Mozilla

Mozilla: Celebrating the First Ten Years

January 22nd, 2008

2008 is a year to celebrate — Mozilla turns 10 this year. 10 years of open source history, commitment, product development, community building and accomplishments. An open source project of astonishing scope and diversity. A portion of the Internet that is more open and participatory than almost anyone imagined. A strong voice for what the Internet can be. That’s 10 amazing years.

2008 is a year to celebrate our history, our accomplishments, our community and our future. We have laid the groundwork for another great 10 years — years where we can influence the web for the better, demonstrate what openness, transparency and broad participation look like, marvel at the distributed excitement and fierce dedication to the Mozilla vision for the Internet, and do things we haven’t even dreamed up yet.

I really do mean a year to celebrate. Not one day, not even the actual date the code was released. That’s an important date and we’ll certainly celebrate it. But the code release was one part of what was a much larger effort 10 years ago, and is a much larger story today. 1998 saw some great accomplishments, and we’ll celebrate them this year. The project has seen great accomplishments all through this first decade, and we should celebrate these as well.

I don’t have precisely formed ideas yet for how we ought to mark our anniversary events. In general though, I’m intent on making sure that our activities are:

a) International in scope: notable events that take place around the globe.

b) Participatory. We’ve had crate-your-own parties in the past; that’s a good start. ‘d like to see us do some other things as well this year. Perhaps we might have a way for people to record their experiences with some event in Mozilla’s history. Perhaps we will create a timeline where people can note the various events they feel have been critical to the Mozilla project (this is not my idea). These are only early ideas; there’s lots of room for creativity here.

c) Varied.

d) Fun.

If you’ve got ideas, let me know (or Mary Colvig — mary at mozilla dot com). We may come up with some other tools for making planning easier, but comments here are a good start.

Categories: Mozilla | Tags: , ,

14 comments for “Mozilla: Celebrating the First Ten Years”

  1. 1

    Percy Cabello said on January 22nd, 2008 at 6:56 pm:

    During this year and the next the first round of the FIFA World Cup 2010 will take place in almost every country in the world. I suggested in the Foxkeh blog (http://www.foxkeh.com/blog/347/#comment-2304) that they could make high resolution images of Foxkeh in several football (soccer) action poses. Then create national shirts and shorts images to match the poses so Firefox and football fans could mix a pose and their country colors and create a custom poster to show during the matches (hundreds).

    To make it not only about Firefox but Mozilla, an updated T-rex could be used. I think it’s currently too 2-D and may not be that appealing.

    Even further, Mozilla could approach the FIFA and offer a World Cup Firefox theme (or several) development for free. Or get the connection and run a contest of World Cup themes.

    Yeah, very football oriented, but the world just goes crazy when it comes to the World Cup.

  2. 2

    Carsten said on January 23rd, 2008 at 8:54 am:

    Hi,
    following my predecessor, I suggest a cricket match at the new cricket ground in Bliesendorf (near Berlin), Germany.
    It could be a beneficial match between counties or even european countries.
    The German Cricket Federation will celebrate its 20th anniversary there, too.
    I can already see the headline: “Mozilla Cricket Cup” – this sounds awesome!

  3. 3

    Gordon C. Griswold said on January 23rd, 2008 at 12:34 pm:

    It would be nice (and appropriate) to see group within the Mozilla Community pick-up and continue the development of Navigator, since AOL-Time Warner is dropping this fine browser on Feb. 1ST. I can’t think of a better way to mark a 10TH. Anniversary for a browser!

  4. 4

    Rusty Bucket said on January 23rd, 2008 at 4:19 pm:

    Gordon,

    Continuing the development of Netscape Navigator sounds great in name, but today’s Navigator is just Firefox with a Netscape skin and extensions like WeatherBug. In fact, you can download the Netscape skin for stock Firefox if you like. Are you suggesting Mozilla take on the Netscape Navigator branding? I don’t think they’d really want to do that at this point… Netscape Navigator’s not succeeding and got dropped because it’s an old name associated with an old, stuffy product. IMHO, Mozilla’s got a better brand name than Netscape at this point.

    As for Communicator, the concept behind the old Netscape Communicator lives on as SeaMonkey.

  5. 5

    Andi said on January 23rd, 2008 at 9:37 pm:

    What about building an enclosure with REAL red foxes running around an earth model?

  6. 6

    Dennis said on January 24th, 2008 at 12:38 am:

    I think a Chatroom party with free alcohol xD…

  7. 7

    Manikantan said on January 24th, 2008 at 3:42 am:

    10 years ago Netscape got “Netscaped”. A term I learnt in MBA school which means “A collaborator takes all the good things and cannibalizes the other collaborators of their market”.
    1. A show about the rise from the ashes would be a nice prelude.

    Going on
    2. An MBA case-study which explains how if you hold on to your best competencies, you can bounce back into the market and beat a netscaper (again MBA jargon)

  8. 8

    Spencer Selander said on January 24th, 2008 at 3:44 am:

    How about a Mozilla blimp? Could lease one, fly it around to various events…

  9. 9

    Guz said on January 24th, 2008 at 3:59 am:

    Hi,Michell: I´m very glad to congratulate you to confirm after 10 years that to be cost free thanks to advertising it´s possible in the globalized arena.I always recommend to friends of mine to fast adopt what I´ve nominated THE ADVANCE TRILOGY OF THE XXI AGE, it means, Mozilla Firefox, as a browser, GMail as webmail, and Skype as view to view connection.With this trilogy you save time, brain and nerves.As a first insight to comemorate the event I think will be to provide the spread of the TRILOGY. What do you think about?
    Regards truly by Guz, also at the http://www.bloguz.blogspot.com

  10. 10

    Ilya said on February 1st, 2008 at 6:32 am:

    Mozilla vs MS Godzilla: Size doesn’t matter! I am really impressed with Mozilla business model and your team’s efforts helping people to innovate freely around the world. Mozilla is a great phenomenon and I would like to congratulate you on its first 10th anniversary.
    My contribution into handful of ideas for celebrating events sounds like deeply russian: have a big party, have a drink of vodka, dance a lot and don’t think about browsers and e-mail clients, just relax and refresh your mind and then next morning you can strike all your rivals. Perhaps it’s not a clever way of celebrating but it works.
    Good luck!

    Regards,
    Ilya

  11. 11

    Andrew said on February 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 pm:

    How about special editions of Mozilla gears like T-shirts…mugs…etc?

  12. 12

    Eli Marcus said on February 4th, 2008 at 1:48 am:

    I have been a loyal Netscape/Mozilla user since I first got started in the personal computing business early in 1997.
    I would love to see a series of T-shirts that have the logo art of various versions of Netscape and Mozilla. For example, a high quality T-shirt in black, with the original Netscape logo across the chest, and maybe the star background motif across the back. a black T-shirt with the full bodied Mozilla T-rex in bright orange across the front…I’d definitely go for a couple of T’s!!!

  13. 13

    Darryl said on February 4th, 2008 at 8:15 pm:

    How about a re-release of the PBS documentary “Code Rush”? Or even an updated version covering Firefox 3? Something like that. Its quite difficult to get a copy of Code Rush, but I bought it off Amazon Used (for $$$$) and it was great to watch the seeds of Mozilla sprout from the ashes of Netscape/AOL/TimeWarner. It would be quite fitting to see how Firefox has led a revitalization of browser technology (plugins, adblockers, tabbed browsing, cross-platform, etc.) and put Microsoft on the defensive, compared to the world we saw in 1998. A well-done documentary showing the best of what Mozilla has become would be quite a tribute…

  14. 14

    herman said on February 22nd, 2008 at 11:39 pm:

    Happy Birthday Mozilla, Happy Birthday me 😉

    Two reasons to celebrate, though I’m somewhat older…

    And congratulations for the Pioneer Award, Mitchell

    herman

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