Mozilla

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. ...

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. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending September 22, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Grants and related topics. I concluded arrangements for a Foundation grant to Seneca College (of Toronto Canada) to support their Mozilla-related activities; you can read more about these activities on David Humphrey’s blog. Next action(s): Sort out administrative arrangements for one more project we’re planning to fund. IP-related issues. I worked some more on trademark applications; our goal is to have applications for all word marks and logos associated with the main products of the project (not just for Firefox and Thunderbird). Next action(s): Initiate application for the SeaMonkey logo after any needed paperwork gets done. Conferences. Gerv Markham and Zak Greant participated in EuroOSCON and EuroFoo. Next action(s): Maybe Gerv and/or Zak will blog about this? ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending September 15, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Grants and related topics. I concluded arrangements for the Foundation to fund Henri Sivonen to develop an HTML5 conformance checker prototype, based on existing work he’s done in this area. I also approved a grant to Knowbility Inc. for Mozilla accessibility developer travel expenses and general sponsorship of the Second 2006 California Web Accessibility Conference (CalWAC2) at the California State University at Long Beach on September 28–29. Next action(s): Sort out administrative arrangements for a couple of other projects we’re planning to fund. IP-related issues. I formally initiated trademark applications for the Sunbird word mark and logo, and for the SeaMonkey word mark. Gerv worked to ensure proper licensing for language dictionaries contributed for use with Mozilla products. Next action(s): Initiate application for the SeaMonkey logo after any needed paperwork gets done. ...

I was on vacation for the week ending September 8, 2006, so there was very little to report; see my status report for the week ending September 15, 2006.

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending September 1, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Grants and related topics. The Mozilla Foundation will be supporting the Mozilla accessibility hackfest meeting in Cambridge MA October 10–12, including sponsoring travel costs for selected attendees. Next action(s): Work with attendees of accessibility hackfest to get travel arrangements sorted out. Mozilla Foundation web site. I had a phone call with Paul Kim and Zak Greant to coordinate activities related to creating a www.mozillafoundation.org web site. Next action(s): Zak to follow up with Paul. We also need to create more content for the site, and decide what content moves over from mozilla.org and what doesn’t. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending August 25, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Sunbird and SeaMonkey. I did some more work related to trademark issues for Sunbird and SeaMonkey (working with the respective teams), including creating a EULA for Sunbird similar to the Firefox EULA. Next action(s): As appropriate. Grants. The board approved a grant proposal to an academic institution to support some proposed Mozilla-related initiatives; more on this later as things get finalized. I also did more work on an accessibility-related grant; again, more info to follow later once details are worked out. Next action(s): Get the administrative issues sorted out on the above-mentioned grants. Other. I assisted Seth Bindernagel with getting some questions answered regarding the proposed Mozilla Corporation corporate giving program. I discussed with Gerv Markham and Zak Greant the possibility of making a Mozilla Foundation donation to an appropriate nonprofit organization to offset carbon dioxide emissions associated with air travel by Foundation staff. Next action(s): As appropriate. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending August 18, 2006. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Karim Lakhani meeting. I took a day trip up to Boston MA for a meeting with Karim Lakhani. Karim helped start the opensource.mit.edu repository of academic research related to open source, free software, and related topics, and was one of the people involved in the “transition team” prior to the Mozilla Foundation reorganization. He and I had a wide-ranging discussion about Mozilla project issues, how to promote openness and innovation, and related topics. Next action(s): I’ll be working with the Mozilla Foundation board to figure out what (if any) concrete initiatives might be influenced or initiated based on Karim’s and my discussions. If I have time I’ll also post more of my thoughts about what’s going on in the world of open source and innovation these days, especially as it applies to the Mozilla project. Sunbird and SeaMonkey. I did some work with the Sunbird and SeaMonkey teams around the general issues of trademarks and EULAs for those products. Next action(s): As appropriate. ...