Hugs and infographics

Tristan Nitot

Ok, this may seem like a weird headline for this blog post. Let me explain two things that happened this week at Mozilla, and it will hopefully make sense to you.

Let’s start with the infographic. Mozilla published a new infographic called Mozilla in 2012 that gives an overview of our many achievements in 2012. When I see all the things that we did, all the goals achieved, all the progress that took place, I can only be proud of this fantastic organization that is Mozilla. Of course, not everything is perfect, but Mozilla’s efficiency, its achievements compared to its size are something that Mozillians can be extremely proud of. Mozilla is a very streamlined and focused organization, a lean and mean machine, especially when compared to competitors.

Infographic about Mozilla's achievements in 2012

Now, let’s talk about the hugs. Over the past few days, I’ve been in the Paris office, then I have spent a few days in a seminar with a small group of peers, and then a day with colleagues from our Mountain View, California, office.

Let me describe interactions I had with a few people:

In Paris, I worked with Vincent, a bright and quirky high school dropout, who recently showed up at our offices, wanting to help. He had some time on his hands before starting a job in January, and wanted to use his time wisely.. He did just that in a variety of ways: by drafting a User Experience design proposal for a future product, refining graphical details in a slide deck for me, he even set up the Christmas tree in the Paris office. Vincent is a Mozilla contributor: he’s not making money, but he’s learning a lot and meeting people that share his passion for computers, smartphones and the Web.

Then there is Stormy, who heads Developer Engagement at Mozilla. I had dinner with her after our seminar. We shared funny and not-so funny stories and had a deep, courageous and authentic discussion about how we could work better together.

Finally, there was Pascal, a tall passionate German guy who exchanged with me reading suggestions that would make us grow and improve Mozilla as an organization.

I picked just three people, but I could have mentioned dozens of other colleagues I interacted with, including David A. and David B., two wonderfully nerdy and super smart people that serve Mozilla’s mission with a passion, Havi, Johnny, Lori and so on.

All of these people have shared something with me, some energy, some wisdom, some fun. All of them are a source of inspiration for me, and each of them is part of what makes Mozilla such a wonderful place that makes people grow. This is why I wanted to hug each and every one of them.

Where does the infographic fit in? It just proves that Mozilla is more than a social club, it’s a community of passionate people who work hard, care about each other and deliver fantastic products that make the Web a better place.

The beauty of all of this is that we are open. This makes Mozilla a very precious thing. You can be part of Mozilla if you want, it’s as simple as clicking on one of these two links to get started:

Think about it. Mozilla changed my life; it could change yours.

Teaching the next generation not to be passive consumers

Tristan Nitot

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Apple 2 computer

I recently had to give a talk at a conference about digital natives, so I went for a walk down memory lane to remember what where my favorite computers back when I was a kid. At the time, the Apple II was the king of the hill, the absolute dream machine. Thanks to Woz, its creator, it was open in every possible way: a BASIC language interpreter enabled everyone to learn programming, a built-in disassembler enabled power users to understand how the operating system worked, the case was easy to open (no tools needed) and you had more extension slots than you needed to connect peripherals. You could even design your own extension cards, since the electronic schematics where shipping with the computer. In short, the Apple II was built to encourage tinkering and hacking.

Fast forward to 2012. Kids in developed countries are all digital natives, and Smartphones have outsold PCs.

Graph showing that smartphones outsell PC

In other words, kids are going to learn computing with smartphones and tablets. These are systems that are not open to tinkering at all. Users are left with very limited options:

  1. Download an App
  2. Use it
  3. Rinse, repeat

In short, we’re training kids to be passive consumers, to use their devices in “read-only” mode.

Of course, not everybody wants or needs to “hack” (e.g. tinker with) their devices. Most of use want something that just works, but I claim that in order to have a generation that is creative and takes control on its digital lives, our society needs systems that kids can tinker with.

This system is the Web. The Web is fantastic because it encourages participation, just like the Apple II did back in the days. It’s easy to understand, source code can be made visible with the “view source” command, and there is no need to pay a fee to participate nor beg approval from a gatekeeper (the App Store).

To support this approach, Mozilla is working on two initiatives:

  1. Webmaker.org, a set of tools and events that aim at helping the world increase their understanding of the Web and take greater control of their online lives.
  2. Firefox OS, a mobile operating systems that enables the Open Web as a platform for mobile devices.

We need your help! It’s easy and possible in many different ways.

Here are two links for you to help Mozilla on this important topic:

Mozilla and ITU

Tristan Nitot

I have written a couple of times on this blog that what I like about the Web (and the Internet overall) is the fact that anyone can participate without having to ask for permission.

The origin of this is that the Internet was built around this idea. It was not made by a government with a top-down approach: the technical standards that make the Internet possible were created by engineers and scientists.

The result is that nobody owns the Internet, and everyone participate.

This may change, as governments will meet next week in Dubai, behind closed doors, to determine if countries should be allowed to regulate and control the structure of the Web.

I’ll leave it to Mozilla’s General Counsel, Harvey Handerson, to explain why this is such an important issue (emphasis is mine):

Whether the Internet is regulated by governmental treaties via the ITU and to what extent, is a vitally critical question. In fact it is so critical it can’t be done behind closed doors. The Internet as we know it today is just too fundamental to our lives to leave it to governments to decide its fate.

This is why all of us, citizens of the Web, need to take action on this important topic. How? Glad you asked:

The freedom to participate is one of the key things that have made it so awesome. Let’s defend it.

Unprecedented Commercial Freedom

Tristan Nitot

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the dangers of closed marketplaces when it comes to selling smartphone apps. One can ask what are the alternatives, and how they’re better than monopolistic marketplaces. I had started writing a post to answer these questions when a colleague of mine share a fantastic article written by David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and partner at 37signals.

David starts by writing “It’s easy to take for granted just how good we have it as software makers selling on the internet” as it give “unprecedented commercial freedom”.

David goes and lists his 5 top reasons why he loves the “unregulated Internet” (as opposed to App Stores):

  1. Access to world markets
  2. Direct sales to customers
  3. Free tools and education
  4. No capital requirements
  5. Self promotion can build a brand

All of these reasons are interesting, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll focus on #2 and #3.

Direct sales to customers – I’m quoting David: “There are no distributors and no retailers with their hand out to take a cut. And we, the makers, get to talk directly to our customers—not someone else with a million other products to sell and none of our expertise.”

In short, you don’t suffer from “App Store tyranny” as this is now called. App Stores can be useful if they provide convenience to the users (like payment, curation of apps) and developers (getting additional visibility for apps), on top of direct sales. But if they are the only option, especially if there is a monopolistic App Store, then they are damaging commercial freedom.

Free tools and education – I’m quoting David again: “All the software we needed to build our business with was not only freely available off the internet, it came with a wealth of free education that would shame any university. Programming languages, database systems, web servers, load balancers, operating systems. It was all there for the taking.”

This is something that I have already discussed here on Beyond the Code. Open standards, tons of education material (including Mozilla’s MDN) and all-you-can-eat Free/Libre/Open-Source Software, which is the number one reason why the Web is the platform for so many innovations. This is completely in line with Mozilla’s mission, which is to promote openness, innovation & opportunity. This is also the reason why we’re investing so much in Firefox OS: we want to extend the freedom of the Web to Mobile.

Mozilla: a vision and what it needs to make it real

Tristan Nitot

Mozilla has just published its annual State of Mozilla, along with a very inspirational post by Mitchell Baker that I encourage people to read.

Today, Mozilla’s mission remains as important as ever. From Firefox through Firefox OS to our new Mozilla Webmaker educational offering, the goal is empowerment. It’s about unlocking the full creative power of mobile; standing up for user sovereignty, privacy and freedom; and helping millions of people move from using the Web to actively building its future.

We do this by building products, technologies, programs and communities that embody our values and empower people when it comes to their online lives.

Today, we see how the Web can make yet another leap in its usefulness, fun, business opportunities and social benefit. (…) Mozilla is building this world. We have the vision of this world, the architecture, the technology and the product plans. We’re building these products now. We have the financial resources to support these efforts. This is an exciting and very productive period. (…) Please join us in building this world.

Come on, help us, and join the crowd of people who want to build a better digital future for all of us.

Mozillians at the Mozilla Festival, 2012

Mozillians at the Mozilla Festival, 2012. Photo by Paul Clarke

Brian King, fighting for the user

Tristan Nitot

In the spirit of showing what’s (and who) is beyond the code that powers Mozilla technology, I’m interviewing Brian King, a long-time contributor living in Slovenia, with his quite noticeable Dublin accent.

Tristan Nitot – Hi Brian, can you introduce yourself and what you have done for Mozilla over the years, when did you start contributing?

Brian King – I’m Brian King and I’ve been involved with Mozilla since 1999. I was primarily a developer. A company I worked for was one of the first 3rd parties to use the Mozilla code to write software, in this case a firm in Dublin writing children’s software. Then I got involved with mozdev.org and helped build up a developer ecosystem around Mozilla software and products, e.g. Add-ons. Then I started doing consulting around this, eventually setting up my own firm Briks in 2006. I also do many volunteer activities for Mozilla, most recently engagement efforts in the Mozilla Reps program.

Tristan – I’ve seen you help with organizing tons of events, such as FOSDEM, every year in Brussels, Belgium.

Brian – Yes, from early on I tried to attend as many events as possible, e.g. developer meetings or European get-togethers. After some time I became involved in the organizational side, such as managing the schedule and logistics for the Mozilla room at FOSDEM.

Tristan – Why did you do this as a volunteer? What has drawn you to Mozilla?

Brian – At the start I became more drawn into the community because of the people. On IRC and newsgroups, I found passionate, helpful and welcoming folks. It brought a sense of belonging beyond what I needed to do for my job. As I learned more about Mozilla’s mission and values, it made more sense to me personally to continue contributing. Later when I started making a living writing add-ons and other Mozilla software, I felt a) I needed to give something back and b) I was personally invested in the success of the Open Web and Mozilla. So there were altruistic and selfish reasons mixed together.

Tristan – Do you remember when you have read the Mozilla Manifesto? What impression did it leave you?

Brian – I read it very shortly after it became public, or even during the drafting phase. To me it was just a more explicit expression of what I felt to be the ideals of Mozilla before. The essence of these principles are openness, standards, and the standing up for Web users around the world. It is too verbose to give someone an elevator pitch about Mozilla, but as a document cementing our core values and beliefs I believe it has held up very well. We’ve refined the shorter messages as well since then.

Tristan – I’ve just heard that you’ve become paid staff, focusing on Community management in Europe. How do you feel?

Brian – This is somewhat of a departure for me as up until now I have mostly been doing development work for a living with Briks and other employers before that. Yet in many ways it is a continuation of the work I have been doing as a Mozilla volunteer for a long time. In particular as I mentioned before, my work with mozdev, Mozilla Reps, and on events has really primed me for the position. As I’ve traveled around and met many great people and seen how communities work over the last few years, I’m amazed by the endless energy and ideas. This is a time of change for Mozilla as we move into the new areas to fulfill our mission. The community is rising to the challenge and I’m looking forward to continue to work with everyone.

Tristan – How do you see Mozilla in the next 5 years?

Brian – I think we will continue to do our mission through first-class products, and continue our evolution into mobile with Firefox OS. There is huge opportunity here.
Beyond that it is quite simple, I’d like to see us scale the number of contributors globally, and continue to fight for the user so that they continue to have a stake and control in their Web presence.

Tristan – “fighting for the user”, I can’t agree more! Thank you Brian for your time. I wish you the best in your new job with Mozilla!

Securing Firefox and the other browsers too

Tristan Nitot

A padlock. Photo by Tristan Nitot

All of the readers of this blog depend increasingly on the Internet for many aspects of our lives; this is why the security of Mozilla products and services is extremely important, as stated in the Mozilla Manifesto:

Individuals’ security on the Internet is fundamental and cannot be treated as optional.

My colleague Michael Coates has just published a new article on Mozilla’s security blog: Mozilla’s Commitment To Security.

Here is an excerpt:

In the spirit of Mozilla and our pledge to being open, we report all of our security issues to the public. We don’t just show bugs when someone else publicly discusses an issue or when it is convenient to us; we’re open and transparent as a matter of principle.

When a security issue is present that impacts our users we’ll tell the world what we know, what it means to our users and what we’re doing to address the concern. Our pledge is to provide this information to our users as soon as we know it and fix the issue as quickly and responsibly as possible.

Mozilla was the first organization making an open source browser back in 1998, almost 15 years ago, and the industry has followed, with some competitors being partly open source. But we’ve gone further than this to improve security through transparency, as explained by Michael.

Let’s take the innovative topic of fuzzing, which Michael defines as “sending a variety of malformed data into our applications to ensure our products properly handle all sorts of unexpected scenarios that could otherwise lead to vulnerabilities.” Mozilla has been on the bleeding edge of fuzzing in order to harden our applications and improve security. But we have also done something that is not so common, which is to share our tools with our competitors so that they can in turn improve their own applications. We also publicly share our knowledge on such topics in order to improve security for desktop and mobile browsers.

If Mozilla were a commercial organization, it would not make a lot of sense to help our competitors, because it would make them stronger and hurt our bottom line. But Mozilla is a not-for-profit organization, and it makes sense to help competitors improve their products, as it serves Mozilla’s mission: Make the Web a better place for everyone, including those who use other browsers.

Freedom to tinker is the missing feature in tablets and smartphones

Tristan Nitot

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I had a really good conversation earlier today with a reporter. We were discussing the tablet craze and how tablets (and smartphones) could replace computers. I agreed that in a growing number of cases, they can replace PCs. Then he asked me a the following question: “What do tablets miss?”. My response puzzled him. I told the reporter that tablets and smartphones miss freedom. Freedom to tinker. To hack. To experiment with code.

The reporter’s response was his readers, ordinary people, do not care about code. This may be true. On the short term, they don’t care. On a longer term, society as a whole really cares about code. Let me explain: more and more, computers are the interface between us and the rest of the world, for very basic needs such as communicating, learning, getting informed, entertained and such.

But tablets and smartphones do not enable people to program; yet they will replace most of the PCs. In a near future, most kids will experience computing through a tablet or a smartphone: a machine that cannot be programmed easily.

This means two things:

1 – people will grow in a world where they are used to being consumers of applications, without the ability for them to control their computing experience.
2 – innovation is less likely to happen if children don’t learn how to tinker as they grow.

This is not the world I want for my children.

I often get the question from reporters on how I see the future. My answer is this: “I don’t see the future. I don’t know how to predict it. But I know what I want, and I work hard to make it happen”. This is why I’ve been involved with Mozilla for almost 15 years now: I want to invent the digital future that I want to live in.

Maybe you want the same. For this to happen, we need to create a generation of Web makers. This is an important focus for Mozilla. I’ll quote Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, about what this means:

A 100 years from now, we could have a world where making and coding online are a mainstream amateur activity. There would still be professional coders, of course. There always will be. But a huge number of the people making apps, tinkering with robots and writing code would be doing it for the joy of it.

This would ensure freedom for users and innovation for society, just like we had in the PC era and the Web era.

This is not just a dream. It’s a goal. To reach this goal, we have programs such as Mozilla WebMaker, tools, such as Thimble, Popcorn Maker, X-Ray Goggles and events, such as the upcoming Mozilla Festival.

The Mozilla Festival is going to take place in London on November 9th to 11th, 2012. I’ll be there, and there are a few dozen tickets still available. Get yours fast, if you want to build the digital future you want, not the one that’s handed down to us.

The danger of closed marketplaces

Tristan Nitot

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Earlier this week, a very good article about closed app stores (aka marketplaces) was published by Seattle developer Casey Muratori: The Next Twenty Years: What Windows 8′s Closed Distribution Means.

This is a long, thoughtful article focused on the new Windows 8 app store that clearly demonstrates the dangers of app stores monopolies, pioneered by Apple with the iPhone then the iPad, with now Microsoft taking a page from Apple’s book and applying it to the tablet version of Windows 8.

Here is a part of Casey’s conclusion, which I fully agree with:

Experimentation on open platforms is one of the primary sources of innovation in the computer industry. There are no two ways about that. Open software ecosystems are what gave us most of what we use today, whether it’s business software like the spreadsheet, entertainment software like the first-person shooter, or world-changing revolutionary paradigms like the World Wide Web. It will be a much better world for everyone if this kind of innovation continues.

This is something that Mozilla is fully aware of. App stores (aka marketplaces) are interesting and useful because they help users discover applications and developers monetize them. But having a monopolistic app store is just really bad for innovation and more generally our freedom. Is is possible to have the positive things brought by app stores (discoverability and monetization) while avoiding the downsides of monopolistic app stores? Yes it is.

Yesterday, Mozilla released a preliminary version of such an open marketplace for Android. It enables users to install Web applications on their Android smartphone, and we’re already working on extending this to our upcoming Firefox OS mobile platform and Firefox on other platforms.

screenshot of the Firefox marketplaceThis may sound like a paradox, but one of the key features of Mozilla’s approach is to enable developers to bypass the marketplace if they want to by selling their application directly from their own Web site. Exactly for the the reasons detailed above: openness promotes innovation and freedom.

Like everything Mozilla does, this ecosystem is always open — users have choices and developers have control over their content, functionality and distribution.

If you are a developer, I’m sure you’ll want to know more about the Firefox Marketplace approach. Here are a few interesting links:

People and principles are beyond the code

Tristan Nitot

This is how we, Mozilla, define what we do in our Manifesto:

We create communities of people involved in making the Internet experience better for all of us.

What’s interesting here is that — in this sentence — we don’t mention Firefox at all. The goal is to make the Internet better for all of us, and that’s why we make Firefox (along with the very promising Firefox OS project). But a big piece of what we do, even if it’s not very visible from the outside, is to create communities of people. These people — that we call Mozillians–, in turn, build the products that make the Internet better. What makes makes Mozillians — most of them are volunteers — contribute to Mozilla? The Mozilla Mission, which is to make the Internet better. See the virtuous circle? Make the Mission exciting, and you get a vibrant and mobilized community, which in turn helps making the mission a reality, therefore more exciting (there is nothing more exciting than a utopia becoming a reality).

Part of the (excited) French-speaking Mozilla community, CC by Flore

Without the mission, we’re just a small organization competing with other browser vendors: Microsoft, Google and Apple. And Opera. Which, incidentally, are all publicly traded companies. Mozilla, with its few hundred employees (somewhere between 600 and 700 employees) is the small fish in the browser pond. Yet it’s second in terms of market share when it comes to desktop browsing. Without our community, Firefox would not be available in more than 85 languages, as all localization is actually made by volunteers. It would be the same for Quality Assurance, Support, Marketing, Documentation and many other functions of the organization.

So while the community is key in Mozilla’s success, it’s our best interest to demonstrate how Mozilla is doing its best to serve the community. Otherwise, we would lose what really sets us apart and contributes to make us a successful organization: our communities. This means that you can count on Mozilla for doing the right thing for Internet users: we owe it to our community members.

Is making the Internet better for everyone something that inspires you? Would you like to contribute to Mozilla? We’ve room for you. Head over to our Contribute page and see what we have for you. Welcome to Mozilla!