Mozilla

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending July 4, 2008. My apologies for the delay in posting this. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on that week; for more information about others’ activities please see the blogs published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Mozilla Foundation future I did two posts related to the ongoing conversation about future Mozilla and Mozilla Foundation strategy. Grants and related expenditures Peter Jaros completed work on his Camino scriptability project (a 2007 grant); for more information see bugs 390072 (preliminary support), 385989 (windows and tabs), and 390846 (bookmarks). I received and started reviewing two new accessibility-related grant applications. CAs and related issues I started the first public comment period for EV-related requests from GlobalSign. Public communication David continued work on updating www.mozilla.org. Conferences Zak continued work on the proposed FOSSCoach event at OSCON. Other Gerv continued work on projects from last week, including tracking Google Summer of Code work for Mozilla-related projects, updating the public suffix list, working toward the proposed Bugzilla reorganization, reviewing a new proposal for site security policies, posting a proposal for replacing the Despot system, and various other things. Upcoming events and activities David, Gerv, and Zak will be attending OSCON (July 21-25 in Portland OR) and the Firefox Summit (July 29-31 in Whistler BC). I will be attending the Firefox Summit but not OSCON.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending June 27, 2008. My apologies for the delay in posting this. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on that week; for more information about others’ activities please see the status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Mozilla Foundation future Lots of people started posting on the topic of what the Mozilla Foundation should be doing in the future, including blog posts from David Eaves, Mark Surman (including a followup), Glyn Moody, and Mozilla’s own David Ascher and Mitchell Baker. There’s also lots of good stuff in the comments to the posts. CAs and related issues I gave final approval for Entrust’s request to enable the Entrust Root Certification Authority for EV (bug 416544) and filed bug 442561 against PSM to have the change made. Public communication David continued work on updating www.mozilla.org. David continued work on the Mozilla brochure project. Conferences Brian Behlendorf (Mozilla Foundation board member) spoke at the Personal Democracy Forum conference. I also attended, and did a related blog post. Zak continued work on the proposed FOSSCoach event at OSCON. Other Gerv worked on a number of projects, including tracking Google Summer of Code work for Mozilla-related projects, updating the public suffix list, working toward the proposed Bugzilla reorganization, reviewing a new proposal for site security policies, posting a collection of “party favors” for Mozilla/Firefox parties, and various other things. David was on vacation that week. Upcoming events and activities David, Gerv, and Zak will be attending OSCON (July 21-25 in Portland OR) and the Firefox Summit (July 29-31 in Whistler BC). I will be attending the Firefox Summit but not OSCON.

In my last post I referred to the “Mozilla DNA,” a term I picked up from Mitchell and used in the course of discussing what role(s) the Mozilla Foundation might take on in future. However I’m not sure Mitchell (or anyone else for that matter) has ever precisely defined what the Mozilla DNA actually consists of, so before going on I thought I’d write down my own personal opinions on the matter. ...

Recently Mitchell posted her thoughts on how the Mozilla Foundation might go about expanding the scope of its activities, in response to posts from various other people. Mark Surman’s post in particular is interesting in its proposal for how the Mozilla Foundation might adopt a broader and more participatory approach to defining its future scope and role; to some degree his proposal contrasts with Mitchell’s thoughts about “building concentric circles” starting with the current focus on software development, where “[the] next circle out would be pretty closely related to this, the next circle a little less so,” and so on. ...

Today and tomorrow I’ll be at the Personal Democracy Forum 2008 conference, of which the Mozilla Foundation is a sponsor. PdF 2008 deals with what has been variously known as “open source politics” or “politics 2.0”—essentially the application of web 2.0 concepts to the area of political campaigning and (to a lesser extent) governance. Brian Behlendorf, one of the members of the Mozilla Foundation board of directors, will be speaking at the conference (as part of a session on “redefining leadership in a networked age”). ...