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By now the press release has gone out announcing Adobe’s contribution to the Mozilla project of open source code for their ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2), and Brendan has blogged about it. I’m not directly involved with the project itself but have spent a few days reviewing press materials and doing press interviews, so I’ve had a chance to think about the significance of this announcement and what it means for the Mozilla project and for the web at large. Here are some of my thoughts. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending November 3, 2006. Note that a lot of the stuff I did this week was for a project not yet ready for announcement, hence the skimpiness of this report. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: IP-related issues. With others, looked into the possibility of relicensing the Rhino Java-based JavaScript engine under the MPL. Next action(s): Get a resolution on Rhino licensing. Continue working on trademark-related issues. Grants and related activities. Still working on getting new grant proposals evaluated and approved (or rejected); nothing ready to be announced yet. Next action(s): Get decisions made on the various funding and grant proposals previously submitted. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending October 27, 2006. This was a partial week for me as I had to deal with various home and family issues. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Mozilla Foundation vision and strategy. One of the things I’ll be doing over the next few months is working with the Mozilla Foundation board to create a more defined vision and strategy for the Foundation to guide our efforts in 2007 and beyond, in support of our overall mission to promote choice and innovation on the Internet. If you have your own thoughts on what the Foundation should be doing, please feel free to send me an email and I’ll take your suggestions into account in my own planning activities. IP-related issues. I submitted a trademark application for the SeaMonkey logo. Next action(s): Continue working with the SeaMonkey group and others. Grants and related activities. I’m still trying to get some accessibility-related proposals reviewed that Aaron Leventhal submitted previously, plus Aaron has some more ideas for future projects. (Aaron is clearly trying to keep me busy :-) Next action(s): Get decisions made on the various funding and grant proposals previously submitted. Press. I did a press interview on the subject of the Mozilla project’s CA certificate policy and so-called “extended validation” certificates, and also worked with others on an upcoming press release. Next action(s): None at this time. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending October 20, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Board meeting. A big chunk of my time last week was spent preparing for and following up from a Mozilla Foundation board meeting. Next action(s): More follow-up from the board meeting. IP-related issues. I did some work for Daniel Glazman relating to finding an official name for his new HTML/XML editing application (which he refers to as “Composer” for now). Next action(s): Continue working with Daniel, SeaMonkey group, and others. Grants and related activities. I’m working with Aaron Leventhal on proposals for three new accessibility-related projects that are candidates for Mozilla Foundation funding. Next action(s): Get decisions made on the various funding and grant proposals previously submitted. Press. I did another interview about the Eudora announcement, and also worked with others on a couple of upcoming press releases. Next action(s): None at this time. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending October 13, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: IP-related issues. I had some more discussions with folks about how to handle the SeaMonkey trademarks. Next action(s): More discussions about creating trademark policies for SeaMonkey, Sunbird, and other non-Corporation products. Grants and related activities. I attended the Mozilla accessibility summit in Cambridge MA to talk to the various people we’ve funded to do accessibility-related work, and get an update on accessibility-related development activities. It was a great event; for more information on what went on see Mark Pilgrim’s accessibility summit blog post. As noted in Mark’s post we also completed paperwork on funding XUL accessibility work by WebAIM; I’m glad that got done and we’re able to announce it to everyone. Finally, I’m happy to note that the Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the W4A conference on accessibility next year. Next action(s): Follow up with some other candidates for funding. Press. I did two interviews about the announcement that future versions of Eudora will be based on open source (namely Thunderbird). Next action(s): None at this time. ...

By now many if not most of you reading this will have seen the news about the next version of Eudora being open source and based on Thunderbird’s technology. You may also seen some of the analysis of the announcement. I thought about writing up some analysis of my own, but rather than listen to me I think it’s better to let the Eudora developers speak for themselves. For my own part I’ll simply say that that’s it’s great to have the Eudora developers join the Mozilla community and the world of open source (in particular, I’m glad to see more developers with deep experience in the email space join the project), and I wish them the best of luck as they develop the next Eudora release.

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending October 6, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: IP-related issues. I did some trademark-related work for SeaMonkey, plus various other items. Next action(s): Look at creating trademark policies for SeaMonkey, Sunbird, and other non-Corporation products. Grants and related activities. I finished up paperwork for funding some more accessibility-related work, and will announce it soon. There’s also another grant proposal we’ve received for an unrelated area, plus we’ve gotten expressions of interest from a number of other organizations regarding applying for grants. Next action(s): Get a decision made on the current grant proposal being considered, and take a look at other grant opportunities to gauge their suitability from a Foundation point of view. IDN. The Foundation will be sponsoring Neil Harris to speak on the Mozilla project’s work on Internationalized Domain Names at the Internet Governance Forum meeting in Athens Greece on October 30 through November 2. Next action(s): Assist Neil with travel arrangements. ...

Here’s a weird one, perhaps even weirder than the eMusic deal with Westin Hotels: “Johnny Rockets Expands Music Initiative with Local Market Campaign.” For those who aren’t familiar with it, Johnny Rockets is a faux-retro hamburger chain, and now an eMusic business partner: Johnny Rockets will be expanding its branded music to bring the classic Johnny Rockets music experience to consumers and music fans in new ways. The new local market campaign will include custom playlists on eMusic, a retailer of independent music, free eMusic downloads, Johnny Rockets branded iPod giveaways, and radio and online contests. ...

My apologies for not posting in recent days; work has taken precedence. Here are two quick items to help fill the void for now: First, Pioneers of the Inevitable, the folks behind the open source media player Songbird, have just gotten $1M in venture funding. They’re also about to release version 0.2, but you knew that already, right? Second, since this is Swindleeeee!!!!! we have to have an eMusic tie-in, and fortunately Erik Staats came through for us, announcing his new eMusic extension for Songbird. The extension eliminates the most annoying (at least to me) feature of the eMusic web site, namely that listening to the 30-second track samples requires launching an external application (in my case iTunes for OS X). The extension still has a few rough spots (as noted in my posts to the eMusic message board thread linked to earlier), but it’s definitely full of promise. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending September 29, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: IP-related issues. I corresponded with Daniel Glazman about the naming of his proposed successor product to Mozilla Composer and Nvu, and agreed to help him with trademark-related issues as appropriate. I also got some paperwork completed relating to the trademark application for the SeaMonkey logo, and will be proceeding with that. I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank Alex Butin, who created the SeaMonkey logo, and Mark Carson, who created the Sunbird logo, for their great work and generosity in creating the logos and donating them to the Mozilla Foundation. Please join me in thanking them both! Next action(s): More trademark stuff. Conferences and other outreach. At EuroOSCON Zak Greant interviewed various folks with other open source and free software projects to get a handle on their own issues and whether and how the Mozilla Foundation might be able to assist them in future. interally. Zak also represented the Mozilla Foundation at the Government CIO Summit in Ottawa on September 28 and talked with various people about adoption of open source and free software within government organizations in Canada and elsewhere. Next action(s): Zak is looking to do more such interviews in the future. IDN. Gerv Markham was invited to speak on the Mozilla project’s work on Internationalized Domain Names at the Internet Governance Forum meeting in Athens Greece October 30 through November 2, but won’t be able to attend due to his radiotherapy treatments. He’s working to recruit someone to go in his stead. Next action(s): If a volunteer can be found, arrange Foundation sponsorship for their travel. Mozilla meet-ups. Gerv has been discussing with various people the possibility of having a European meeting sometime in 2007 for localizers and other Mozilla contributors. Next action(s): Talk with folks at the Corporation to see what if any plans they have, and proceed accordingly. Grants and related topics. Other than helping with arrangements for the Mozilla accessibility summit, not much went on last week. Next action(s): Sort out administrative arrangements for one more project we’re planning to fund. ...