Mozilla in Asia

Engadget’s N900 review covers the Mozilla-based browser:

Now, finally, let’s talk about this handset’s real treat, its crown jewel: the glorious browser. The Internet Tablet line has used a fairly capable Mozilla-based browser for ages, but between the latest tweaked code and the N900′s thoroughly freshened internals, it’s gone to an entirely new level. Almost without fail, sites were rendered faithfully (just as you’d expect them to look in Firefox on your desktop) with fully-functional, usable Flash embeds — and it’s fast. Not only is the initial rendering fast, but scrolling around complex pages (Engadget’s always a good example) was effortless; you see the typical grid pattern when you first scroll into a new area, of course, but it fills in with the correct content rapidly. To say we were blown away by the N900′s raw browsing power would be an understatement — in fact, we could realistically see carrying it in addition to another phone for browsing alone, because even in areas where it gives a little ground to the iPhone or Pre in usability, it smacks everyone down in raw power and compatibility. In our line of work where 24 / 7 access to the web is of paramount importance, having the N900 in our pocket when we were away from our laptop was a comforting insurance policy.

Nokia N900 review — Engadget

Robert O’Callahan mentioned it on his blog but if you attend Linux.conf.au this week, you get to see not only ROC in action speaking on the importance of open video on the Web,  but also Chris Double on implementing HTML5 video in Firefox and Taras Gleck on The Hydras too.

Not only that, they’re screening Code Rush on Wednesday evening, so you get to see Stuart Parmenter too!

This is a re-post from the Mozilla Blog:

It has come to our attention that there are reports on the popular Thai forum Blognone, มีบริษัทไหน โดนคนจาก Mozilla โทรข้ามประเทศมาเช็คยอดคนใช้ Firefox บ้างไหมครับ, and from Mr. Paiboon’s blog เมื่อมีฝรั่งแปลกหน้าโทรเข้า ออฟฟิศของผม !!, of someone called ‘Edison’ calling Internet businesses in Thailand and using the Mozilla Foundation name. These callers are asking about how many computers in the company are using Mozilla Firefox and are connected to the Internet. Mozilla has no representatives named Edison and no representatives in Thailand doing any telephone-based market surveys. If you receive a phone call from a ‘representative of the Mozilla Foundation’ they are not a representative of Mozilla Corporation or the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla has done web-based surveys from the Mozilla website and other websites and does market research via email, but not via phone in Thailand. If you receive a phone call in Thailand from someone saying that they are from Mozilla, please do not provide any information and take their name and number and send it to press at mozilla dot com for confirmation.

Thank you very much for your support of Mozilla and Firefox in Thailand.

On November 26th, the newest Mozilla community, Mozilla Philippines, which started only a few weeks earlier in the Philippines, celebrated the Five Years of Firefox at the Asian Institute of Management in Manila.

Everything came together very quickly with organization driven by Regnard Raquedan, our new community leader, as well as the Filipino Campus Reps, (Ren-Ren Gabas, Allan Caeg, and Joell Lapitan among many others) who have been very active.  Sherwin Sowy of Globe Labs (a division of Globe Telecom) was kind enough to help with sponsorship and showed off a Firefox Addon that university students had recently developed which enabled the sending of web content (text or images) via SMS/MMS.

If you would like to join the new community that is growing in the Philippines to support Mozilla and Firefox, please join the Philippine Mozilla community list.

Five Years of Firefox in Manila Done!

Other blog posts on the event can be found here:

Five Years of Firefox in Manila Done! – Mozilla Philippines

Five Years of Firefox in Manila Done!

Five Years of Firefox in Manila! – a set on Flickr (Photos courtesy of Aja Lapus & Joell Lapitan)

Mozilla Firefox Turns Five

5 Years of Firefox in Manila, a Report

Happy 5th Birthday Mozilla Firefox!

2009-11-21 Five Years of Firefox in Manila – a set on Flickr:

While this is ostensibly about European Union politics, I wanted to make sure that Planet readers saw this interesting Ashlee Vance story in the NY Times on business models in open source software that mentions Mozilla and Firefox.

Open-source software has thrived and played a prominent role in the building of the Internet’s infrastructure. Many companies rely on Linux-based computers and Apache Web server software to display their Web pages. Similarly, the Mozilla Firefox Web browser has emerged as the most formidable competitor to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

The grass-roots nature of open source has led advocates to view the projects as a populist foil to proprietary software, where a company keeps the inner workings of its applications secret.

But in the last decade, open-source software has become more of a corporate affair than a people’s revolution.

In some cases, dominant technology companies have used open-source projects as pawns. Google, for example, has needled Microsoft by providing financial support to the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which oversees of the development of Firefox. I.B.M. has been a major backer of Linux, helping to raise it as a competitor to Microsoft’s Windows and other proprietary operating systems.

Open Source as a Model for Business Is Elusive

Last week the Korea Times had a long piece on the unique issues around browser security and encryption technologies in Korea, Korea Paying Price for Microsoft Monoculture, which did not reference my original article, the cost of monoculture, but is updating the issues I raised in early 2007.

A few choice quotes:

But the land of ubiquitous broadband, feature-happy “smart” phones and ultra-cool computing devices doubles as a crusty regime where Linux, Firefox, Chrome and Opera users can’t bank or purchase products online, and where Mac users buy Windows CDs to prevent their devices being reduced to fashion items.

The bizarre coexistence of advanced hardware and an outdated user environment is a result of the country’s overreliance on the technology of Microsoft, the U.S. software giant that owns the Korean computing experience like a fat kid does a cookie jar.
…
Critics say the country would end up paying dearly for allowing a Microsoft monoculture to take hold, with consumers deprived of the freedom to choose newer and better products and the Web industry seeing its innovation compromised.

(Anyone want to send me a Steve Ballmer with cookie jar photoshop masterpiece? )

The article goes on to cover a lot of the issues affecting web users in Korea and how many valiant efforts have gone into trying to affect change, most significantly the 3 lawsuits that Dr. Keechang Kim has brought against various Korean policy-making bodies, without success.

The newest effort of the open web community in Korea is openbank.or.kr, an effort to push/educate banking institutions in Korea to change their practices as many believe it is these consumer-facing services which are key to making real change happen for an open web in Korea.

Mozilla is committed to supporting the Koreans who are pushing for a competitive truly open web in Korea. If there is something that we should be doing in Korea to further support open web efforts, please do not hesitate to contact me or leave a comment with your thoughts.

I, for one, look forward to a day when anyone in Korea can use any modern browser on any major consumer computer operating system to bank, purchase goods/services online, trade stocks, etc. without the need for a browser plugin.

Before you read my post (below) about Mozilla’s recent activities in the Philippines, please note that the September 26-27 Tropical Storm Ketsana has caused over 100 deaths and over 340,000 affected by the flooding – the worst flooding in Manila in living memory.  Aggregated information about the floods and how to donate to those who were affected can be found at Ondoy Relief, Typhoon Ondoy, Pinoy Tumblr, Ondoy Tumblr and the Philippine National Red Cross.

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Over the weekend of Sept. 18-20, Seth Bindernagel and I traveled to Manila to begin to understand the Philippines as a growing community of Mozilla users.  We met various people in order to begin to understand the Philippines as an Internet market including domain registrars, network operators, social network service operators, web developers, a group of Spread Firefox Campus Representatives from a few of the schools local to Manila, and the attendees of the 2009 WordCamp Philippines event.

Dinner with the Mozilla Spread Firefox Campus Reps:

Seth has covered a lot of the information we learned from our trip but I wanted to share a few other pieces of information as well as some photos of the places and the people we met.

Chin Wong, who writes the Digital Life column in the Manila Standard met with us and provided a good overview in his article of what we are trying to understand with regards to web usage in the Philippines.

Digital Life by Chin Wong — Filipino Firefox
DO we need a Filipino-language version of Firefox? Mozilla, maker of the world’s most downloaded browser, wants to know.

Chin provided a thoughtful response in the column wherein the first response was that most Filipinos use the Internet in English, all software in English, so a localized (Filipino) version of Firefox is not necessary. But he went on to note that:

On the other hand, I realize there might be a lot of interest in a localized browser, and that there are many more end-users out there [in the Philippines] for whom English is not their first language. After all, the most widely viewed TV shows are all in Filipino, and the most widely read newspapers aren’t the English-language broadsheets but Filipino tabloids. Certainly, folks who fit this media profile would benefit from a Filipino browser.

The majority of people we met with in the few days we were in Manila were more than happy with the English Firefox, which makes sense. These are Internet professionals, web developers, bloggers, people who’s entire academic education was in English. For people like this, an English language Firefox is most natural. But considering the nature of the Philippines, where there are multiple languages in use across the over 7000 islands, where a majority of the population has yet to get online in the first place, and considering how common it is for people to use Filipino (or Taglish) in daily conversation, Seth and I came away convinced that there is a need for a more localized version of Firefox. Exactly what that will look like should be up to the Filipinos who will make that happen, but we’re looking forward to what that may be.

In the coming days, we will be launching a Filipino community mailing list and hopefully from there a website with perhaps a forum so that Filipino users and developers can start collaborating and sharing and planning what to do with Mozilla or Firefox in the Philippines.  If you’d like more information on this new Mozilla community in the Philippines, please leave a comment and I’ll email you the details once they are running.

I am also hoping to be back in Manila for the Philippine Blog Awards, which Mozilla is co-sponsoring this year.  I look forward to meeting bloggers and Firefox users at the Blog Awards event in Manila.

Here are some photos from Seth & my trip to Manila:

Makati at dusk

The infamous traffic of Manila (on a Friday night in rush hour no less)

Beau Lebens, Automattic

Seth Bindernagel, Mozilla

2009 WordCamp Philippines speakers on stage

Please Don’t Hurt the Web, Use Open Standards

Seth & Beau providing entertainment as they eat Balut. (I didn’t partake.)

Even many of the Filipinos at dinner that night don’t eat balut…

It’s always interesting when worlds collide.

Yesterday my friend Fazal Majid, who I have known for years from his excellent blog, wrote about implementing his own local copy of Weave in 200 lines of Python.

I’ve notified the Weave team at Mozilla and they’re looking forward to meeting with Fazal and moving his code to version control so that it can be updated and shared with more Weave fans.

Thanks to Fazal for releasing his code into the public domain for reuse.

Channy Yun of the Mozilla Korea community tells me that the Future Web Forum 2009 event is this Friday, September 4th, in Seoul. Channy will be speaking about Firefox 3.5 and Firefox.next while Joone Hur will be speaking about the current state of Fennec (see event program).

Last year Mitchell Baker and I spoke at this event which was scheduled alongside the OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Internet.  Vint Cerf and Mitchell both keynoted the event last year.

If you are in Seoul this Friday, don’t miss this event as it is one of the few events which showcases browsers other than IE in Korea.

From: WordCamp San Francisco 2009