Currently Swindleeeee!!!!! is hosted on a server I administer, and uses the WordPress blogging software. Over the years I’ve grown tired of maintaining my own blogging configuration, and some time ago I wrote that I was considering moving this blog to the wordpress.com blog hosting service. That time has now come. I have imported all my old blog posts and comments to my new wordpress.com blog, and am about to throw the switch on the actual move. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending January 11, 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 worked on more paperwork for new Foundation grants (to be announced). Steve Lee published a report on his Foundation-funded Jambu on-screen keyboard project. I got grant agreements in place for two new grants (to be announced later), finished a grant agreement for one more, and received proposals for more grants. CAs and related issues I started going through the EV-related CA applications to see which were most ready for approval. Public communications David Boswell worked on more changes to www.mozilla.org, including changes to the Timeline and Projects pages and a new Mozilla-Based Applications page. Other I was out part of the week on family business, and also lost some time dealing with system problems affecting email. Upcoming trips and events David Boswell will be moving out to California Real Soon Now. I’ll be attending at least part of the CSUN conference March 10-15 in Los Angeles CA, and the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1 in Silver Spring MD. Zak will be speaking at the Southern California Linux Expo February 8-10 in Los Angeles, the PHP Quebec Conference March 12-14 in Montreal, and other events later in 2008. Random notes Due to intermittent but annoying problems, I’m about to make two major changes to my current system setup. First, several months ago I started using Gmail as my preferred mail interface, using address aliases and mail forwarding to avoid having to change my canonical email address, and running my old IMAP server configuration in parallel. I’ve now decided to stop trying to run my own mail server, and as of this week I’m switching to Google Apps to provide email and other services for my hecker.org domain. All of my existing email addresses will continue to work, so this should be a transparent switch unless something goes wrong. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending January 4, 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 got grant agreements in place for two new grants (to be announced later), finished a grant agreement for one more, and received proposals for more grants. Licensing and legal I worked with Gerv on a plan to make progress on the proposed replacement for the CVS contributor form, with Gerv contributing drafts of related documents. CAs and related issues I approved the application for inclusion from TÜRKTRUST and filed bug 410821 to have the TÜRKTRUST certificates added to NSS. Public communications David worked on more proposed changes to www.mozilla.org. Other Zak coordinated proposed Mozilla Foundation participation in various 2008 conferences and other events. Upcoming trips and events I’ll be attending the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1 in Silver Spring MD. Zak will be speaking at the Southern California Linux Expo February 8-10 in Los Angeles, the PHP Quebec Conference March 12-14 in Montreal, and other events later in 2008. A final note: Although 2007 has ended, we’re still accepting donations to the Mozilla Foundation through our directed giving program. Help support Bugzilla, Camino, SeaMonkey, and the Mozilla accessibility project, as well as general Foundation activities for the coming year.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the weeks ending December 14, December 21, and December 28, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on in the last three weeks; 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 A number of significant grant proposals were approved in December; I’ll make public announcements on these soon and will update the 2007 grants report to reflect all 2007 activities. Eitan Isaacson completed work on a Mozilla Foundation-funded project to improve performance of the Orca open source screen reader; for more information see GNOME bugs 446277, 495077, 502924, and 491756, as well as Marco Zehe’s report on the overall improvements to Orca performance with Firefox 3. Eitan is now working on a new Foundation-funded project to enhance the Braille output of Orca, including adding support for contracted Braille. Licensing and legal I looked over the proposed replacement for the CVS contributor form to determine what’s needed to complete the project. CAs and related issues I went over the application for inclusion from TÜRKTRUST and all the public comments prior to making a final decision on approval. Web sites David Boswell worked more on proposed changes to www.mozilla.org. Other Gerv had surgery and is now back home recovering. Zak worked on Mozilla Foundation participation in various upcoming events. Upcoming trips and events I’m planning to attend the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1, 2008 in Silver Spring MD.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending December 7, 2007. 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 Ariel Rios completed his Foundation-funded project to add the Accessibility::Collection interface to the AT-SPI accessibility API for GNOME; for more information see GNOME bug 326516. Patrick Michaud produced a progress report on the Perl 6 work jointly funded by the Mozilla Foundation and the Perl Foundation. Zak and I worked on some new grant proposals. Licensing and legal Gerv worked on revising and updating the Mozilla license policy, to bring the document in line with current practice. CAs and related issues I approved the application for inclusion from SwissSign and filed bug 407396 to have the SwissSign CA certificates added to NSS. Web sites David Boswell worked on various changes to www.mozilla.org, including a new Mozilla Foundation home page and a new “Featured Projects” page (bug 393447). Miscellaneous We have a new #foundation IRC channel on irc.mozilla.org for anyone wishing to contact us real-time. Upcoming trips and events I’m planning to be in Mountain View on December 11 (afternoon only) and 12. A final note: We have just over two weeks left in 2007 for you to donate to the Mozilla Foundation through our directed giving program and support Bugzilla, Camino, SeaMonkey, and the Mozilla accessibility project.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending November 30, 2007. 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 Steve Lee provided a report on his participation in the RAatE conference. (Steve’s Jambu project has received funding from the Foundation.) I received some new grant proposals for the board’s consideration. CAs and related issues I worked on the applications for inclusion from SwissSign and TÜRKTRUST, as well as on the EV applications from VeriSign and QuoVadis. I made updates to the pending list to reflect the current status of CA applications. I created a wiki page to track recommended practices relating to CA applications. Web sites David Boswell posted a proposed new Mozilla Foundation page mockup for comment. Upcoming trips and events I’m planning to be in Mountain View on December 11 (afternoon only) and 12.

For the most part I resist writing about the actual music on eMusic, because I’m really not a very good musical critic. However from time to time I do feel the urge to recommend something, and this is one of those times. Courtesy of eMusic I’ve been listening to a lot of “contemporary classical” music (or “new music” to insiders), a taste I came by through listening to electronic music (techno, ambient, etc.). The most well-known and influential movement in classical music over the past half century is of course minimalism, and I think everyone interested in either classical music or (especially) modern electronic music should have an acquaintance with the classic works of minimalism. I’m referring here not to Nixon in China-style “minimalism” but rather to hard-core “let’s play that phrase a few dozen times and then introduce a new element or two” minimalism—or as suggested by someone in response to a Kyle Gann rant, the-music-formerly-known-as-minimalism. ...

No, Alex Ross (of “The Rest is Noise” fame, both blog and book) isn’t being mean to eMusic; in fact to my knowledge he’s never mentioned it, at least on his blog. What I mean is that several of the releases on Ross’s list of recommended CDs (CDs? how last century!) can be found on eMusic: ...

I know it’s only marginally eMusic-related (though it does include a quote from David Pakman, as noted below), but I can’t help commenting on the recent Wired interview with Doug Morris of Universal (not yet online, but excerpted in a blog post on the New York magazine site). Two points struck me in particular: First, the willful cluelessness of Morris and associates about technology and its effect on the music business; as New York magazine notes, it’s “like if your grandfather were accidentally hired to run Google.” Second, Morris’s claim that the major labels are just poor innocent victims in all this, comparing them to Al Capp’s famous Shmoo: ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending November 23, 2007. Note that this was a short week for those of us in the US due to the Thanksgiving holiday. 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 did a blog post describing Mozilla Foundation grants and related expenditures in 2007. David Humphrey pointed us to a press article about Mozilla activities in Toronto and at Seneca College. (Seneca is a Mozilla Foundation grantee.) Donations I did a blog post on the new Mozilla Foundation directed giving program. David Boswell published a FAQ about donating to the Foundation and a new page describing Foundation activities, and coordinated updates to the main Mozilla Foundation donation page and the per-project donation pages for Bugzilla, Camino, SeaMonkey, and Mozilla accessibility to people with disabilities. CAs and related issues I worked on the applications for inclusion from SwissSign and TÜRKTRUST CAs, announced my intent to approve TÜRKTRUST’s inclusion, and started a two-week comment period on TÜRKTRUST’s application. Other Gerv helped resolve some licensing-related issues. Gerv provided detailed feedback on Alex Faaborg’s UI mockups. Upcoming activities I’m planning to be in Mountain View on December 11 (afternoon only) and 12.