Taking open source foundations to the next level

Krita is a fine sketching and painting program, but few would claim that it is one of the big names in the open source world, such as Firefox or LibreOffice. That makes the following recent announcement noteworthy:

On The H Open.

Where are the Alpha *Female* Hackers?

Today is Ada Lovelace Day:

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. That’s a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let’s come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let’s create new role models and make sure that whenever the question “Who are the leading women in tech?” is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues.

Not surprisingly, my first thought was: who have we got in the world of free software? There are certainly some big names like Mitchell Baker, Chief Lizard Wrangler of Mozilla and Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.

But notice that both of these occupy executive positions: they hack business/legal/social systems. And while there are plenty of female coders contributing to free software projects, I can't think of any high-profile ones that might stand alongside the obvious alpha males in the coding world.

Now, this is probably due to my ignorance as much as anything. So I'd like to put out a call for names that I ought to know in this context - women who code at a high level, and whose names I should be mentioning more often. And as a pendant I'd also be interested on people's thoughts as to how we can nurture more top-flight female hackers.

Update: Just come across this great List of women in Open Source.

Will OpenOffice.org Go to the Ball this Year?

I remain perplexed by the state of OpenOffice.org. After years of using Word 2 (yes, you read that correctly - by far the best version Microsoft ever produced), I jumped straight to OpenOffice.org as my main office software. Version 1.0 was, it is a true, a little on the, er, rough side, but since 2.0, I've had practically no problems - no crashes at all that I can remember. It's reasonably fast, not a huge memory hog (certainly nothing compared to the old versions of Firefox, or even Firefox 3.0, which still regularly eats several hundred Meg of my RAM for breakfast) and does practically everything most people who aren't Excel macro junkies could possibly want: what's not to like?

On Open Enterprise blog.

A Good Foundation for 2009

If I had to pinpoint major open source trends in 2008, one of them would be the rise in the foundation as a major force in free software. The best-known examples of these are probably the Mozilla Foundation and GNOME Foundation, both of which have expanded their ambitions recently. Here's what each has to say about its aims...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is Sir Tim B-L Distancing Himself from the W3C?

When you've invented probably the most important technology for fifty years – and then magnanimously given it away – it's hardly surprising if your every move is seized upon. And yet in the case of Sir Tim Berners-Lee's latest wheeze, I've been struck by the paucity of real analysis. Most commentators have been happy to applaud its obviously laudable intentions. But I wonder whether there might be more to the move than meets the eye....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Mozilla Gets Google's Moolah for 3 More Years

This is important:

Another important element is the financial resources Mozilla enjoys. We’ve just renewed our agreement with Google for an additional three years. This agreement now ends in November of 2011 rather than November of 2008, so we have stability in income. We’re also learning more all the time about how to use Mozilla’s financial resources to help contributors through infrastructure, new programs, and new types of support from employees.

The deal with Google is bringing in over $60 million a year: that's a huge resource, unmatched by any other open source project. It lets Mozilla defend the open Web - and dream, with things like this. (Via Standblog.)

Desperately Seeking Chandler

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Open Web: A New Old Meme

On Open Enterprise blog.

Flavour of the Month: Executive Director

On Open Enterprise blog.

How Can We Harness the Firefox Effect?

On Linux Journal.

What Henry Blodget Just Does Not Get

Here's one of the barmiest - and saddest - things I've ever read, from a certain Henry Blodget:

When Will Firefox/Mozilla Go Public?

Mozilla's earnest Mitchell Baker and friends will, of course, publicly say "NEVER!" But let's be serious. Why wouldn't the Mozilla Foundation, which presumably exists to do good for the world, want to be the proud possessor of several billion dollars worth of public company stock? The Google Foundation, also a good-doing 501c3, certainly hasn't done badly with its own stash of GOOG. And, over time, like any smart foundation, Mozilla and Google will likely want diversify their holdings so they can continue to do good for decades.

Also, as well as Firefox is doing as a part-time love project, it could do even better with some major marketing, deal-making, and distribution power behind it. Every company in the world (save Microsoft) should want a Microsoft (and Google) competitor to succeed. So every company should want to at least consider a partnership with Firefox.

Mozilla Corporation was set up with one aim in mind: to further the open source code produced by the Mozilla Foundation, and the ecosystem around it. It was not set up to make money, or to have money as is its raison d'être. If it went public, money, not the users of its code, would dominate its decisions - and would have to, or shareholders would sue the management. (Google Foundation is a private foundation, and hence doesn't worry about shareholders: Google does, but it isn't trying to promote open source, it's trying to make money.)

Mozilla depends, not incidentally but critically, on those users: its programmers could write the code, but they couldn't debug it on their own, as open source history has often shown. And the amazing SpreadFirefox marketing effort made up of hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts giving their time and even money to further Firefox would evaporate the instant they realised that they were doing it to make other people rich. The moment Mozilla goes for the money, it cuts itself off at the the legs.

And even if in some moment of suicidal insanity all this did happen, the code would be forked faster than you can say "GNU": all the best - because most passionate - coders, beta-testers and marketing people would leave. This would split Firefox's marketshare and destroy any power that it currently has - and with it most of its revenue.

Mozilla Inc would promptly implode, and the "new" Firefox would steadily rise from the ashes, just as the old did from the original Mozilla. We could even call it "Phoenix"....

Update: From the horse's mouth.

Firefox By Numbers

* We think there are at least 125,000,000 Firefox users in the world right now, give or take. That represents a doubling since Firefox 2 was released a little over a year ago, and significant growth in every country.
* At Mozilla we view market share as an important quantitative metric that can help us ask smarter questions and build better products, but it’s only one of many
* We have systems here that tell us approximate number of daily users, and use that information to inform much of what we do.

The rest of this interesting post from John Lilly, COO of Mozilla, explains the reasoning behind that number, and also offers some insight into what the Mozilla team are thinking these days. (Via Asa Dotzler.)

Fun Fiscal Facts of Firefox

Somewhat belatedly, The New York Times has caught up with the rumblings in free software community about all the dosh Firefox is raking in thanks to its search engine deals, and its possible over-dependence on Google. Nothing really new there, but it does have some juicy figures:

According to Mozilla’s 2006 financial records, which were recently released, the foundation had $74 million in assets, the bulk invested in mutual funds and the like, and last year it collected $66 million in revenue. Eighty-five percent of that revenue came from a single source — Google, which has a royalty contract with Firefox.

Despite that ample revenue, the Mozilla Foundation gave away less than $100,000 in grants (according to the audited statement), or $285,000 (according to Mozilla itself), in 2006. In the same year, it paid the corporation’s chief executive, Mitchell Baker, more than $500,000 in salary and benefits. (She is also chairwoman of the foundation.)

Hm: $500,000 a year - who says free software doesn't pay?

Thunderbird Spreads its Wings

I was muttering darkly about Thunderbird's future, and the worrying attitude the Mozilla Foundation seemed to be taking to this key program. Happily, they have got their brains in gear again, and come up with the following wizard plan:

Mozilla today announced a new initiative to stimulate innovation in Internet mail and communications. Mozilla plans to develop Internet communications software based on the Thunderbird product, code and brand. The new initiative also aims to nurture a robust developer ecosystem in order to drive improvements through open source and community innovation, in the tradition of the Firefox web browser.

...

Mozilla will provide US$3 million seed funding to establish this new company.

Millions of people around the world rely on Thunderbird as their primary mail application. Nothing will change for current Thunderbird users. Mozilla will continue to provide Thunderbird users with regular security and stability updates as it establishes its new initiative, and remains committed to the needs of Thunderbird users.

The Mozilla Manifesto

It's either a sign of a growing maturity - or of great hubris - that the Mozilla Foundation under the guidance of the Chief Lizard Wrangler herself, Mitch Baker, feels moved to offer the world the Mozilla Manifesto:

The Manifesto sets out a vision of the Internet as a piece of infrastructure that is open, accessible and enriches the lives of individual human beings. It includes a pledge from the Mozilla Foundation about taking action in support of the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto. It extends an invitation to others to join us, either by working directly with the Foundation or through other activities that support the Mozilla Manifesto.

It adheres to the following principles:

1. The Internet is an integral part of modern life - a key component in education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole.

2. The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.

3. The Internet should enrich the lives of individual human beings.

4. Individuals' security on the Internet is fundamental and cannot be treated as optional.

5. Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet.

6. The effectiveness of the Internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.

7. Free and open source software promotes the development of the Internet as a public resource.

8. Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability, and trust.

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

10. Magnifying the public benefit aspects of the Internet is an important goal, worthy of time, attention and commitment.

I get the feeling that the lizard will continue to surprise in all sorts of ways in the years to come.