Archive for September, 2008

We’re still working on this. There’s been a bunch of helpful feedback. We appreciate this. We think we’ve integrated the feedback into something that’s a good solution; different from out last version in both its essence and its presentation and content.

We’ve come to understand that anything EULA-like is disturbing, even if the content is FLOSS based. So we’re eliminating that. We still feel that something about the web services integrated into the browser is needed; these services can be turned off and not interrupt the flow of using the browser. We also want to tell
people about the FLOSS license — as a notice, not as as EULA or use restriction. Again, this won’t block the flow or provide the unwelcoming feeling that one comment to my previous post described so eloquently.

We expect to have the materials that show this plan posted tomorrow morning.

Along with the feedback, there have also been some responses that go beyond anger to nasty, personal attacks.  This is unfortunate. I think we’ve gotten past the vitriol to absorb the underlying issues. It’s possible that we’ve missed something. Sometimes the vitriol masks what would otherwise be a point we might understand and agree with. If that’s the case, we’ll keep working on things. The end result will be better for all of us.

Ubuntu recently included a patch that causes an End User License  Agreement for Firefox to appear. This has caused great concern on several topics. One is the content of the agreement. Another is the presentation. A third is whether there’s any reason for a license at all.

The most important thing here is to acknowledge that yes, the content of the license agreement is wrong. The correct content is clear that the code is governed by FLOSS licenses, not the typical end user license agreement language that is in the current version. We created a license that points to the FLOSS licenses, but we’ve made a giant error in not getting this to Ubuntu, other distributors, and posted publicly for review. We’ll correct this asap.

Second, the way the license is presented to people also has issues. I think the presentation might not be so bad if we had the correct content there, so that it said the software is governed by the FLOSS licenses that are so important to us. But even then the presentation may have issues. We’re certainly trying to figure this out. We’ll do this with public input; you’ll see posts about this shortly as well.

There’s a third question of services, and whether the FLOSS license for the code can include the services one accesses. We think this isn’t true all the time, and the license will reflect that. The code is governed by FLOSS licenses, and we should have been clear about that.

This leaves the question of whether it ever makes sense to show people the terms that relate to the software and services available to them. I saw some comments asking why one ever needs any terms. Again, if we had the correct content I think this would be less of an issue because then we would be telling people about FLOSS licenses. We (meaning Mozilla) have shot ourselves in the foot here given the old, wrong content. So I hope we can have a discussion on this point, but I doubt we’ll have a good one until we fix the other problems.

We take this very seriously and are working hard to fix it.

Update: text of the revised license is online.

What can Mozilla do with our products and our product development processes to move the Internet toward our vision of an open, decentralized, participatory place in the next two years? In my last post I suggested we develop a set of goals to answer this question. Here’s my proposal. Comments, suggestions, additions, deletions, concerns, even wholesale restructuring welcome!

1. Deepen Mozilla’s role as a centerpiece of the Internet

• communities continue to expand and provide means for individual development
• thought leadership expands to include things such as the open web, hybrid social enterprises, organizational sustainability, shared decision-making, individual control, and portability in Internet life
• innovations emerge from the Mozilla world
• technology excellence and industry wide leadership continues
• projects and products remain vital

2. Data: provide leadership in

• helping people exercise better ownership and control over their data
• making anonymous, aggregate “usage data” more of a public resource

3. Mobile

• have an effective product in the mobile market
• demonstrate that “mobile” is part of one, unified, open web

4. Continue Firefox mindshare and marketshare momentum

I propose we have a set of goals for the next two years that describe the ways we want our products and technologies to move the Mozilla misison forward.

These goals should be concrete enough that people can respond to them and provide a means for evaluating the scope of progress. Perhaps even more importantly, these goals should express important ideas rather than specifying implementation plans. They should set the directional, aspirational goals. They are intended to describe the type and scope of accomplishment we want to see.

Broad aspirational goals are critical, for the reasons I described last May. Mozilla’s great success is built on:

. . . many thousands of people (tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, actually) moving in the same general direction, most of whom aren’t full time, aren’t employees and may not even be known personally to the project’s leadership. We won’t know and don’t seek to control all the things people will do that make us more successful. Articulating a broad, commonly shared set of aspirations helps many disparate groups of people organize themselves and work towards very practical, concrete tasks that make our aspirations real.

There are also other broader goals that Mozilla might take on — proposals to date include education, open source evangelism in general, open everything, assisting online communities with participatory tools. These discussions will pick up steam as Mark Surman joins us. Having an  set of goals for our product and technology development will also provide valuable input into that discussion.

I’ll give a list of 2010 Goals in my next post. I initially presented these goals at the Firefox Summit, and invited people to post sticky notes and comments on a whiteboard. The transcribed notes have been placed on the Wiki so they can continue to generate discussion.

Please take some time to review the proposed goals, make suggestions, ask questions, and make alternatve proposals. It’s important to have only a small number of goals, so I’ll be constantly trying to find the over-arching themes.

It’s been a hectic summer. First the Firefox 3 release, then the Firefox (Plus) Summit, then working on renewing our Google agreement, then  a week of vacation at the end of August, and then responding to the release of Google’s browser. (Fortunately part of my vacation was in an old cabin in a beautiful old state park with waterfalls and woods and trails and not much else to do but relax and unwind.) I’ve got a lot of things in progress that I want to return to, as well as a bunch of new topics. Here’s a partial list:

On-Going:

• data and privacy
• two year goals for Mozilla technology and products
• Mozilla’s scope and mission
• standards process and standards bodies
• “hybrid” organizations — those that combine public benefit mission with market mechanisms

New topics:

• Mark Surman starts as new Mozilla Foundation ED in two weeks. I’m anticipating he’ll spend a couple of weeks getting settled and then there will be a flow of Foundation topics that both he and I will be focused on.
• Describe my current role — what I’e been doing, how I work with John and the rest of MoCo in my current role.
• Describe my perspective on what it’s like to guide a project like Mozilla, how we “manage” things, what leadership looks like, what I’m learning about distributed authority.

Unplanned: I don’t know what these are yet, but I’m sure they are coming. If the past is any judge, the unplanned topics may well overshadow everything else! Even before that happens there’s plenty to do