This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending September 7. I spent most of my time in preparation for an upcoming board meeting, so there’s not much to report this week. 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 my activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending August 31, 2007. Note that I’ve tweaked the format of these reports in an effort to make them easier to read. 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 activities The Mozilla Foundation is funding a project to implement server-side features in Apache and OpenSSL to complement future Firefox enhancements to check the validity of SSL certificates using OCSP. (Technically, what’s being done is implementing support for the Certificate Status Request extension to TLS as defined in section 3.6 of RFC 3546, so that OCSP information can be returned to Firefox as part of the TLS handshake and Firefox doesn’t have to generate a separate OSCP request itself. This technique is sometimes referred to as “OCSP stapling.”) Such validity checks will help improve security when connecting to all SSL sites, but will be especially important when connecting to sites with extended validation certificates. The Mozilla Foundation is co-sponsoring the Foundations of Open Media Software developer workshop to be held in January in Melbourne Australia; among other things, our support will help pay for travel costs for developers attending the workshop. One major topic at FOMS 2008 will be native Firefox support for Ogg Theora and other open media formats. Peter Jaros completed the intermediate milestone on his project to improve scriptability of Camino with AppleScript (a project the Mozilla Foundation is co-sponsoring with the Camino project). IP/legal issues We are close to having a final internal draft for the proposed corporate contributors agreement. I hope to be able to circulate a draft for public comment soon. Upcoming activities I’ll be in Mountain View on September 12 for a Mozilla Foundation board meeting. Zak Greant will be in Mountain View September 13–16 for Mozilla 24. Random notes Driving around a few nights ago I saw signs announcing “Cyberden: alternative coffee house.” I’ve never stepped in the place, but I knew Cyberden as a small PC gaming center in a strip shopping center. However it’s now moved into a new space and added an (alcohol-free) nightclub and cafe; judging from its brochure it’s quite impressive. ...

This is my report on my activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending August 24, 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 activities. Two new projects got approved for funding, details to be announced when all the paperwork gets done. ...

Last Sunday night I happened to be reading the eMusic message boards when I saw a [new post][new pos]") announcing the availability on eMusic of the new album [Kala][] from M.I.A. The original announcement was quickly followed by those ominous words familiar to all eMusic regulars: “get it while you can.” I followed the advice, quickly downloaded the album, and the next morning woke up to read the latest comment on the topic: “And, now it’s gone.” In this case it’s not really gone from eMusic completely, it’s just “unavailable for download in your country” (another phrase dreaded by eMusicians). ...

This is my report on my activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending August 17, 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 activities. The Mozilla Foundation is making a second grant to the Mozdev Community Organization to support maintenance and enhancement of the Mozdev web site. (We made a similar grant last year.) Henri Sivonen completed the final milestone on his Foundation-funded conformance checker work. ...

This is my report on my activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending August 10, 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 activities. The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the 2008 W4A conference (renewing our sponsorship from this year). Henri Sivonen completed another milestone on his Foundation-funded conformance checker work. ...

Reading one of Bob Lefsetz’s latest letters recently I found out about Universal’s plan to offer digital music in a DRM-free format (although not through iTunes). Lefsetz takes a somewhat jaundiced view of the situation, and in particular makes the point (which I mostly agree with) that the key issue for music buyers is price, not DRM. Hypebot takes issue with his pessimism and (among other things) sees abandonment of DRM as key to enabling more experimentation in music retailing. I agree with this too, but I also remember: Haven’t we seen an experiment like this before? ...

If anyone is still reading this blog, my apologies: I’ve been preoccupied with work and family matters and haven’t posted anything since May. In fact, things got so bad in terms of distractions that I had not one but two months in which I even neglected to use all my eMusic downloads (the horror!). I can’t promise to resume the posting frequency of certain times past, but I do have at least one or two new posts coming up in the next few days, and hope to keep additional posts coming on a semi-regular schedule. ...

This is my report on my activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the weeks ending July 27 and August 3, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on the last two weeks; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Executive director search. The search committee had its first meeting; for more information see the meeting notes. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending July 20, 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 activities. Henri Sivonen completed another milestone in his HTML conformance checker project. Next action(s): Evaluate a funding request for sponsorship of a developer workshop (Mozilla-related but not Mozilla-specific). Make a decision on two new accessibility-related proposals. ...