The Mozilla Blog

Mozilla Foundation Webmaker Program, Indonesia (credit: Laura de Reynal)

Mozilla Foundation Webmaker Program, Indonesia (photo credit: Laura de Reynal)

It is critical to ensure that women are active participants in digital life. Without this we won’t reach full economic empowerment. An explicit focus on women and digital life is necessary for economic empowerment because the statistics are striking: over 1.7 billion women in low- and middle-income countries do not own mobile phones. Women in South Asia are 38 percent less likely to own a phone than men; in Africa, they are 50 percent less likely to use the internet.

This is the perspective and focus I bring to the UN High Level Panel for Women’s Economic Empowerment, an initiative of the United Nations that aims at unlocking the power of women to work and achieve their financial independence. You can read here about my participation to the Panel.

I joined fellow Panel members in Costa Rica a few weeks ago for a meeting hosted by Costa Rica President, Luis Guillermo Solis. Many thanks to President Solis for leading the meeting with both commitment and authenticity!

Here he shows his prowess with selfie-taking:

Members of the High Level Panel – From Left to Right: Tina Fordham, Citi Research; Laura Tyson, UC Berkeley; Alejandra Mora, Government of Costa Rica; Ahmadou Ba, AllAfrica Global Media; Renana Jhabvala, WIEGO; Elizabeth Vazquez, WeConnect; Jeni Klugman, Harvard Business School; Mitchell Baker, Mozilla; Gwen Hines, DFID-UK; Phumzile Mlambo, UN Women; José Manuel Salazar Xirinachs, International Labour Organization; Simona Scarpaleggia, Ikea; Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam; Fiza Farhan, Buksh Foundation; Karen Grown, World Bank; Margo Thomas, HLP Secretariat.
(photo credit: Luis Guillermo Solis, President, Costa Rica)

The meeting was an opportunity for all to learn about actions the Panel members have initiated, are piloting or are already scaling.

We also provided feedback and guidelines on the first draft of the HLP report that is due later this year. The report will describe actions towards women’s economic empowerment that have shown positive results. The goal of the report is to tell these stories to others interested in fostering women’s empowerment and enable them to adopt these successful practices. An initial version of the report will be released in September, with the final report in 2017.

As Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the Executive Director of UN Women often says, the best report will be one that points to projects that are known to work. One such example is a set of new initiatives, interventions and commitments to be undertaken in the Punjab, announced by the Panel Member Fiza Farhan and her Deputy Mahwish Javaid, from Pakistan.

Mozilla, too, is engaged in a set of new initiatives. We’ve been tuning our Mozilla Clubs program, which are on-going events to teach Web Literacy, to be interesting and more accessible to women and girls. We’ve entered into a partnership with UN Women to deepen this work and the pilots are underway. If you’d like to participate, consider applying your organizational, educational, or web skills to start a Mozilla Club for women and girls in your area. Here are examples of existing clubs for women in Nairobi and Cape Town.

Digital inclusion, a cross-cutting, overarching theme of the HLP report, is also a crucial topic for Mozilla. This is where Anar Simpson, my official Deputy for the Panel, focuses her work. We are liaising with companies in Silicon Valley who are working in the fields of connectivity and distribution of access to explore if, when and how their projects can empower women economically. We’re looking to gather everything they have learned about what has been effective. In addition to this information gathering task, Mozilla is working with the Panel to advocate and publicize the efforts of the report.

I joined the Panel because I see it as a valuable mechanism for driving both visibility and action on this topic. Women’s economic empowerment combines social justice, economic growth benefits and the chance for more stability in a fragile world. I look forward to meeting with the UN Panel again in September and reporting back on practical and research-driven initiatives.

Mozilla Delivers Improved User Experience in Firefox for iOS

Jul 26 2016

Nick Nguyen

When we rolled out Firefox for iOS late last year, we got a tremendous response and millions of downloads. Lots of Firefox users were ecstatic they could use the browser they love on the iPhone or iPad they had chosen. Today, we’re thrilled to release some big improvements to Firefox for iOS. These improvements will give users more speed, flexibility and choice, three things we care deeply about.

A Faster Firefox Awaits You

It’s summer intern season and our Firefox for iOS Engineer intern Tyler Lacroix pulled out all the stops this month when he unveiled the results of his pet project – making Firefox faster. In Tyler’s testing, he saw up to 40% reduction in CPU usage and up to 30% reduction in memory usage when using this latest version of Firefox. What this means is that users can get to their Web pages faster while seeing battery life savings. Of course, all devices and humans are different so results may vary. Either way, we are psyched to roll out these improvements to you today.

It’s Now Easy to Add Any Website Specific Search Engine. And Change Your Mind.

We’ve already included a set of the most popular search engines in Firefox for iOS, but users may want to search other sites right from the address bar. Looking for that perfect set of moustache handlebars for a vintage road bike? Users can add sites like Craigslist and eBay. Want to become a trivia champ? Get one tap access to Wikipedia. Simply go to a website with a search box and tap on the the magnifying glass to add that search to your list of search engines.

New Menu for Easier Navigation

Navigation in iOS browsers is a huge pain point for users who have come to expect the same seamless experience that’s available on their desktop or laptop. Firefox for iOS features a brand new menu on the toolbar that allows for easier navigation and quick access to frequently used features – from adding a bookmark to finding text in page.

Recover Closed Tabs and Quickly Flip Through Open Tabs

Browser tabs on mobile devices have traditionally been difficult to use. Hard to see, hard to manage, hard to navigate, and gone forever in a tap. In this upgraded Firefox for iOS users can easily recover all closed tabs and navigate through open tabs.

Home Again, Home Again, With One Quick Tap

Almost everyone has one page they go to first and return to often. Further expanding the ability to customize their Firefox for iOS experience, users can now set their favorite site as their homepage. The designated website will open immediately with a tap of the “home” button. This makes it easier than ever before to visit preferred sites in a matter of seconds.

We created these new features in Firefox for iOS because of what we heard from our users, and we look forward to more feedback on the updates. To check out our handiwork, download Firefox for iOS from the App Store and let us know what you think.

From iOS to Android to Windows to Linux, we are supporting a healthy and open web by building a better Firefox. And we couldn’t do it without our hundreds of millions of active users across all platforms and our vibrant community. Thanks, everyone!

For more information:

Release Notes for Firefox for iOS

Support Public Education and Web Literacy in California

Jul 5 2016

Denelle Dixon-Thayer

2 responses

Web Literacy

Web literacy — the ability to read, write, and participate online — is one of the most important skills of the 21st century. We believe it should be enshrined as the fourth “R,” alongside Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. From our open source learning tools to our free educational curriculum, we are dedicated to empowering individuals by teaching Web literacy.

In 2015, 65% of California public schools offered no computer science courses at all. Public schools should do more to expose students to Web literacy: a paucity of funding and the elimination of digital skills classes and curriculum are a disservice to students and the state’s future.

On June 30, we submitted an amicus letter to the California Supreme Court urging review of the case Campaign for Quality Education v. State of California. The issue in this case is whether the California Constitution requires California to provide its public school students with a quality education. We wrote this letter because we believe that California students risk being left behind in our increasingly digitized society without a quality education that includes Web literacy skills.

The internet has become an integral part of life for many and continues to grow in its global impact. Empowering a Web literate generation of students is crucial to their success, that of the broader online ecosystem and to our local economy. Using technology is an important part of Web literacy but it is not all. Web literacy needs to include a deeper understanding of technology itself and of its impact to empower students and allow meaningful participation in their online lives.

We hope the California Supreme Court takes this case. Ultimately, a quality education, including Web literacy, unlocks opportunities for students to be more engaged citizens as well as making them more college and career ready in today’s technology-driven market.

Meet Codemoji: Mozilla’s New Game for Teaching Encryption Basics with Emoji

Jun 28 2016

Mozilla

🌂🐵✉😓🌉✋📒🏩💥🐵 👻😩📒📒🏂😓😁

The above message may seem like a random string of emoji. But not so: When decoded, it reads: “Encryption Matters.”

Today, Mozilla is launching Codemoji, a fun, educational tool that introduces everyday Internet users to ciphers — the basic building blocks of encryption — using emoji.

Try Codemoji »

How it works

Codemoji is a Web-based platform that allows users to write a message, encode it using emoji, and then send it to a friend.

codemoji

A friendly reminder: Codemoji is intended as a learning tool, not a platform for sharing personal data. Thankfully, modern encryption is much stronger than simple emoji ciphers. If you are going to be sending sensitive information, best to use a more sophisticated security tool 😏.

Why we built Codemoji

Mozilla built Codemoji alongside our friends at TODO, the Turin, Italy-based design and creative agency. Our goal: To educate everyday Internet users about ciphers and the basics of encryption.

Says Mark Surman, Mozilla’s Executive Director:

“When more people understand how encryption works and why it’s important to them, more people can stand up for encryption when it matters most. This is crucial: Currently, encryption is being threatened around the world. From France to Australia to the UK, governments are proposing policies that would harm user security by weakening encryption. And in the U.S., the FBI recently asked Apple to undermine the security of its own products.”

Mozilla believes encryption is the most important tool we have for building a more safe, secure Internet. And building a more secure Internet is critical to our users, our economy, and our national security.

Encryption is also a part of everyday life and everyday commerce. The things we do with it are things we value, like bank and shop. If encryption is weakened, these things become risky.

We believe Codemoji is a first step for everyday Internet users to better understand encryption. To learn more about encryption’s importance, and how you can stand up for encryption, visit advocacy.mozilla.org/encrypt.

Thanks for reading. Or, in Codemoji, 🔔🚄😩🐵🍏😁 🌠💥😓 😓🏂😩💾🏩🐵🚤 .

week2_codemoji_04

Mozilla Awards $385,000 to Open Source Projects as part of MOSS “Mission Partners” Program

Jun 22 2016

Mozilla

3 responses

moz-love-open

For many years people with visual impairments and the legally blind have paid a steep price to access the Web on Windows-based computers. The market-leading software for screen readers costs well over $1,000. The high price is a considerable obstacle to keeping the Web open and accessible to all. The NVDA Project has developed an open source screen reader that is free to download and to use, and which works well with Firefox. NVDA aligns with one of the Mozilla Manifesto’s principles: “The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.”

That’s why, at Mozilla, we have elected to give the project $15,000 in the inaugural round of our Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) “Mission Partners” awards. The award will help NVDA stay compatible with the Firefox browser and support a long-term relationship between our two organizations. NVDA is just one of eight grantees in a wide range of key disciplines and technology areas that we have chosen to support as part of the MOSS Mission Partners track. This track financially supports open source software projects doing work that meaningfully advances Mozilla’s mission and priorities.

Giving Money for Open Source Accessibility, Privacy, Security and More

Aside from accessibility, security and privacy are common themes in this set of awards. We are supporting several secure communications tools, a web server which only works in secure mode, and a distributed, client-side, privacy-respecting search engine. The set is rounded out with awards to support the growing Rust ecosystem and promote open source options for the building of compelling games on the Web. (Yes, games. We consider games to be a key art-form in this modern era, which is why we are investing in the future of Web games with WebAssembly and Open Web Games.)

MOSS is a continuing program. The Mission Partners track has a budget for 2016 of around US$1.25 million. The first set of awards listed below total US$385,000 and we look forward to supporting more projects in the coming months. Applications remain open both for Mission Partners and for the Foundational Technology track (for projects creating software that Mozilla already uses or deploys) on an ongoing basis.

We are greatly helped in evaluating applications and making awards by the MOSS Committee. Many thanks again to them.

And The Winners Are….

The first eight awardees are:

Tor: $152,500. Tor is a system for using a distributed network to communicate anonymously and without being tracked. This award will be used to significantly enhance the Tor network’s metrics infrastructure so that the performance and stability of the network can be monitored and improvements made as appropriate.

Tails: $77,000. Tails is a secure-by-default live operating system that aims at preserving the user’s privacy and anonymity. This award will be used to implement reproducible builds, making it possible for third parties to independently verify that a Tails ISO image was built from the corresponding Tails source code.

Caddy: $50,000. Caddy is an HTTP/2 web server that uses HTTPS automatically and by default via Let’s Encrypt. This award will be used to add a REST API, web UI, and new documentation, all of which make it easier to deploy more services with TLS.

Mio: $30,000. Mio is an asynchronous I/O library written in Rust. This award will be used to make ergonomic improvements to the API and thereby make it easier to build high performance applications with Mio in Rust.

getdns-300

DNSSEC/DANE Chain Stapling: $25,000. This project is standardizing and implementing a new TLS extension for transport of a serialized DNSSEC record set, to reduce the latency associated with DANE and DNSSEC validation. This award will be used to complete the standard in the IETF and build both a client-side and a server-side implementation.

godot

Godot Engine: $20,000. Godot is a high-performance multi-platform game engine which can deploy to HTML5. This award will be used to add support for Web Sockets, WebAssembly and WebGL 2.0.

pears

PeARS: $15,500. PeARS (Peer-to-peer Agent for Reciprocated Search) is a lightweight, distributed web search engine which runs in an individual’s browser and indexes the pages they visit in a privacy-respecting way. This award will permit face-to-face collaboration among the remote team and bring the software to beta status.

NVDA: $15,000. NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free, open source screen reader for Microsoft Windows. This award will be used to make sure NVDA and Firefox continue to work well together as Firefox moves to a multi-process architecture.

This is only the beginning. Stay tuned for more award announcements as we allocate funds. Open Source is a movement that is only growing, both in numbers and in importance. Operating in the open makes for better security, better accessibility, better policy, better code and, ultimately, a better world. So if you know any projects whose work furthers the Mozilla Mission, send them our way and encourage them to apply.

Expanding Mozilla’s Boards

Jun 14 2016

Mitchell Baker

2 responses

https://air.mozilla.org/moco-mofo-board-development/

Watch the presentation of Mozilla’s Boards expansion on AirMozilla

In a post earlier this month, I mentioned the importance of building a network of people who can help us identify and recruit potential Board level contributors and senior advisors. We are also currently working to expand both the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation Boards.

The role of a Mozilla Board member

I’ve written a few posts about the role of the Board of Directors at Mozilla.

At Mozilla, we invite our Board members to be more involved with management, employees and volunteers than is generally the case. It’s not that common for Board members to have unstructured contacts with individuals or even sometimes the management team. The conventional thinking is that these types of relationships make it hard for the CEO to do his or her job. We feel differently. We have open flows of information in multiple channels. Part of building the world we want is to have built transparency and shared understandings.

We also prefer a reasonably extended “get to know each other” period for our Board members. Sometimes I hear people speak poorly of extended process, but I feel it’s very important for Mozilla. Mozilla is an unusual organization. We’re a technology powerhouse with a broad Internet openness and empowerment mission at its core. We feel like a product organization to those from the nonprofit world; we feel like a non-profit organization to those from the Internet industry.

It’s important that our Board members understand the full breadth of Mozilla’s mission. It’s important that Mozilla Foundation Board members understand why we build consumer products, why it happens in the subsidiary and why they cannot micro-manage this work. It is equally important that Mozilla Corporation Board members understand why we engage in the open Internet activities of the Mozilla Foundation and why we seek to develop complementary programs and shared goals.

I want all our Board members to understand that “empowering people” encompasses “user communities” but is much broader for Mozilla. Mozilla should be a resource for the set of people who care about the open Internet. We want people to look to Mozilla because we are such an excellent resource for openness online, not because we hope to “leverage our community” to do something that benefits us.

These sort of distinctions can be rather abstract in practice. So knowing someone well enough to be comfortable about these takes a while. We have a couple of ways of doing this. First, we have extensive discussions with a wide range of people. Board candidates will meet the existing Board members, members of the management team, individual contributors and volunteers. We’ve been piloting ways to work with potential Board candidates in some way. We’ve done that with Cathy Davidson, Ronaldo Lemos, Katharina Borchert and Karim Lakhani. We’re not sure we’ll be able to do it with everyone, and we don’t see it as a requirement. We do see this as a good way to get to know how someone thinks and works within the framework of the Mozilla mission. It helps us feel comfortable including someone at this senior level of stewardship.

What does a Mozilla Board member look like

Job descriptions often get long and wordy. We have those too but, for the search of new Board members, we’ve tried something else this time: a visual role description.

Board member job description for Mozilla Corporation

Board member job description for Mozilla Foundation

Here is a short explanation of how to read these visuals:

The horizontal lines speaks to things that every Board member should have. For instance, to be a Board member, you have to care about the mission and you have to have some cultural sense of Mozilla, etc. They are a set of things that are important for each and every candidate. In addition, there is a set of things that are important for the Board as a whole. For instance, we could put international experience in there or whether the candidate is a public spokesperson. We want some of that but it is not necessary that every Board member has that.
In the vertical green columns, we have the particular skills and expertise that we are looking for at this point.
We would expect the horizontal lines not to change too much over time and the vertical lines to change depending on who joins the Board and who leaves.

I invite you to look at these documents and provide input on them. If you have candidates that you believe would be good Board members, send them to the boarddevelopment@mozilla.com mailing list. We will use real discretion with the names you send us.

We’ll also be designing a process for how to broaden participation in the process beyond other Board members. We want to take advantage of the awareness and the cluefulness of the organization. That will be part of a future update.

Help Make Open Source Secure

Jun 9 2016

Chris Riley

Major security bugs heartbleed bandage in core pieces of open source software – such as Heartbleed and Shellshock – have elevated highly technical security vulnerabilities into national news headlines. Despite these sobering incidents, adequate support for securing open source software remains an unsolved problem, as a panel of 32 security professionals confirmed in 2015. We want to change that, starting today with the creation of the Secure Open Source (“SOS”) Fund aimed at precisely this need.

Open source software is used by millions of businesses and thousands of educational and government institutions for critical applications and services. From Google and Microsoft to the United Nations, open source code is now tightly woven into the fabric of the software that powers the world. Indeed, much of the Internet – including the network infrastructure that supports it – runs using open source technologies. As the Internet moves from connecting browsers to connecting devices (cars and medical equipment), software security becomes a life and death consideration.

The SOS Fund will provide security auditing, remediation, and verification for key open source software projects. The Fund is part of the Mozilla Open Source Support program (MOSS) and has been allocated $500,000 in initial funding, which will cover audits of some widely-used open source libraries and programs. But we hope this is only the beginning. We want to see the numerous companies and governments that use open source join us and provide additional financial support. We challenge these beneficiaries of open source to pay it forward and help secure the Internet.

Security is a process. To have substantial and lasting benefit, we need to invest in education, best practices, and a host of other areas. Yet we hope that this fund will provide needed short-term benefits and industry momentum to help strengthen open source projects.

Mozilla is committed to tackling the need for more security in the open source ecosystem through three steps:

Mozilla will contract with and pay professional security firms to audit other projects’ code;
Mozilla will work with the project maintainer(s) to support and implement fixes, and to manage disclosure; and
Mozilla will pay for the remediation work to be verified, to ensure any identified bugs have been fixed.

We have already tested this process with audits of three pieces of open source software. In those audits we uncovered and addressed a total of 43 bugs, including one critical vulnerability and two issues with a widely-used image file format. These initial results confirm our investment hypothesis, and we’re excited to learn more as we open for applications.

We all rely on open source software. We invite other companies and funders to join us in securing the open source ecosystem. If you’re a developer, apply for support! And if you’re a funder, join us. Together, we can have a greater impact for the security of open source systems and the Internet as a whole.

More information: