This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending May 30, 2008. 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 made a small grant to support the G3ict accessibility initiative. Among other things, G3ict has published a book, The Accessibility Imperative, discussing implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in an IT context. (I have a few copies of this book available for those who want one; please send me an email if you’re interested.) Legal issues Gerv Markham published an update to the Mozilla Foundation license policy, but held off on publishing the new Mozilla committer’s agreement pending a final decision on administrative arrangements for processing the signed forms. CAs and related issues Gerv worked with others to determine how the Debian weak key problem might affect CAs and SSL-enabled web sites. Kathleen Wilson worked on gathering information relating to requests from GlobalSign (bugs 406796 and 406796), secomtrust (bug 394419), Comodo (bug 421946), Wells Fargo (bug 428390), Verizon/CyberTrust (bugs 430694, 430698, and 430700), and TC TrustCenter (bug 436467). I communicated with various CAs regarding their planned applications for inclusion of roots in Mozilla, and posted a draft checklist for information needed for evaluating CA requests. Public communication David Boswell worked with Samuel Sidler on a www.mozilla.org design brief and archiving plan and posted to www.mozilla.org new featured Mozilla-based applications for June (Google AdWords Editor and Zimbra Desktop). David posted a draft copy of a proposed Mozilla brochure for public review. Conferences Zak Greant did a keynote presentation at eLiberatica, and worked on the proposed FOSSCoach event at OSCON. Upcoming events and activities The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum conference (June 23-24 in New York NY). Brian Behlendorf will be speaking there, and I’m also planning to attend. David, Gerv, and Zak will be attending OSCON (July 21-25 in Portland OR) and the Firefox Summit (July 29-31 in Whistler BC). I will be attending the Firefox Summit but not OSCON.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending May 23, 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 Eitan Isaacson completed his Mozilla Foundation-funded work to improve the Orca open source screen reader for Linux. Thanks go to Eitan for all his work on this! The Mozilla Foundation is funding Ben Millard for an accessibility-related project to study how authors use HTML in practice, compare this with the semantics and accessibilty-related features in HTML5, identify any gaps, and help develop realistic ways to fill them. The Mozilla Foundation is funding Wellington Fernando de Macedo to help implement in the Mozilla code base server-sent DOM events functionality as specified in HTML5. This is a project originally proposed for the Google Summer of Code; we thought it was a project worth supporting but didn’t have enough SoC slots to include it as part of that program. CAs and related issues As I previously announced in the m.d.t.crypto newsgroup, Kathleen Wilson will be assisting me with the task of gathering information about Certificate Authorities that apply for inclusion of their root certificates into Mozilla. I’ve assigned a number of CA-related bugs to Kathleen, with a priority on getting EV-related requests processed. I updated the pending and included lists to reflect changes in Firefox 3 RC1. Conferences Zak prepared for his keynote at eLiberatica and for the FOSSCoach event at OSCON. Upcoming events and activities Zak will be doing a keynote at the eLiberatica 2008 conference (May 30-31, 2008, in Bucharest). The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum conference (June 23-24 in New York NY). Brian Behlendorf will be speaking there, and I’m also planning to attend. Schorsch (Schorsch@invalid.com) - 2008-05-29 06:57 Well - it looks as if the T-Systems CA ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378882 ) pass this train? I’ve to wait until FF4.7, am I right? ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending May 16, 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 Eitan Isaacson published an update on his Mozilla Foundation-funded work to improve the Orca open source screen reader for Linux. The Perl Foundation received a $200,000 donation to support Perl 6 development. Among other things, this donation will be used for continuation of Patrick Michaud’s Perl 6 work, for which the Mozilla Foundation made a $10,000 seed grant. Legal issues We got final legal signoff for the proposed new Mozilla committer’s agreement; Gerv is now working to get an official copy of this agreement and related information posted to www.mozilla.org. CAs and related issues I found someone to help clear the backlog of CA requests. Public communications and related issues David continued work on the www.mozilla.org site. Conferences We have more blog posts from the Mozilla accessibility team’s attendance of SightCity 2008, including one from Steve Lee and an almost minute-by-minute account by Ben Millard. Zak prepared for upcoming conference appearances. Upcoming events and activities Zak will be doing a keynote at the eLiberatica 2008 conference (May 30-31, 2008, in Bucharest). 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.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending May 9, 2008. 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 With support from people who’ve designated donations for Bugzilla, the Mozilla Foundation is funding a new project to be undertaken by Everything Solved, Inc. As a major Bugzilla contributor and customization expert, Everything Solved will survey large corporations and organizations already using Bugzilla in order to determine what the most desired enhancements and changes are. This will help guide the Bugzilla project for future development, and will also begin a standardized and organized list of feature ideas from the most visible users of Bugzilla. Legal issues We got a final round of legal review for the proposed new Mozilla committer’s agreement. CAs and related issues I held discussions with various parties about how to resolve issues with disabling email trust for certificates issued by DigiNotar. Public communications and related issues David participated in a planning meeting for www.mozilla.org changes and worked on related issues; for more information see his recent blog post. Conferences Various members of the Mozilla accessibility team attended SightCity 2008, with sponsorship by the Mozilla Foundation; Marco Zehe wrote a blog post with more details. Zak prepared for upcoming conference appearances already scheduled, and proposed some new conferences for our consideration. Upcoming events and activities Zak will be doing a keynote at the eLiberatica 2008 conference (May 30-31, 2008, in Bucharest). 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.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending May 2, 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 I approved funding for a new Bugzilla-related project; more details last next week. Thanks to all who donated to the Mozilla Foundation in support of Bugzilla! CAs and related issues I gave final 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 checked in changes to the Community pages on www.mozilla.org (bugs 271655, 370222, and 426600). David updated the Mozilla-Based Applications page and added Featured Apps for May (Joost and Second Life). David and I participated in activities related to the Powered by Mozilla program. Other Gerv worked on Summer of Code and other activities. Zak worked on various conference-related activities. 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), with sponsorship by the Mozilla Foundation. I will not be able to attend the Berkman@10 conference (May 15-16 in Boston); 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). 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. LpSolit - 2008-05-05 23:19 “I approved funding for a new Bugzilla-related project; more details last week.” Last week? Or next week? ...

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. ...