Banging on about Mozilla Drumbeat

Six months ago, for all the best possible reasons, I rather tore into Mozilla's Drumbeat project. This led to some useful dialogue with the man behind it, Mark Surman. At least, I presume it was useful, since he's still talking to me; indeed, he's bravely asked me to review the progress of the project.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Where and Whither Mozilla?

The importance of Mozilla and its Firefox browser went up a notch last week. For it was then that it became clear that Microsoft has little intention of following a very particular standard – its own OOXML, pushed through the ISO at great cost to that institution's authority. Contrast that with Microsoft's increasingly positive signals about Web standards, which it is adopting with notable fervency – largely thanks to Firefox.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Hear that Mozilla Drumbeat? No, Me Neither

A few months ago, I wrote about Mozilla's new Drumbeat campaign, "a global community of people and projects using technology to help internet users understand, participate and take control of their online lives."

As a big fan of Mozilla since its earliest days, I'm all in favour of this - just as I'm in favour of its new Drumbeat site for developers. As Mark Surman explains:

Our main goal with this early version of the site is to get people developing and working on a handful of Drumbeat projects. Which is why we're calling it a 'developer version'. It's intended first and foremost for brave souls with good open web ideas who are ready to a) put their ideas on the table and b) help us figure out how Drumbeat should work along the way.

If that sounds like you (brave soul + big open web idea), check out the site and create an account, then go to the 'create a project' form to describe what you'd like to work on.

Well, that's absolutely super-duper and fab, Mark, but just a teensy-weensy little thing: when something is called *Drumbeat*, as in making a noise, getting the message out etc., you don't think it might be a vaguely good idea to *tell people what you're doing*?

Had it not been for the wonders of Twitter, I would never have known about this latest move, and that's both a pity and something of a concern for the future of Drumbeat...

Update 1: There's now a Drumbeat calendar which gives an indication of the planned crescendo...

Update 2: Mark Surman has fleshed things out with this useful post.

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Brainstorming with GNOME's Stormy Peters

As I wrote last week, foundations are playing an increasingly important role in the development of free software. I cited Mozilla Foundation and GNOME Foundation - although Matthew Aslett rightly pointed out that Eclipse is a leader, too - but in one respect Mozilla and GNOME are somewhat different. We hear a lot about Mozilla's plans, articulated by Mitchell Baker, now ably abetted by Mark Surman, but GNOME is rather less high profile. The same goes for the head of the GNOME Foundation, Stormy Peters, so I was delighted to come across this very full interview with her....

(On Open Enterprise blog.)

Linux Foundation Interview with Mozilla's Mitchell Baker

On Open Enterprise blog.

Flavour of the Month: Executive Director

On Open Enterprise blog.

How Should Mozilla Execute Its Vision?

On Linux Journal.