Mozilla is a global, non-profit community dedicated to the mission of building an Internet that is “knowable,” interoperable and open to everyone.  When the Internet is knowable it is transparent, we can see it and understand it; we can know more. When the Internet is interoperable we have more opportunity to try new things; we can do more. When it is open to everyone it becomes “ours,” and we can build things that support the full range of human life, from economic to social to public to individual; we can do better.

When we use the word “open” we mean all of these things. We expect these traits in all aspects of online life. We work to represent these traits in how we organize and operate as Mozilla. We are organized as a non-profit so we can put these elements first, always. We seek to influence the Web as a whole towards user-control, towards the openness that builds accountability and trustworthiness, and individual choice and empowerment.

We build products, such as Firefox and Firefox OS, to make our values concrete and part of daily online life. We empower global communities, so more of the people who share our mission have the knowledge and experience and credibility to move the mission forward. We do this by deepening our volunteer engagement in our core products, and by encouraging them to develop their own projects. We teach and learn, both through our product development and through dedicated teaching and learning programs such as Webmaker. Ultimately we aim to shape environments, from the consumer Internet experience to public policy to learning environments.

Mozilla’s direction and decisions are based on our mission of making the Internet understandable, interoperable and open to all, while moving the Web forward as a platform for creation and consumption. We recently released our State of Mozilla and audited financial statements for 2012. That generally sparks comments on our finances, which of course makes sense. The finances are important, they are what allows us to support our work at the scale at which we need to operate and to advocate for the Web and the billions of people online. For us, however, financial return is not our main organizing principle. Our stakeholders are our global communities, the people who use our projects and ultimately all those interested in the health and openness of the Internet. The key return on investment for these stakeholders is the degree to which we move Internet life towards being knowable, interoperable and open to everyone.

Friday I attended the inauguration of the new Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.  I spent a lot of time at UC Berkeley (or “Cal” as it is known among students and alums).  I got my undergraduate degree (in Asian Studies, an interdisciplinary degree) from Berkeley.  I worked as a staff member at the Center for Chinese Studies Library for a few years, where I was generally the only non-native Chinese speaker in the Library.  In an odd turn of fate I returned to Berkeley for my graduate degree (in law).

Berkeley is part of the much larger system of public education in the state of California.  “Public” higher education may seem obvious to some, if you come from a part of the world where this is standard.  In the US, many universities (e.g., Harvard, Stanford, Yale) are private organizations, and so the public nature of the University of California is a big part of its identity.  The entire system includes a set of 2-year Community Colleges, almost 25 California State University campuses and 10 University of California campuses.  I was very fortunate because during my college and graduate years the State of California provided immense support to public education, and I was one of the many beneficiaries.  I benefited from a world-class education without the kind of crushing debt that colors one’s choices for years afterwards.  I see my work at Mozilla as possible in part because the State of California invested in me.

I have always found UC Berkeley to be a funny mix of radical, innovative, and traditional.  The student body is politically active at Berkeley.  The Free Speech Movement in the early 1960’s established the right of students to engage in political speech on campus, something I took for granted.  The faculty at Berkeley is active.  In the 1920’s a “faculty revolt” resulted in the faculty (through the Academic Senate) obtaining a much-extended role in shared governance of UC Berkeley.  The staff at Berkeley is active as well, demanding respect as part of what makes Berkeley great.  (I was staff at UC Berkeley for a few years before graduate school, so I remember this aspect as well.)

Both of these elements were present at the inauguration.  The event started with a student protest about Janet Napolitano, ex head of US Homeland Security and recently appointed as the President of the UC system.  It’s a controversial appointment since her background is in security and immigration/ deportation rather than education.  The protest was actually quite moderate.  The students sat up in the balcony, stood up as soon as the event started and chanted their position.  This took maybe a couple of minutes.  Then they left.  No on-going heckling, no need to be tossed out.

A few things I noticed about the content of the event.  During the procession (classes, faculty, other institutions, staff), I felt myself perk up at one point.  I wondered why, especially as the law school classmate I went with didn’t seem to notice.  Then I realized — the orchestra was playing the UC Berkeley  “fight song”.  I’ve heard this a million times — it’s like hearing your name.  The song refers to the UC Berkeley mascot — the Golden Bear. It includes a verse:

From his Lair he fiercely growls.
What’s he say? He says:
From his Lair he fiercely growls.
What’s he say? He says:
Grrrrrah, Grrrrrrah!
Grrrr, Rrrr, Rrrrrah!

So, after the first Processional there was a very quiet sound from the hall:

Grrrrrah, Grrrrrrah!
Grrrr, Rrrr, Rrrrrah!

After each Processional group the Golden Bear got louder.  Never as loud as at a football game, but still it felt like Berkeley.  Funny tradition of activism and chants.  Similarly, many of the speakers at the inauguration ended their remarks with the classic call “Go Bears!”  You can hear it at the end of the Men’s Octet rendition of the fight song.

More seriously, the remarks made by all speakers reinforced a few key concepts:

• Cal seeks to be the world’s pre-eminent public research university, promoting both excellence and education as an important element of democratic societies, not just economic benefit of individual students.Cal aims for excellence, affordability, and diversity of students.
  Calls for social justice, both for working people and for undocumented students.  For those not familiar with US immigration issues, “undocumented students” refers to people who hold neither a US passport nor a visa to remain in the United States.

There were also many references to the difficulties the UC System faces.  Finances are tight, the State of California has reduced its support dramatically and tuition rates have gone up. Undergraduate education vs  graduate and research efforts are a topic.  The value of studying humanity (“liberal arts”) as well as technology is a topic.

The new chancellor described all of these, plus the plans to move forward.  This part of the talk was a bit long for me.  It was a speech, rather than the short remarks of the other participants. This makes sense to me.  But I have to admit that my working life is mostly focused around very short attention spans — like 15 seconds.  🙂  Seriously, that’s advice I give people who are dealing with executives for the first time.  You have about 15 seconds to get someone’s attention, especially via email.  So even though I was a bit itchy during the end of this talk, I was still able to focus enough to appreciate the core content.

Since I moved to Silicon Valley, I’ve come to appreciate how amazing Stanford University is.  It’s a key component of the innovation and intelligence and excellence that the Valley produces.  I didn’t understand its important until I lived here a while.  I’ve always found Stanford very difficult to develop any relationship with as a non-alum, but I have come to be awed by it as well.

I have to say though, it was wonderful to be at UC Berkeley, where I felt at home — utterly, totally, and completely at home.

In just a week Mozillians will gather for the Mozilla Summit 2013.  I’ve been working with a number of the facilitators and the “track leads” and I have to say, it is really rewarding.

The Summit will have 4 or 5 “plenary sessions” with pretty carefully planned content.  We also have identified some key ideas and topics that the plenary talks will raise, and planned session to address some of these. These are known as “Supporting Sessions.” We expect to have the same Supporting Sessions in each of the 3 locations, facilitated by people in each location.  (There will also be a big chunk of time for Open Sessions –anyone proposes a session — and for spontaneous groups to gather.)  The topics for the Supporting Sessions were determined by the 60 or so Assembly Delegates and the rest of the summit organizing team.  These groups did not determine the actual content of the Supporting Sessions.  Instead, we gave a topical statement to guide the facilitators in developing an approach to the session.   The Track Leads have the roles of looking at all the supporting Sessions for a particular theme — product and technology, people and process, purpose and strategy.  They also assist the facilitators stay connected with the overall picture.

I’ll give one of plenary talks, focused on the nature of Mozilla, who we are, why we exist, how we work, the attributes of success, and the connections to our products and communities.  So far I’ve talked with the facilitators of 3 the Supporting Sessions that relate to these themes:

what does “mozillian” mean? ”
“practicing Open;” and
“distributed leadership and decision-making.”

Wow!  In each case I was impressed with the sophistication of the work the facilitators and track leads are doing.  These are complex topics, selected to represent some key elements of Mozilla that are different from most organizations.   That means it’s really important to develop a shared understanding of our goals, and yet we can’t simply do what everyone else does.

I’m looking forward to the Summit more than ever!

Barcelona has a couple of large music festivals in the spring.  The largest is Sonar, which takes over *both* of the FIRAs, including the gigantic one that Mobile World Congress just moved to in 2013.  It includes a range of activities.  Another is “Primavera Sound,”  a multi-stage, multi-day event that covers an immense area of renovated waterfront on the northern end of Barcelona.  The day we went to Primavera the shows started at noon or so and continued until 5:30 am the next morning.  This being Barcelona, there are tons of shows schedule for 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 am.  This being an odd and cold winter, it was jackets and fleeces and hats to fend off the cold wind from the water and prepare for the threat of rain.

Sometime while waiting for the 4am shows to start my husband and I wandered through the vendor stalls.  It was odd — other than food, drink and a huge number of cigarettes (it is still very surprising to me, still a Californian at heart, to see how much smoking is a part of daily life here), the only item for purchase were all small print runs of posters, mostly band and venue posters.  It was fun to see: there were no mass produced items, and so we saw the return of serious, low-volume speciality printing.

One set of prints caught our eye — it was a set of eyes, not a musical print but interesting.  Here they are: For those of you who are familiar with Terri Prachett’s “Only You Can Save Mankind” these remind me of the captain, although her color palate is different.

We ended up in an instant, totally comfortable conversation with the proprietor of this stall.   As we talk I am repeatedly drawn to a particular poster, very ornate, for some reason I couldn’t quite place. Here’s what it looks like:

After a while we learn the proprietor of the stall is from Berkeley, CA.    That explains it — I was born in Berkeley, grew up in the town next door, went to college and grad  school in Berkeley, understand the vibe and often like the people.

Eventually it’s time for our show to start and so he, his wife, my husband and I say our “we’ll-come-by-and-visit-you-once-we-move-back-to-California” good-buys. We get along so well he pulls out his good, special business card.  Immediately I see it says “monkey.”    I say “there’s a lot of monkeys in the world.”

He responds “Yes, I made a JaegerMonkey t-shirt for Mozilla a while back.”  My husband and I stop, stunned.  Our son wears his JaegerMonkey t-shirt regularly  (actually, it started off as my t-shirt but we both realized  immediately it would become his.) There is JaegerMonkey inspired artwork, album covers and even music floating around our house, thanks to the kids  who have been drawn to the JaegerMonkey t-shirt.  On a recent trip to the coast one of my son’s friends spent the trip making an 8-bit, mine-craft like JaegerMonkey image ….

My husband points to the small Firefox button he has pinned to his jacket and describes my role.  The print-maker shows off the t-shirt he’s wearing, which is the test print for the new Mozilla shirt he’s driving down to our offices when he gets back to California.  We all stand around stunned for a bit.  I don’t  have the new Mozilla t-shirt, but thanks to this odd meeting we’ve not the copies of the prints above.  You can find the prints at the monkeyink website.

Firefox OS is launching today.  With that in mind, it’s a good time to recap why Mozilla builds products, what our products represent and how our products relate to our goals.

Mozilla’s goal is to build openness, innovation, and opportunity into online life.   One of our biggest levers is of course building products.   We build products that provide a great user experience and engender openness, innovation and opportunity into the technology of the Web itself.

Firefox has done this in many ways.  Firefox was a pioneer in the world of open source consumer products, in open techniques for feedback, support, and quality, just to name a few examples.  We have always built Firefox to give developers huge opportunities for innovation in areas they care about.  We do not seek to control the ways developers can innovate, or the way people take control of their software.

As a result, Firefox helped usher in a whole new era of Web computing, bringing new experiences for users and new freedoms for developers.  Today Firefox continues to pioneer new technologies and features that benefit users.  Some recent examples include features such as Do Not Track, which allows people to tell websites they do not wish to be tracked around the Web, and our Social API that makes the browsing experience more personal and customizable.

With Firefox OS we hope to do something similar with the mobile computing environment.  We want to bring the power of the open Web to this world.  We want to bring the same kinds of flexibility, opportunity and freedom to this computing environment that the original Firefox brings to the desktop.  More specifically, we want  Firefox OS to:

• Prove that the Web is the platform, surprise people with what HTML5 is capable of on mobile devices.
• Advance adoption of mobile Web standards and APIs across the industry, including on other operating systems.
• Spur developer innovation; break the mold of what a mobile app is capable of.
• Make the open Web accessible to more people.
• Spur competition in making the Web the platform for mobile computing.
• Excite people.
• Provide a powerful, exciting and open alternative to the current closed ecosystems.

You’ll note that I haven’t included something like “we want to ship X numbers of phones.”  Ultimately, we want enough people choosing Firefox OS to confirm we’ve built a great product and to move us toward  a more open mobile computing platform based on the Web.    Our goal is to provide an alternative that has a deep and exciting user experience based on openness, choice and competition.

Imagine you live in a world where the buildings are glass and you can’t ever close the curtains. Imagine the floor is glass, the ceiling is glass and all the walls are glass. There are no curtains, no window shades, no shutters and you can’t make your own. We’re heading into this world online. A robust network, cheap sensors and massive data manipulation builds the equivalent of glass houses.

The question today is whether we can have curtains. Whether any business or ecosystem provides curtains and whether we can make our own. Today we have very little ability to close the curtains in commercial activities. Websites are technically able to track *everything* we do, from how long we stay on a page to what ads attract us to how to travel from one website to the next. The data about you can be sold to others. Online data can be combined with data from your physical world and made available or sold to others  Telephone providers know when we make a phone call, where we made it from, who we called, how long we talked, our regular patterns of calls, and more.

Now we know that the U.S. government is gathering significant quantities of this data. Currently it’s understood to be using only “metadata” about phone calls for U.S. citizens, and to be using the actual content as well for foreign nationals. Now we also know that the inability to pull the curtains applies to governments as well.  We can also wonder how many other governments are collecting these types of data.

Now is the moment to ask — do we care?  Do care how much our government watches us, tracks us without our knowing it? Do we care how  the U.S. government treats the citizens of friendly, allied states? Do we care if other governments emulate the U.S. and gather this data?   How do businesses, organizations and individuals approach the US knowing the scope of online activities that are being monitored?  How much do other governments do this — either to  citizens or to foreign nationals?

Here’s a  talk  I gave at the annual public policy event organized by the Center for Democracy and Technology.  It starts with about 3-4 minutes summary of my high level view of Mozilla, using language tuned for the public policy audience.  You won’t find comments about interoperability or standards.  This talk focuses on the human experiences these approaches help create, rather than talking about the technical approaches themselves.

The first 90 seconds is the introduction.  The next 3 or 4 minutes are the description of Mozilla and what we do.  Right around the 5-minute mark, the talk moves into the Public Policy area. Given the event and the audience, Mozilla’s public policy approach is the bulk of the talk. Around the 16-minute mark, I return to Mozilla’s biggest lever —  building technology and products.  In total, about 20 minutes.

The Mozilla Manifesto identifies a set of principles that we believe are critical for the Internet to continue to benefit the public good, commercial life and individual opportunity. For those interested in Mozilla history and development, this 2007 post describes why the Mozilla Manifesto was written and its goals.

In 2007 we gave the Mozilla Manifesto an “0.9” designation and began using it as a guidepost for our work. My plan at the time was to see if translating the Mozilla Manifesto caused questions or suggestions for improvements before moving to a 1.0 version. We have seen many translations (35 languages to date). In an unplanned path, the 0.9 version proved extremely resilient and we didn’t actually change it to a “1.0” version.

We’ve now reached Mozilla’s 15 year anniversary, which is a good time to make a few tweaks and identify this as our version 1.0. To do this, we’ve gathered input from the Mozilla community over the last 12 months, via workshops held at MozCamps and at the Mozilla Festival. Having considered all that has been said so far, we are proposing 3 changes to the 10 principles in the Manifesto.

1. Add a reference to “privacy”

Preserving the privacy of users is a core Mozilla value. In version 0.9, the reference to “security” in principle 4 was intended to imply “privacy”. However, experience has shown that the text is not read that way. And so we propose changing principle 4 to add an explicit reference:

Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and cannot be treated as optional.

2. Make all principles expressible in 140 characters

Rightly or wrongly, being able to make a point in 140 characters is now an extremely useful (and sometimes necessary) way of conveying information. Making each principle tweetable helps us communicate them. Also, we believe that we can do this without losing key messages, and that the shorter versions are clearer. To do this, 3 principles – 1, 6 and 9 – need to be shortened. We propose:

1: The Internet is integral to modern life – education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society.

6: The effectiveness of the Internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability, innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.

9: Commercial involvement in the Internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial goals and public benefit is critical.

3. Strengthen the reference to individuals being able to create their own experience

Mozilla’s mission involves empowering people to act, to move from being consumers to creators of online life. A rewording of principle 5 makes the “building and making” part much more clear:

Individuals must have the ability to shape the Internet, and their own experiences on it.

A summary is available of the feedback from the MozCamps and the Mozilla Festival – this was the document we considered in coming up with the proposals above. If there’s something big you think has not been considered, let us know. If you think any of these changes are wrong-headed or destructive, also let us know. You can comment on these proposed changes in the governance forum.

Gary Kovacs joined us in November of 2010 as the Mozilla Corporation’s third CEO. I was the first (2004-2008), and John Lilly the second (2008-2010). We’ve had two CEO transitions so far, and now we will have a third. Gary will step down as CEO later this year. He will remain a member of our board of directors. As we did before, we are making this announcement as we begin a search for a new CEO, rather than waiting until after we have identified one. This fits with Mozilla’s identity as a public benefit organization dedicated to openness and participation in Internet life.

Each of Mozilla Corporation’s CEOs has brought our particular skills and expertise to an important era of Mozilla and Firefox development. I led during the start-up/underdog phase and the transition into an industry success with a strong open source and public benefit core. John’s leadership helped us solidify that success, grow to a couple of hundred people (huge by our standards then) and extend our reach in ways we hadn’t imagined.

Gary joined us to make a dramatic pivot — to move Mozilla from the desktop browser world into the mobile ecosystem. In 2010 we knew that we would need to change many things in order to be effective in the mobile computing environment: our technology, our expertise, our worldview, our focus. Gary’s leadership during this period has helped us build on the strong foundation to make these changes, and to bring that strength into the mobile environment. Gary has reinvigorated our focus on working with commercial partners, a trait that was central in Mozilla’s early life but less so during the Firefox desktop era.

We have accomplished a huge amount since Gary joined us. I want to thank Gary for his contributions to our cause, and for bringing new things to Mozilla. Our understanding of the world is deeper and our ability to focus stronger as a result. We have also built many layers of strong leaders at Mozilla. I have every confidence in the leadership team, in the dedicated individuals throughout Mozilla, in our vibrant community and the growing participation of our commercial contributors. We’ll celebrate this at the Summit, we’ll see it in action before then, and we’ll see it in the products we build and ship in the coming months.

There’s a lot to do. The future of our freedoms online are at stake. For my part I’ll be more deeply involvement in Mozilla’s daily activities during the transition period and in the CEO search. I’ll also be working to ensure that our partners and individual contributors have the tools they need to make meaningful contributions to Mozilla, and through us to the potential of the Web.

I urge each of us to step forward and *lead* — lead each other and lead others to join us. Lead a growing number of people as we build as much openness, innovation and opportunity into Internet life as we possibly can. Let’s make something great of the changes that come our way. Let’s make the next 15 years a watershed time for the digital freedom and opportunity.