’m happy to announce approval of Mozilla Foundation funding for two new accessibility-related projects: Steve Lee’s On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) proposal to improve Mozilla accessibility for people with physical disabilities, and Charles Chen’s proposal to create test cases and associated documentation for the W3C’s work-in-progress for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (aka the “liveregion” proposal).

    Next action(s): Complete paperwork for two other accessibility-related proposals, and work on some other non-accessibility proposals as well.

  • IP-related issues. I talked with Chris Beard at the Firefox summit about how to coordinate our activities with regard to product-specific EULAs and trademark policies. (The issue here is that the Mozilla Corporation has formal responsibility for Firefox and Thunderbird, with the Foundation responsible for other products distributed under Foundation auspices.)

    Next action(s): Work with Catherine Brady on EULA issue. Help answer licensing-related questions sent to us while Gerv Markham is on vacation. Assist Daniel Glazman with selection of a name for his editor project.

  • CA-related issues. I received a few more CA applications for inclusion in Mozilla-based products.

    Next action(s): Try to make some headway on the other outstanding requests (at least a dozen or more).

  • Press-related. I did two final press interviews on the Tamarin project.

    Next action(s): None at this time.

Upcoming activities

  • Gerv will be out on vacation until December 11 or so.
  • I’ll be out on vacation November 27 and 28.
  • I’ll be in Boston in early December for a meeting with Aaron Leventhal (tentative).
  • I may be out on vacation at least part of the week of December 4. (This is still tentative.)
  • I’ll be in California (though not necessarily at Mozilla HQ) on December 12 and probably on December 11 and/or 13 as well.

Random notes

These reports can be pretty dry and could possibly use just a pinch of something else, hence the addition of this new section to this and future reports.

This week’s topic is music, which I listen to a lot while working in my home office. My recent favorite (read: obsessively-listened-to) albums are somewhat coincidentally at opposite ends of the verbosity spectrum: Joanna Newsom’s Ys (lyrically florid symphonic folk/pop) and Explosions In The Sky’s The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place and How Strange, Innocence (instrumental post rock). All these albums are available on eMusic, a great service you should subscribe to right now if you’re at all interested in music not on major labels.