Mozilla

In previous posts I’ve discussed the theory of disruptive innovation (sometimes referred to as disruptive technology) created by Clayton Christensen and his associates, whether Firefox is a disruptive innovation in the sense Christensen uses, and the value network for Firefox. In this post I discuss potential “asymmetric competition” between the Mozilla project and Microsoft; much of my discussion is in the context of Firefox and IE, but my comments are meant to encompass the project as a whole. ...

The Mozilla Foundation has just announced a reorganization in which it’s created a new wholly-owned subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. In this post I wanted to provide my thoughts about the reorganization, why it’s being done, and what I think it means for the Mozilla project and the Mozilla Foundation. Since my name was mentioned in the press release I thought I’d begin by very briefly describing my role in all this. As it happens it was almost eight years ago to the day that I became seriously involved with what eventually became the Mozilla project. Since then I’ve worked on a variety of Mozilla-related tasks as a volunteer, almost all of them involving policy issues and related activities. Recently I decided to participate even more actively in the Mozilla project, first by serving as chair of a committee advising the Mozilla Foundation board of directors concerning the reorganization, and now by taking a half-time position as director of policy for the Foundation. ...

In previous posts I discussed the basics of Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory and considered whether Firefox is a disruptive innovation. In this post I try to describe the ”value network” for Firefox, using Christensen’s definition: “[a firm’s] upstream suppliers; its downstream customers, retailers, and distributors; and its partners and ancillary industry players” (Seeing What’s Next, p. 63). I also discuss how the Firefox value network overlaps (or not) with the value networks of Microsoft and others. ...

In a previous post I discussed Clayton Christensen’s “disruptive innovation” theory (as popularized in The Innovator’s Dilemma and other books) and how it applied to the rise and fall of Netscape. In this post I turn to more recent events, and attempt to answer at least some of the five questions with which I ended previously: Is Firefox more of a sustaining innovation or a disruptive innovation? In what sense is the Mozilla project pursuing (or could pursue) disruptive strategies, whether based on low cost or competing against nonconsumption? ...

I have just submitted a Mozilla CA certificate policy 1.0 release candidate to the Mozilla Foundation and mozilla.org staff for consideration as an official 1.0 policy. This version of the policy is basically the draft 12 version with two changes: I explicitly marked the policy as a release candidate. I made a minor change to the last sentence in clause 7 to clarify the meaning of the sentence. Here is the message I sent to mozilla.org staff recommending adoption of the policy. Note that I tried to distinguish between points on which there has been reasonable consensus (at least among the people who’ve commented on the policy throughout this process) and points on which no real consensus exists (at least in my opinion); I also tried to fairly characterize the nature of any remaining disagreements and indicate the implications for future policy. ...

I’ve just posted a new draft 12 of the proposed Mozilla CA certificate policy, and absent strong objections plan to submit this to the Mozilla Foundation for approval as a 1.0 policy. The two substantive changes in this draft are as follows: To address some of the concerns expressed about CAs issuing “duff” certificates (defined loosely as certificates that are dubious from a security or technical point of view) I’ve expanded clause 4 to add examples of certificate-related problems that might cause us to reject a CA’s application for inclusion or to consider removing an already-included CA certificate. ...

I’ve previously thought of Jamie Zawinski not just as an excellent hacker but also as a marketing talent, creator of the original mozilla.org “brand.” (Imagined conversation: “You know, these open source and free software types are all radical anarchists or Marxist hippies; they’ll really go for a brand image that reminds them of trashing a WTO meeting” “Well, Jamie, you’re the expert. . . .”) Now based on his “groupware bad” rant it turns out that JWZ is also a leading-edge corporate competitive strategist; maybe the people getting Harvard Business School MBAs could take a break and hang out at the DNA Lounge instead. ...

I happened to stumble upon a blog post by Jennifer Rice on “Love/Hate brand scores". She did a thoroughly unscientific comparison of common brands based on querying Google for “I love Foo” and “I hate Foo” (similar to Googlefight, but taking the idea a bit further). I’ve recomputed her results and included some brands and products of interest to us. Here’s the original Love/Hate brand score table, with all figures recomputed based on new searches (partly so I can understand exactly how she computed her results, and partly to get a consistent baseline for adding Firefox et.al. ); I’ve left the brands in the same order as in Rice’s table for ease of comparison. ...

I’ve posted a new draft 10 of the proposed Mozilla CA certificate policy. The only substantive changes are as follows: I changed the language on disclosure of financial compensation (i.e., of independent evaluators by CAs) to read “publicly disclose” as opposed to “fully and publicly disclose”; in other words, I dropped the word “fully.” I added a section discussing revision of the policy, and noting that such revision would be done only after public discussions (similar to what we’re doing now). ...

In the course of our discussing the proposed Mozilla CA certificate policy, Ian Grigg happened to ask about the existing Mozilla policy on handling security bugs and how we tried to forge a compromise between people advocating full disclosure of security bugs and people who were opposed to that. (Ian was interested in this because he and Adam Shostack have been blogging on the “economics of disclosure.”) I happened to look back at the Google archives of the discussions we had, and found some material that I thought was worth revising, reprinting, and commenting upon, especially for people who are not aware of how the current Mozilla policy came to be. ...