cbeard's blog

Personas for Firefox, Now with Snowmen

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 09:27:28 -0800

Personas for Firefox has been updated and officially moved into Mozilla Labs as part of our exploration of dynamic personalization.

Be sure to grab the latest version it's a major rewrite of the code and includes dozens of new designs (including a bunch in time for the holidays!). It also now works with the beta releases of Firefox 3.

Special thanks to Rhian for coordinating the development of new designs, and to Myk for driving this round of development.

A new Web site and developer APIs will be released within the next couple of weeks.

Firefox is a Public Asset

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 08:19:09 -0700

Mitchell Baker, Chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, today blogged about why we're not a "for profit" organization. I'm posting as I think that it's highly relevant and important to everyone here, as key contributors to the Mozilla Project.

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.

Source: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/08/firefox_is_a_public_asset.html

Gran Paradiso - Gearing Up for Paradise

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 23:01:23 -0700

Gran Paradiso is the codename for the next major release of Firefox. We’re now within six weeks of releasing the first of two planned Beta releases. (You can view the current schedule at: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/Schedule.)

The way major Firefox product releases work, following the Beta the product team will evaluate the feedback and remaining work, and a schedule for final release will begin to firm up. There is no date yet for final release -- we’re much more quality than date driven as an engineering organization.

At this point in the release cycle, we’re starting to define the marketing activities and to gear up for the launch!

One of the first things we’re doing is taking a look at the features list and pulling out key themes and characteristics.

Over the following days and weeks we’ll be posting the first draft of this work and the early plans for the launch campaign. We’re particularly interested in your thoughts, opinions and gut reactions.

The first early draft of the key bullets for the general consumer audience has been posted at: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/27771

So if you’re at all interested at helping out, please do not hesitate to jump right in! More info will be available soon on the schedule and community meetings.

- cbeard, on behalf of the firefox product team

Being Knowable

Mon, 21 May 2007 20:39:35 -0700

As anyone close to the Mozilla project knows, we're a really different kind of animal and one that is particularly hard to describe. I've tried in the past by saying that "We are a global community and a public benefit organization dedicated to improving the Internet experience for people everywhere." But that misses the mark and doesn't capture the fact that Mozilla is many things to many people, and we're made up of a multitude of voices, interests and passions. (And it also sounds like corporate-speak.)

To make it that much harder, Mozilla has a long and storied history and only recently gained its independence, both organizationally and financially. To compound the matter, it turns out that the unique legal structure required to fit Mozilla's context and support that independence is complex and easily misunderstood. [1]

For example, I often wish we had chosen a name for what is now the "Corporation" (the wholly-owned taxable subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation) that wasn't so highly charged and full of implicit negative meaning to so many people. It hasn't been an easy starting point when trying to help someone understand Mozilla.

At the end of the day, we're unique and imperfect (as anyone close to us can attest), but so far have collectively accomplished things that many believed impossible.

I don't know if we will ever be able to make Mozilla understandable to the whole world, but I do believe that we need to now make ourselves increasingly knowable to a wider audience so that we can grow as a community (and as a movement) to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

Recent press articles and blog posts suggest that our public weekly project meetings, DevNews blog, Developer Days, Spread Firefox and so on, are only the beginning of what's needed.

- cbeard

[1] Much more detail on how Mozilla is organized and its legal structure can be found in the detailed FAQ on the reorganizaton and in Mozilla's legal and tax documents.

Playing with Masks

Mon, 14 May 2007 12:40:37 -0700

A few weeks ago, I got an itch. It was the sort of itch that I hadn't had in a very long time. You see, many moons ago I was a bit technical. These days I'm more of a pointy-haired kinda guy over here at Mozilla.

Thanks to the tremendous support of many folks, over the last few weekends and several late nights, I've hacked together my first Firefox add-on.

I call it "Personas for Firefox" and it adds a feature that allows you to instantly put on a new mask or "persona" to personalize your Firefox.

It's still very early in its design and development, but ready for wider testing and feedback.

Please do check it out and let me know what you think. You can find it here:
http://www.puffinlabs.com/personas/

Special thanks to beltzner, myk, mconnor, gavin, ss, ian hayward, mfinkle, and brendan for their advice and for answering my seemingly random technical questions. And especially to asa, jslater, rolo, graphicsguru, pkim and sean for whipping up the first round of themes that can be applied.

And, of course, Mozilla Japan for the awesome design work on Foxkeh that inspired this whole idea.

- cbeard

PS: if you're at all artistic, please do consider creating your own Persona and submitting it to the list. They are really easy to make!

Rebirth of Spread Firefox

Thu, 10 May 2007 09:15:01 -0700

In the coming weeks you will see some pretty dramatic changes here. We're rolling forward quickly with a plan to evolve Spread Firefox to support the entirety of the global Firefox marketing program. Stay tuned! But do hold on and please excuse any unexpected outtages as the site goes through a rebirth.

Firefox Dashboard

Thu, 10 May 2007 08:55:01 -0700

We've started a project to define and build a community dashboard to track Firefox adoption. You can learn more by clicking on the Dashboard tab in the header, or by going to the Spread Firefox Dashboard project.

The plan is to publish a full set of metrics and raw data so that everyone has as much information in their hands as possible, to assist with planning and decision making around driving adoption worldwide. We're going to release everything under a CC license, and given the nature of some of the data it should be pretty valuable for other open projects as it gives a unique view into Internet adoption and activity patterns on a global basis.

Here's an example of some of the data we've published so far, that shows global downloads of Firefox by originating browser:

How can you help?

If you've got statistics in your blood, love econometrics, or otherwise like to understand and tinker with modeling, please do join us. This is real world data that we're trying hard to better understand and to affect through community marketing programs on a global basis.
If you're driving a Spread Firefox project or have ideas for new projects, jump into the conversation and let's talk about what sort of data and metrics you think would be useful for us all to collectively gather and track.

Special welcome to students and faculty from Stanford University who have joined the project through the d.school's class on Creating Infections Action, Kindling Gregarious Behaviour and the Global Entrepreneuship Marketing (GEM) programme.

If you're a student or teacher in business, stats, economics, marketing, or in any way interested in joining the project and having your class work on real world marketing programs with real data, in the open, with a global community, please do get in touch! Contact Asa Dotzler or myself and we'll get the ball rolling.

cbeard, on behalf of the mozilla marketing team

Trademark Infringement / Policing Project

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 15:35:55 -0700

The staff here at Mozilla have been working with our pro bono legal team to chase down and stop people from abusing the Mozilla trademarks. However, we're starting to lose that battle as the volume of infringement continues to rise. I think we need to rethink our approach and consider ways in which we can get a wider set of people involved in protecting our collective reputation.

Here's one idea: We could setup a section of SFX and we can point people to it from the main Web site where anyone could report a possible infringement. This would allow us to build a solid list and also triage issues in the open, perhaps using Bugzilla as the back-end. We could then deputize folks to help with the triage, and also to send out courtesy notes and communication to let people know that they are not playing by the rules. (We're generally very friendly in our communication, and rarely need to escalate to sending a threatening letter from our lawyers!)

If and when this doesn't work, we would have a defined method for escalating and having a much more formal communication sent out. The trick is, that we need to ensure that we're tracking everything.

And in particular, we're most worried about people using the Mozilla trademarks and logos to confuse consumers into thinking that a particular product or service is endorsed or from the Mozilla community. In the past, we've stopped people from shipping products like "Firefox Office" and for charging people $39/month for using
Firefox.

All the policies are listing at: http://www.mozilla.org/licensing/
(And are long overdue for an overhaul, regardless, as they don't make it super easy for people to get quick answers to their questions.)

Anyone else have any other ideas or thoughts?

cbeard

HELP WANTED: Google Map Hacking

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 08:02:52 -0700

We need to quickly add a way to find parties near you. I imagine there should be an easy way to go this as part of the Google Maps API. If you can help here, please e-mail asa@mozilla.org.

The team is also working on this, but I think this is a pretty critical piece of functionality that we should get in as soon as possible.

http://www.firefoxparty.com/parties/

Thanks!

Firefox 2 to Launch Afternoon of Tuesday, October 24th

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:44:51 -0700

Are you ready? We're working on the final details now, and will be finalizing the Web site updates over the weekend. Special thanks to everyone from the SFX community who has helped out with testing, marketing and outreach programs.

Mozilla, Trademarks and Debian

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:07:48 -0700

Recently there have been a number of discussion group postings, etc., about disagreements between Mozilla and Debian over the issue of the Firefox trademark and how it can be used. I wanted to address the issues that people have raised, and explain why we've taken the approach we have.

Bon Echo Identity

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 07:55:03 -0700

We've created an identity for the Bon Echo development, marketing and release teams.

As you may already know, "Bon Echo" is the code name for Firefox 2, and is named after a provincial park in Canada. The inside joke is that when Mike Beltzner (Firefox User Experience Lead) first setup the mailing list for the project, he named it "bonecho". And so, at the first planning meeting someone asked "What's Bone Cho?". This was incredibly funny to many of us, and so we took that concept and ran with it, much to Beltzner's chagrin.

You can find desktop wallpaper and other designs here:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Cbeard/bonecho/brand-assets

The t-shirt designs you see on this site are the preliminary thoughts on what the "internal" launch shirt will look like. Of course, at Mozilla "internal" has a much wider meaning and includes all significant contributors to the release. It will not be made available for sale on the Mozilla Store. [1]

The code name for Firefox 3 is going to be "Gran Paradiso", after a park in Italy. We're already trying to come up with ideas on what the design for that release should look like. "Granpa Radiso" has some fun possibilities, although perhaps not as edgy as "Bone Cho".

- cbeard

[1] We're also planning and refreshing all of the designs in the Mozilla Store as part of the Firefox 2 launch. Start brainstorming ideas! We'll have more details soon as we start to roll out our revised brand architecture.

Not all bugs are bugs at Mozilla

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 17:28:28 -0700

...and I don't mean that they are features, either. At least not always. ;-)

We need to do a better job at educating the press about our development process. This is particularly important since we do all of our development in the open, and with a transparent process you see everything in glorious detail. For example, it is being reported that we are presently in trouble because there are 87 "bugs" in Bon Echo (the code name for what will become Firefox 2).

http://www.pcworld.ca/news/article/21c66f000a01040800afaa85c10d5e8b/pg1.htm

The thing is, we use "bugs" as a generic term meaning any issue that we're tracking against the next release milestone. We use the Mozilla-developed Bugzilla application for project management. In this case, "bugs" mean all tasks required before we release the Beta 2 milestone of Bon Echo, including updating web sites, tweaking URLs, localizing strings, etc.

Reporting that these are "bugs in the software" is incorrect and misleading.

Without clarification, non-technical readers of these articles will be misinformed and not given all the information they need to make informed decisions about the Web software that they use.

Any thoughts on how we can address this? FAQs? Press briefing notes with each blog or Wiki post? Renaming Bugzilla really isn't an option, and we don't want to hide all of our meeting notes and status reports as we need and want those to be accessible to the wider community.

Mozilla at OSCON 2006

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 09:17:12 -0700

Our summer interns have posted another Firefox podcast. We were up at O'Reilly's Open Source Conference a couple of weeks ago in Portland, Oregon. Much more to come soon, as they continue to edit and take you behind the scenes worldwide. Check it out!

Firefox, Google and Real Networks

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 07:30:00 -0700

The push to Firefox 2 begins now, with IE 7 expected on XP as a forced
upgrade for hundreds of millions of unsuspecting people any time between now and the end of year -- creating an awesome opportunity and ensuring that this will be an exciting time for us all.

As part of our efforts to extend the reach and drive adoption of Firefox, you will see an announcement today from Real Networks.

http://www.techweb.com/showPressRelease.jhtml?articleID=X50853

More soon.

Update: To clarify, Firefox will now be offered up to people who are in the process of installing Real Networks software. There are no plans to bundle any third-party products with Firefox.