This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending May 2, 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 approved funding for a new Bugzilla-related project; more details last next week. Thanks to all who donated to the Mozilla Foundation in support of Bugzilla!
• CAs and related issues
  • I gave final approval to the request from DigiNotar to add a new root and enable it for EV; for more information see bug 369357.
• Public communications and related issues
  • David checked in changes to the Community pages on www.mozilla.org (bugs 271655, 370222, and 426600).
  • David updated the Mozilla-Based Applications page and added Featured Apps for May (Joost and Second Life).
  • David and I participated in activities related to the Powered by Mozilla program.
• Other
  • Gerv worked on Summer of Code and other activities.
  • Zak worked on various conference-related activities.

Upcoming events and activities

• The Mozilla accessibility team will be attending and staffing a Mozilla booth at the SightCity conference (May 7-9 in Frankfurt), with sponsorship by the Mozilla Foundation.
• I will not be able to attend the Berkman@10 conference (May 15-16 in Boston); if any Boston-area Mozilla people are interested in attending, please contact me.
• Zak will be doing a keynote at the eLiberatica 2008 conference (May 30-31, 2008, in Bucharest).
• The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum conference (June 23-24 in New York NY), which I’m planning to attend if possible.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 25, 2008. (Yes, I’m somewhat behind again on status reports, but will catch up again today.)

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 weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant.

• Grants and related expenditures
  • I worked on one grant approved but not yet finalized, and another larger accessibility-related grant not yet approved.
• CAs and related issues
  • I gave preliminary approval to the request from DigiNotar to add a new root and enable it for EV; for more information see bug 369357.
• Public communications and related issues
  • David and I participated in activities related to the Powered by Mozilla program.
  • David made some additional changes to drafts of new Community pages for www.mozilla.org.
• Conferences
  • The Mozilla Foundation was a sponsor of the W4A conference, more formally known as the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (April 21-22 in Beijing).
  • Zak spoke at the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference (April 24 in Munich).
  • Steve Lee attended and spoke briefly at the Accessibility 2.0 conference (April 25 in London) on behalf of the Mozilla Foundation, and posted a conference report.

Upcoming events and activities

• The Mozilla accessibility team will be attending and staffing a Mozilla booth at the SightCity conference (May 7-9 in Frankfurt, Germany), with sponsorship by the Mozilla Foundation.
• I will not be able to attend the Berkman@10 conference (May 15-16 in Boston MA); if any Boston-area Mozilla people are interested in attending, please contact me.
• Zak will be doing a keynote at the eLiberatica 2008 conference (May 30-31, 2008, in Bucharest, Romania).
• The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum conference (June 23-24 in New York NY), which I’m planning to attend if possible.

Paul Graham (of Y Combinator fame) recently posted an interesting article “Be Good” (which I found via John Gruber’s Daring Fireball site) about the connections between startups and nonprofits:

About a month after we started Y Combinator we came up with the phrase that became our motto: Make something people want. … Another thing we tell founders is not to worry too much about the business model, at least at first. … A couple weeks ago I realized that if you put those two ideas together, you get something surprising. Make something people want. Don’t worry too much about making money. What you’ve got is a description of a charity.

Graham mentions Craigslist as an example of a corporation that deliberately avoids profit maximization in the interests of serving users, and Google as an example of a company that initially focused solely on serving users, to the point of looking like a nonprofit service, and only later found a business model. He then notes:

If you start from successful startups, you find they often behaved like nonprofits. And if you start from ideas for nonprofits, you find they’d often make good startups.

Graham then goes on to talk about a nonprofit “be good” orientation as a way to establish a market position, maintain employee morale, attract support from others (customers, investors, etc.), and provide guidance when tough decisions need to be made. All great points, and you can read them for yourself. However there’s one thing I wanted to note and one point I wanted to expand on.

First, I’m surprised Graham didn’t mention Mozilla in this context; it seems a textbook case of succeeding by focusing on what users want, starting from a nonprofit orientation and then evolving into a hybrid organization combining a public benefit purpose and a revenue-producing business model. Netscape spent a lot of time focusing on how the browser could drive server software sales and create new lines of business, and Netscape Communicator was the result. AOL spent a lot of time focusing on how the browser could drive AOL subscription and ad sales, and, well, not much was the result. Once revenue and profit were de-emphasized the Mozilla Foundation spent its time focusing on making a great browser people would want to use, and Firefox was the result.

Second, Graham speculates “Would all good nonprofits be good companies? … Could you, for example, grow a successful startup out of curing an unfashionable but deadly disease like malaria?” Though he doesn’t use the term, he’s describing a “social enterprise“, one of the hottest topics of recent years in the nonprofit world, along with its sister concept, the “social  entrepreneur“. Graham briefly considers why more nonprofits don’t follow this path:

The idea of starting a company with benevolent aims is currently undervalued, because the kind of people who currently make that their explicit goal don’t usually do a very good job. … The problem with most of [such efforts] is that they either have a bogus political agenda or are feebly executed. … Most explicitly benevolent projects don’t hold themselves sufficiently accountable. They act as if having good intentions were enough to guarantee good effects.

In other words, they’re not run like good businesses, and don’t subject themselves to the internal and external discipline (including the discipline of the market) that would force them to do so. It’s a superficially plausible dismissal, but is this the whole story? That’s a question I’ll try to explore in a future post.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 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 weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant.

• Grants and related expenditures
  • The Mozilla Foundation will be funding Alexander Surkov to continue his work with the Mozilla accessibility code, and in particular to develop test cases and create fixes where necessary for the Gecko 1.9 accessibility infrastructure.
• CAs and related issues
  • I gave preliminary approval to the request from Network Solutions to add a new root and enable it for EV.
  • I also worked on the request from DigiNotar to add a new root and enable it for EV.
• Public communications and related issues
  • David participated in activities related to the Powered by Mozilla program.
• Conferences
  • The Mozilla accessibility team will be attending and staffing a Mozilla booth at the SightCity conference May 7-9 in Frankfurt.
  • The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum conference June 23-24 in New York NY.

Upcoming events and activities

• I’m planning to attend the Berkman@10 conference (May 15-16 in Boston MA) and the Personal Democracy Forum conference (June 23-24 in New York NY) if possible.
• Zak will be speaking at the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference (April 24 in Munich), and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 11, 2008. (I’m now caught up on status reports.) Note that I was out almost all week taking care of family medical matters, so the report is somewhat skimpy.

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
  • The Mozilla Foundation will be sponsoring some Mozilla accessibility developers to attend the SightCity conference and meet with Marco Zehe and Aaron Leventhal.
  • Mozdev published its 2007 annual report.
• CAs and related issues
  • I corresponded with some people who can potentially help with processing CA applications, and set up some calls to discuss next steps.
• Public communications and related issues
  • David did more work on revising the www.mozilla.org site, including updating the “About” page.
• Conferences
  • Zak attended the Go Open 2008 conference in Oslo, Norway, and spoke to a number of people about Mozilla-related issues.

Upcoming events and activities

• I’m planning to attend the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA and the Personal Democracy Forum conference June 23-24 in New York NY if possible.
• Zak will be speaking at the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference April 24 in Munich, and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 4, 2008. (I’m still trying to catch up on status reports.)

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 weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant.

• Grants and related expenditures
  • The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the NetSquared 2008 conference.
• CAs and related issues
  • I gave final approval to the application from Comodo to add a new EV root and EV-enable three existing roots; for more information see bugs 401587, 426568, 426572, and 426575.
  • I also tried to address general questions about the Mozilla CA policy and how it should be applied
• Public communications and related issues
  • David did more work on revising the www.mozilla.org site, including updating the featured applications page and participating in a planning meeting for proposed site changes.
• Conferences
  • Zak worked on a proposal to hold a session at OSCON on coaching open source developers and other FOSS community members.

Upcoming events and activities

• I’m planning to attend the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA and the Personal Democracy Forum conference June 23-24 in New York NY if possible.
• Zak will be speaking at the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference April 24 in Munich, and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 28, 2008. (I’m again trying to catch up on status reports.)

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 weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant.

• Grants and related expenditures
  • Eitan Isaacson completed the intermediate milestone for his Orca contracted Braille project.
• CAs and related issues
  • I worked on the applications from Comodo and KISA.
  • I also tried to address general questions about the Mozilla CA policy and how it should be applied
• Public communications and related issues
  • David did more work on revising the www.mozilla.org site, including helping with a 10th anniversary page and a proposed new About page.

Upcoming events and activities

• I’m planning to attend the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA and the Personal Democracy Forum conference June 23-24 in New York NY if possible.
• Zak will be speaking at the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference April 24 in Munich, and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 21, 2008. (I’m now caught up on status reports, thank goodness.)

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 got paperwork done for another new grant, to be announced later.
• CAs and related issues
  • I gave final approval to the applications from GeoTrust (bug 407168) and thawte (bug 407163) and filed bugs against NSS/PSM for the changes.
• Public communications and related issues
  • David worked on various items related to the Mozilla 10th anniversary celebrations.

Upcoming events and activities

• I’m planning to attend the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1, 2008 in Silver Spring MD, and (if possible) the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA.
• I’ll be out for a few days the week of April 7 to handle a family medical issue.
• Zak will be speaking at the Go Open conference April 8 and 9, 2008, in Oslo, the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference April 24 in Munich, and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 14, 2008. (I’m running a bit behind on status reports; the one for last week should be up in the next couple of days.)

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 worked on new grants (recently approved); no public announcements yet
• CAs and related issues
  • I gave final approval to the request from VeriSign to add a new EV root (bug 402947).
  • I gave preliminary approval to the application from Comodo to mark three existing roots for EV use (bug 401587).
• Public communication
  • David continued work on www.mozilla.org changes and the proposed new Mozilla T-shirt, as well as other internal (for now) projects.
• Conferences and events
  • Zak did a keynote presentation at the PHP Quebec Conference March 12-14.
  • I attended the CSUN conference for one day and worked at the Mozilla booth. Thanks go to David for helping to get stuff shipped to CSUN, and to all the people who did booth duty at CSUN: Mick Curran, Joanie Diggs, Eitan Isaacson, Steve Lee, Chris Leung, Jamie Teh, and (last not least) Marco Zehe.

Upcoming events and activities

• I’m planning to attend the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1, 2008 in Silver Spring MD, and (if possible) the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA.
• Zak will be speaking at the Go Open conference April 8 and 9, 2008, in Oslo, the Leadership by (Open) Innovation in the Telecom, IT and Media Industries conference April 24 in Munich, and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 7, 2008. (I’m running a bit behind on status reports; the one for last week should be up tomorrow.)

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
  • Seneca College announced a $100,000 grant from the Mozilla Foundation to support Seneca’s ongoing work with the Mozilla project and its creation of a curriculum for educating Mozilla and open source developers.
  • The GNOME Foundation announced that the Mozilla Foundation will be joining the GNOME Foundation advisory board.
• CAs and related issues
  • I gave preliminary approval to the applications from GeoTrust and thawte to add new EV-capable roots (bugs 407168 and 407163 respectively).
  • I also worked on EV-related applications from Comodo and VeriSign.
• Public communication
  • David continued work on various www.mozilla.org-related tasks.
  • David also posted a proposed new Mozilla T-shirt design.
• Conferences and events
  • Zak published a number of blog posts from his attendance at SCALE; see the latest post for links.
  • I continued work on arrangements for CSUN.

Upcoming events and activities

• I’m planning to attend the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1, 2008 in Silver Spring MD, and (if possible) the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA.
• Zak will be speaking at various open source events in 2008.