Mozilla

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. Next action(s): Evaluate a funding request for sponsorship of a developer workshop (Mozilla-related but not Mozilla-specific). IP/legal issues. I posted to www.mozilla.org a new version of the Mozilla domain name license application to correct the postal address for the Mozilla Foundation. I also resumed work on putting together a draft corporate contributors agreement, and Zak and I worked on various trademark-related issues. Next action(s): Continue work on the corporate contributors agreement. Get work started again on an update for the CVS contributors form. Web sites. David Boswell worked more on revising the Foundation section of www.mozilla.org, and participated in discussions on revamping www.mozilla.org as a whole. Next action(s): Continue work on www.mozilla.org. CA-related. I worked on issues related to a third-party’s web sites with misconfigured SSL certificate information causing Firefox errors. Next action(s): Start the process of revising the Mozilla CA certificate policy to take into account Extended Validation certificates. Other. Zak helped out with Software Freedom Day and Mozilla 24 planning. David met with Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Law Center. Gerv Markham was on vacation. ...

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. Next action(s): Evaluate a funding request for sponsorship of a developer workshop (Mozilla-related but not Mozilla-specific). Work with the Foundation board to make a decision on other new proposals. IP/legal issues. I created a new version of the Mozilla domain name license application to correct the postal address for the Mozilla Foundation. Next action(s): Post the new domain name license application to www.mozilla.org. Work with the SeaMonkey Council and others on appropriate policies for the SeaMonkey trademarks. Work more to get the contributors agreement moved forward. Web sites. Gerv Markham updated the Mozilla Suite start page to encourage users to upgrade to more recent products. David Boswell worked more on revising the Foundation section of www.mozilla.org. Next action(s): Continue work on www.mozilla.org. CA-related. Gerv Markham worked on a number of pending CA applications for certificates to be included in Mozilla products. Next action(s): Start the process of revising the Mozilla CA certificate policy to take into account Extended Validation certificates. ...

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. Next action(s): Complete paperwork on a major new grant. Evaluate a funding request for sponsorship of a developer workshop (Mozilla-related but not Mozilla-specific). Work with the Foundation board to make a decision on other new proposals. IP/legal issues. I’m responding to licensing-related questions to the Foundation while Gerv Markham is on vacation. I contacted a company about putting proper MPL, etc., notifications in the EULA and other material for their Mozilla-based product. Next action(s): Work with the SeaMonkey Council and others on appropriate policies for the SeaMonkey trademarks. Work more to get the contributors agreement moved forward. Web sites. David Boswell worked more on revising the Foundation section of www.mozilla.org. Next action(s): Continue this work. Other. Zak Greant worked on tying up loose ends from the Internet as a Public Good Symposium. Gerv was on vacation. Next action(s): Do a blog post on the issues discussed at the IPG symposium. ...

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. Grants and related activities. As part of our efforts to improve the accessibility of Firefox and the web, particularly on free and open source platforms, the Foundation will be funding improvements to the GNOME AT-SPI accessibility API on Linux and enhancements to the Orca screen reader for Linux. Also, Eitan Isaacson completed his Foundation-funded work on the Accerciser accessibility test tool for GNOME on Linux. Last but definitely not least, Aaron Leventhal was one of five winners of the 2007 Google/O’Reilly Open Source Awards, for his work on Mozilla and Firefox accessibility; please join us in congratulating Aaron! Next action(s): Evaluate a funding request for sponsorship of a developer workshop (Mozilla-related but not Mozilla-specific). Work with the Foundation board to make a decision on other new proposals. IP/legal issues. I’m responding to licensing-related questions to the Foundation while Gerv Markham is on vacation. Next action(s): Work with the SeaMonkey Council and others on appropriate policies for the SeaMonkey trademarks. Work more to get the contributors agreement moved forward. Web sites. David Boswell created a Foundation page on wiki.mozilla.org for Foundation-related work in progress, links to staff blogs, etc. Other. Along with Mitchell, David, Zak, and I participated in the Internet as a Public Good symposium at Harvard. Thanks go to Zak for his work in getting the symposium organized! Next actions: Do a blog post on the issues discussed at the IPG symposium. ...

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. IP/legal issues. I worked on some internal legal and licensing issues. Next action(s): Work with the SeaMonkey Council and others on appropriate policies for the SeaMonkey trademarks. Work more to get the contributors agreement moved forward. Other. Gerv attended the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS). Zak has been working to help get the Internet as a Public Good symposium organized. David has been working on various tasks related to donations to the Mozilla Foundation. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending July 13, 2007. Projects for the week Note that starting with this report I’m going to be more consistent about making this a report for all Foundation-related activities, not just stuff I’m doing. For more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Here’s a partial listing of what I and others did this past week. ...

This is my report on my activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending July 6, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others did this past week: Grants and related activities. Steve Lee completed phase 2 of his Jambu project to enable Firefox to work with alternative input devices; for more information see his report; he’ll now be starting phase 3 of this work. Aaron Leventhal submitted two new accessibility-related grant proposals for our consideration. Next action(s): Evaluate a funding request for sponsorship of a developer workshop (Mozilla-related but not Mozilla-specific). Work with the Foundation board to make a decision on other new grant proposals. Do a blog post summarizing our accessibility-related efforts (done), as well as a brief meeting report on CSUN and G3ICT. IP/legal issues. With the help of Smokey Ardisson and Samuel Sidler, I tracked down some additional information needed by our lawyers to initiate trademark registration of the Camino logo. Next action(s): Get the Camino logo trademark registration formally submitted (done). Work with the SeaMonkey Council and others on appropriate policies for the SeaMonkey trademarks. Work more to get the contributors agreement moved forward. Other. I spoke at the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science meeting in Atlanta GA, about the nature and importance of open source, our Mozilla and Firefox accessibility efforts, and how open source might affect the assistive technology industry. I also cleaned out the queues for various Mozilla mailing lists that I moderate, and wrote responses to any relevant non-spam emails. ...

For some time now the Mozilla Foundation has been involved in supporting efforts to make Firefox and other Mozilla products more accessible to people with disabilities; see for example my blog post on Mozilla and accessibility. This document builds on the ideas in that post to propose an overall vision and strategy for possible efforts to improve the accessibility of Firefox and other Mozilla-related software and the web in general. Note that the ideas expressed in this post are my own and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Mozilla Foundation. It’s up to the Foundation board and to the new executive director to decide whether and how to implement this proposed strategy. Also note that my comments are primarily concerning the Mozilla Foundation; however the Mozilla Corporation has also taken some great steps to support accessibility (for example, hiring Tim Keenan to work full-time on accessibility QA and evangelism) and no doubt will do more in future. ...

This is my report on my activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending June 29, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others did this past week: Grants and related activities. I approved funding for a project to enhance the NVDA open source screen reader for Windows to better support Firefox. This actually happened some time ago, but I forgot to mention it: WebAIM completed its project to produce revised XUL accessibility guidelines and create a XUL accessibility evaluation tool. Henri Sivonen completed the third milestone on his current HTML5 conformance checker project. Next action(s): Evaluate a funding request for sponsorship of a developer workshop (Mozilla-related but not Mozilla-specific). Do a blog post summarizing our accessibility-related efforts, as well as a brief meeting report on CSUN and G3ICT. IP/legal issues. I asked our lawyers to initiate trademark registration of the Camino logo. Next action(s): Work with the SeaMonkey Council and others on appropriate policies for the SeaMonkey trademarks. Work more to get the contributors agreement moved forward. Other. I took a day of vacation. ...