Archive for August, 2007

I understand what Matt over at AllPeers says about finding new ways to combine open source, public benefit and the economic incentives of commercial enterprises. I’m also quite interested in seeing this happen. But we still have a different point of view about Mozilla and Firefox.

Firefox is not the place to test the effects of the profit motive.

The difference might be in a view of the fundamental platform. Matt believes (as I understand his argument) that the Mozilla platform is the fundamental building block right now. An easy way to think of the Mozilla platform is as everything that an application needs to work that a human being doesn’t touch directly. This may not be 100% correct technically, but is close enough for this discussion. In other words, the Mozilla Platform is the giant chunk of code that understands networking, is able to get information from a web server, convert that info into something a human being can understand, present that information to people and allow interaction with that information. This is sometimes called “XULrunner.” Firefox is built on top of a version of XULrunner. Myriads of other applications, are built using this Mozilla technology. So it is possible to separate Firefox conceptually from the Mozilla platform.

But the browser is not just one of many applications that understand the Internet. It is the closest thing there is to a universal client. By that I meant that the browser is the mechanism for delivering an overwhelming majority of web content to people. As more and more web-based applications (from classic style applications like spreadsheets to newer applications like maps and social networking activities) develop, more types of activities flow through the browser.

So we think of Firefox as a part of the web platform. As the entry point for actual human beings to interact with the web. Browsers aren’t the only entry point, but they are closest thing to a universal entry point that exists today. They may not be the major entry way at some point in the future but that’s a way off. And there is certainly a debate to be had about when the “next big thing” will displace browsers vs. how what we call a browser will evolve over time.

For the foreseeable future, browsers are a fundamental part of Internet life. Firefox is a key component of keeping the web open, interoperable and participatory. Thus the importance of its public benefit nature.

Recently a Mozilla observer and contributor asked why Firefox isn’t treated as a typical for-profit, commercial effort, and why we are giving up the chance to get rich. This is a great topic for discussion, I’m glad it was raised. I’ve got a very strong opinion on this, and am quite interested in what others think.

There are many reasons why Firefox is a public asset, built for public benefit rather than private wealth.

To start with, we want to create a part of online life that is explicitly NOT about someone getting rich. We want to promote all the other things in life that matter — personal, social, educational and civic enrichment for massive numbers of people. Individual ability to participate and to control our own lives whether or not someone else gets rich through what we do. We all need a voice for this part of the Internet experience. The people involved with Mozilla are choosing to be this voice rather than to try to get rich.

I know that this may sound naive. But neither I nor the Mozilla project is that naive, and we are not stupid. We recognize that many of us are setting aside chances to make as much money as possible. We are choosing to do this because we want the Internet to be robust and useful even for activities that aren’t making us rich.

It’s possible that some participants are deferring the chance for personal wealth rather than giving up on it. Contributing to Mozilla, passing up opportunities for stock and wealth now, and planning to step back into that world after a while. This is a topic I’d love to discuss further and may write more about before too long.

But for now I want to concentrate on why I have always believed — and still do — that Firefox can not become a tool for some people to get rich. And why I believe the organizational home for Firefox (the Mozilla Corporation) must remain dedicated to the public benefit.

Firefox is not the creation of a “company” or a set of employees. The Mozilla Corporation and its employees are important, but not enough. Not remotely enough. And even if we had 2 or 3 or 4 times as much money or employees it would still not be enough.

Firefox is a great product because thousands and thousands of people care about it, and contribute to making it better. And the Firefox phenomena is even further removed from anything that could be accomplished if Firefox was a private company. Imagine 50 million people, or 100 million people or more. Now imagine getting all those people to download, install, and migrate to Firefox even though they have a similar piece of software already on their machines.

That used to be known as impossible. Today it’s known as Firefox. It is happening because tens of thousands — I believe hundreds of thousands of people — have taken it upon themselves to create Firefox, to spread Firefox, to localize it, to extend it, to tell others, to install it for others, to help others use it.

Firefox generates an emotional response that is hard to imagine until you experience it. People trust Firefox. They love it. Many feel — and rightly so — that Firefox is part “theirs.” That they are involved in creating Firefox and the Firefox phenomena, and in creating a better Internet. People who don’t know that Firefox is open source love the results of open source — the multiple languages, the extensions, the many ways people use the openness to enhance Firefox. People who don’t know that Firefox is a public asset feel the results through the excitement of those who do know.

Firefox is created by a public process as a public asset. Participants are correct to feel that Firefox belongs to them. They are correct legally, since the Mozilla Foundation’s assets are legally dedicated to the public benefit. They are correct practically because Firefox could not exist without the community; the two are completely intertwined.

Periodically someone suggests that it’s possible to build a community like this around a core of people who own a company, and use that company for the express purpose of generating wealth for a few. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it on practical terms. The participants I meet radiate the conviction that Firefox exists to benefit all of us. I don’t buy it on a philosophical level either. A people-centered Internet needs some way for people to interact with the Internet that isn’t all about making money for some company and its shareholders.

We need a public benefit aspect to the Internet. That’s why we started building browsers in the first place. That’s why we build Firefox. That’s why we build Thunderbird, and why we’ll build future products.

Last week I participated in a thought symposium called The Internet and the Public Good. It was about 30 people, jointly hosted by the Mozilla Foundation, the Harvard Business School, and the Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The goal from the Mozilla Foundation’s perspective is to learn new ways to think about public benefit and the Internet. We’re a public benefit organization and it’s important to figure out what set of programs we should launch beyond the support of our current projects. So it’s worth exploring whether there is understanding outside of the open source world about public benefit that can help us.

The symposium started out with a discussion of a “public good.” It turns out that a “public good” has a specified meaning in the realm of economics. So there was a lot of discussion about what a public good is, what it means to be a public good, how public goods have been regulated, how public goods might differ in different parts of the world.

A couple of very interesting comments came out. The discipline of economics can separate three things: a public good, public interest and public provision. Public goods are as described above. Public interest (or public benefit) can be generated by either private or public goods. Either public or private good can be provided by public sources (e.g., government) or private sources. (Of course, as a normative issue, one generally hopes that if a government funds something, there is a public benefit to it.)

This has helped me state more precisely what is of interest to me personally. (I’m not speaking for the Mozilla Foundation here). I want to ensure that the Internet has robust public interest aspects. That the Internet has social, civic and individual benefits as well as commercial benefits. I suppose one could call this ensuring the Internet has robust non-commercial aspects. But this is a negative approach. I’m not against commercial activity being a vibrant part of Internet development. On the contrary, I believe commercial activity brings great value to individuals and society.

But I don’t want to live in a world where the only thing the Internet is useful for, or effective at, or pleasant or fun, are activities where someone is making money from me.

In addition, I want public benefit to be provided by both public and private actors. I hope the Mozilla project can push more actors, including commercial players in the Internet space, to provide more public benefits.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond to my mail/Thunderbird posts. (Well, to almost everyone anyway.) We’re assimilating those comments now. After speaking at some length with the lead Thunderbird developers (Scott and David) here’s what we’ve assimilated so far.

1. Great interest in seeing Thunderbird move forward. Both in terms of a healthy existence, and in terms of development of new features.
2. Option 1 of my initial post — a separate Thunderbird and /or mail Foundation didn’t generate much interest. This option requires a significant number of people deeply interested in the organization and administration of the effort; running a Foundation is work. This option is at the end of the list now.
3. There’s a fair amount of desire for things to stay the same. That desire is not shared by Scott, David, the Foundation or the Corporation.
4. There is some interest in Option 3, where the developers would form a independent company themselves to make the Thunderbird product based on the code in the Mozilla mail project.
5. There’s also a lot of interest in seeing Thunderbird remain part of the Mozilla Foundation as a product. It will stay as a Foundation project whether we take Option 2 or Option 3. In either case the code stays in the Mozilla world under Mozilla policies. The open question is what group takes that code, makes the Thunderbird product from it, releases and supports that product.

Next Steps:

Scott, David and I are working on describing in more detail what Options 2 and 3 would look like; what would be needed, but the unresolved issues are, etc. We hope to get some more information posted shortly.