Mozillafoundation

Some of you may recall that about a year ago the Mozilla Foundation provided a grant to NV Access, an Australia-based nonprofit organization dedicated to developing NVDA, an open source screen reader designed for blind users of Windows applications like Firefox. This grant went to support NV Access hiring a developer (James Teh) to work full-time on NVDA. (The Mozilla Foundation had previously provided a smaller grant as well.) I’m happy to pass on the news that NV Access has now received financial support from Microsoft sufficient to allow Mick Curran (the original developer of NVDA) to also work full-time on NVDA. From my point of view this is a significant development for both NV Access itself, which has taken another step towards sustaining itself and the NVDA project for the long term, and for blind users of Windows. ...

[This is part 2 of a two-part post. Part 1 discusses the future of education and the possibility of customized online educational offerings as a disruptive innovation that might eventually grow to rival and even dominate traditional educational systems. It ended with a question: what does this have to do with Mozilla? I now attempt to answer that question.] Online education evolves to be user-driven, not vendor-driven By definition disruptive innovations allow users to do things they could previously not do, or could do only at great expense and/or effort. But while disruptive innovations make users’ lives easier, they typically make vendors’ lives harder, at least initially, because creating truly disruptive products can be difficult and expensive. (For example, think of all the industrial design, usability engineering, software development, and other work that Apple put into creating the iPhone and its simplified user experience for running mobile applications and using the web from a handheld device.) ...

[This is part 1 of a two-part post; part 2 is here.] Lately there have been a flurry of posts and associated comments discussing possible future activities that the Mozilla Foundation (and by extension the Mozilla project) might undertake in support of its overall mission and the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto. This post is an experiment in thinking about an area the Mozilla Foundation (and Mozilla in general) might consider getting involved in, one possibility out of the many that have been discussed in the various posts referenced, and one of a number of themes that might inspire particular elements of an overall strategy. As usual, these are my personal opinions only. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending July 18, 2008. 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 blogs published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Future of the Foundation Mitchell Baker announced that Mark Surman is being considered for the Foundation executive director position. David posted a blog entry with ideas about how the Foundation might support the Mozilla community. Legal issues Gerv called for people to sign committer’s agreements at the Firefox Summit. Grants and related expenditures The Mozilla Foundation is sponsoring the 2009 Foundations of Open Media Software workshop. Wellington Fernando de Macedo has made further progress on his Foundation-funded server-sent DOM events project; see bug 338583 for more information. CAs and related issues I gave final approval for two requests from GlobalSign (bugs 406794 and 406796) and filed bug 446407 against NSS and bug 446409 against PSM for the actual code changes. I started the first public comment period for requests from Comodo (for a new ECC root, bug 421946), Deutsche Telekom/T-Systems (bug 378882), and Wells Fargo (bug 428390). I worked with Kathleen Wilson to select the next group of CAs for which to process requests and do information gathering. Public communication David arranged for printing copies of the Mozilla brochure for OSCON, and started work on a brochure page for www.mozilla.org. David prepared for a session on the www.mozilla.org site at the upcoming Firefox Summit. David updated the About page on www.mozilla.org to keep it in sync with the last round of changes to the text of the Mozilla brochure. Conferences Zak continued working on the proposed FOSSCoach event at OSCON and related activities, including drafting the schedule and helping to orient the event coaches and participants. Other Gerv met with various people about proposed Site Security Policy implementations. 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, and then will be on vacation for most of the following week.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending July 11, 2008. 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 blogs published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Legal issues Gerv worked on a variety of licensing issues involving software to be used in the context of the Mozilla project. Grants and related expenditures Gerv contacted the various people involved in Google Summer of Code projects related to Mozilla in order to get current status reports. The Mozilla Foundation is funding a new project by Eitan Isaacson to do comparison testing of accessibility support for Firefox and other browsers. CAs and related issues I gave preliminary approval for two requests from GlobalSign (bugs 406794 and406796) and started the second (and last) public comment period. Public communication David posted version 1.0 of the Mozilla brochure, and worked to get copies printed for OSCON. David took part in a discussion on the Mozilla governance list about where policy documents should live and how they should be maintained. Conferences Zak continued working on the proposed FOSSCoach event at OSCON and related activities, including drafting the schedule and helping to orient the event coaches and participants. Other Gerv continued a discussion on how to to gather ISP configuration data for Thunderbird autoconfig, and created a Google Spreadsheet with proposed data to collect. Gerv attended the party for the presentation of the Firefox Guinness world record certificate, where he can be seen trying to peer over Tristan’s left shoulder. 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.