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.

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. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending June 13, 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 weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures I updated the list of Mozilla Foundations grants and related expenditures for 2007 to include all items approved in 2007. Gary Bishop of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill published information on the atool project, a follow-on project to an earlier Mozilla Foundation-funded project to enable people with physical disabilities to do keyboard input using commodity webcam hardware. Legal issues Gerv published the new Mozilla committer’s agreement and related information on the www.mozilla.org site. CAs and related issues Kathleen Wilson updated the pending CA request list to reflect current information received from CAs; she’s still waiting on information from several CAs. Public communication David participated in a planning meeting on www.mozilla.org changes. David also had a call with the evangelism team about community content ideas for www.mozilla.org. Conferences Zak continued work on the proposed FOSSCoach event at OSCON. Other Gerv continued work on a project to calculate what percentage of the world’s Internet users have a localized version of Firefox available in their native language. Upcoming events and activities The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum conference (June 23-24 in New York NY). Brian Behlendorf will be speaking there, and I’m also planning to attend. 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.