Mozilla

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending September 21. I spent a lot of the week handling internal administrivia. 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. Legal/IP issues I’m still waiting on more feedback on the proposed corporate contributors agreement. Grants and related activities Alexander Surkov completed the second milestone on his implementation in Mozilla of the IAccessible2 accessibility API for Windows (to be used by future versions of Firefox and Firefox-compatible screen readers on Windows). The IA2ToGecko project page has more information, including links to the relevant bugs. Ariel Rios completed the second milestone on his project to implement a new Collection interface for the GNOME AT-SPI accessibility API (to be used by future versions of Firefox and Firefox-compatible screen readers on Linux). For more information (and to track progress) see GNOME bug 326516. Steve Lee completed the final milestone for his project to create a prototype switch-activated on-screen keyboard for Firefox; he’ll be showing this at the Mozilla accessibility summit. Web sites David continued work on getting old www.mozilla.org content archived. Upcoming activities I’m considering attending the Mozilla accessibility summit on October 5 in Boston. I’m also considering attending one or both days of the Seneca College Free Software and Open Source Symposium (FSOSS 2007) in Toronto on October 25 and 26.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending September 14. The major activity of the week for me was a trip to California for the monthly Mozilla Foundation board meeting. 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. Legal/IP issues I posted a public draft for the proposed corporate contributors agreement. Gerv corrected the trademark list in the Mozilla trademark policy. Grants and related activities The Mozilla Foundation is sponsoring two representatives to participate in the CalConnect events in Boston September 17–21. The Foundation is sponsoring one person to participate in the Mozilla accessibility summit in Boston October 5. (The Mozilla Corporation is providing general sponsorship for the summit, including travel sponsorship for other attendees.) LWN did an article on Mozilla-related Summer of Code projects, including one mentored by Gerv. Web sites David continued work on getting old www.mozilla.org content archived. Other Zak gave a presentation for Mozilla 24. (I don’t think the presentation was recorded for later viewing, but Zak has put an earlier version online.) Upcoming activities I’m considering attending the Mozilla accessibility summit on October 5 in Boston. I’m also considering attending one or both days of the Seneca College Free Software and Open Source Symposium (FSOSS 2007) in Toronto on October 25 and 26.

Some time ago we started the process of drafting an agreement for use by corporations and other organizations whose employees contribute code and other material to the Mozilla project, and created bug 369879 to track this effort. After some delay (for which I apologize) we now have a draft of such an agreement ready for public comment. In this post I provide a little bit of background to the proposed agreement (formally known as the Mozilla Corporate Contributor License Agreement, or the Mozilla corporate CLA for short). ...

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. ...