This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 25, 2008. (Yes, I’m somewhat behind again on status reports, but will catch up again today.) Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on that week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures I worked on one grant approved but not yet finalized, and another larger accessibility-related grant not yet approved. CAs and related issues I gave preliminary approval to the request from DigiNotar to add a new root and enable it for EV; for more information see bug 369357. Public communications and related issues David and I participated in activities related to the Powered by Mozilla program. David made some additional changes to drafts of new Community pages for www.mozilla.org. Conferences The Mozilla Foundation was a sponsor of the W4A conference, more formally known as the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (April 21-22 in Beijing). Zak spoke at the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference (April 24 in Munich). Steve Lee attended and spoke briefly at the Accessibility 2.0 conference (April 25 in London) on behalf of the Mozilla Foundation, and posted a conference report. Upcoming events and activities The Mozilla accessibility team will be attending and staffing a Mozilla booth at the SightCity conference (May 7-9 in Frankfurt, Germany), with sponsorship by the Mozilla Foundation. I will not be able to attend the Berkman@10 conference (May 15-16 in Boston MA); if any Boston-area Mozilla people are interested in attending, please contact me. Zak will be doing a keynote at the eLiberatica 2008 conference (May 30-31, 2008, in Bucharest, Romania). The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum conference (June 23-24 in New York NY), which I’m planning to attend if possible.

Sometimes I can’t help but agree with Bob Lefsetz’s thesis that the music industry is well and truly f*cked, and this is one of those times. As every eMusic subscriber knows, not too long ago eMusic did a deal with ABKCO to sell the early Rolling Stones back catalog under standard eMusic terms (DRM-free MP3s sold at 33 cents per track or even less depending on your subscription plan). eMusic pulled out all the stops to promote the releases, eMusic subscribers were ecstatic, and by eMusic’s account the folks at ABKCO and Universal Music Group (ABKCO’s distributor) were “incredibly impressed” by the amount of business generated—business that was likely almost pure profit from the point of view of ABKCO, UMG, and everyone else involved, and that almost certainly wouldn’t have been generated under the standard iTunes 99 cents per track model. (As I and others have noted many times, eMusic caters to dedicated music listeners who spend a lot of money on music and prefer paid downloads over P2P, but are very price-sensitive.) I’m by no means a Stones fan, but even I took advantage of the opportunity and purchased Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet (the full albums, not just the singles). ...

Paul Graham (of Y Combinator fame) recently posted an interesting article “Be Good” (which I found via John Gruber’s Daring Fireball site) about the connections between startups and nonprofits: About a month after we started Y Combinator we came up with the phrase that became our motto: Make something people want. . . . Another thing we tell founders is not to worry too much about the business model, at least at first. . . . A couple weeks ago I realized that if you put those two ideas together, you get something surprising. Make something people want. Don’t worry too much about making money. What you’ve got is a description of a charity. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 18, 2008. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures The Mozilla Foundation will be funding Alexander Surkov to continue his work with the Mozilla accessibility code, and in particular to develop test cases and create fixes where necessary for the Gecko 1.9 accessibility infrastructure. CAs and related issues I gave preliminary approval to the request from Network Solutions to add a new root and enable it for EV. I also worked on the request from DigiNotar to add a new root and enable it for EV. Public communications and related issues David participated in activities related to the Powered by Mozilla program. Conferences The Mozilla accessibility team will be attending and staffing a Mozilla booth at the SightCity conference May 7-9 in Frankfurt. The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum conference June 23-24 in New York NY. Upcoming events and activities I’m planning to attend the Berkman@10 conference (May 15-16 in Boston MA) and the Personal Democracy Forum conference (June 23-24 in New York NY) if possible. Zak will be speaking at the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference (April 24 in Munich), and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 11, 2008. (I’m now caught up on status reports.) Note that I was out almost all week taking care of family medical matters, so the report is somewhat skimpy. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 4, 2008. (I’m still trying to catch up on status reports.) Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on that week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the NetSquared 2008 conference. CAs and related issues I gave final approval to the application from Comodo to add a new EV root and EV-enable three existing roots; for more information see bugs 401587, 426568, 426572, and 426575. I also tried to address general questions about the Mozilla CA policy and how it should be applied Public communications and related issues David did more work on revising the www.mozilla.org site, including updating the featured applications page and participating in a planning meeting for proposed site changes. Conferences Zak worked on a proposal to hold a session at OSCON on coaching open source developers and other FOSS community members. Upcoming events and activities I’m planning to attend the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA and the Personal Democracy Forum conference June 23-24 in New York NY if possible. Zak will be speaking at the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference April 24 in Munich, and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 28, 2008. (I’m again trying to catch up on status reports.) Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on that week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures Eitan Isaacson completed the intermediate milestone for his Orca contracted Braille project. CAs and related issues I worked on the applications from Comodo and KISA. I also tried to address general questions about the Mozilla CA policy and how it should be applied Public communications and related issues David did more work on revising the www.mozilla.org site, including helping with a 10th anniversary page and a proposed new About page. Upcoming events and activities I’m planning to attend the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA and the Personal Democracy Forum conference June 23-24 in New York NY if possible. Zak will be speaking at the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference April 24 in Munich, and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 21, 2008. (I’m now caught up on status reports, thank goodness.) Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures I got paperwork done for another new grant, to be announced later. CAs and related issues I gave final approval to the applications from GeoTrust (bug 407168) and thawte (bug 407163) and filed bugs against NSS/PSM for the changes. Public communications and related issues David worked on various items related to the Mozilla 10th anniversary celebrations. Upcoming events and activities I’m planning to attend the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1, 2008 in Silver Spring MD, and (if possible) the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA. I’ll be out for a few days the week of April 7 to handle a family medical issue. Zak will be speaking at the Go Open conference April 8 and 9, 2008, in Oslo, the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference April 24 in Munich, and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 14, 2008. (I’m running a bit behind on status reports; the one for last week should be up in the next couple of days.) Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 7, 2008. (I’m running a bit behind on status reports; the one for last week should be up tomorrow.) Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures Seneca College announced a $100,000 grant from the Mozilla Foundation to support Seneca’s ongoing work with the Mozilla project and its creation of a curriculum for educating Mozilla and open source developers. The GNOME Foundation announced that the Mozilla Foundation will be joining the GNOME Foundation advisory board. CAs and related issues I gave preliminary approval to the applications from GeoTrust and thawte to add new EV-capable roots (bugs 407168 and 407163 respectively). I also worked on EV-related applications from Comodo and VeriSign. Public communication David continued work on various www.mozilla.org-related tasks. David also posted a proposed new Mozilla T-shirt design. Conferences and events Zak published a number of blog posts from his attendance at SCALE; see the latest post for links. I continued work on arrangements for CSUN. Upcoming events and activities I’m planning to attend the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1, 2008 in Silver Spring MD, and (if possible) the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA. Zak will be speaking at various open source events in 2008.