From BarCampTorontoTechWeek

Introduction

Toronto's BarCamp Community meets Mozilla: Toward a New Relationship?

• A roundtable conversation about the Mozilla project
• Facilitated by Mark Kuznicki, featuring Mike Beltzner, Mozilla Foundation
• What is going on inside Mozilla, both platform and the Firefox browser? What is the Toronto connection? Where is the project headed? What don't we know about Mozilla and how can we find out more? What can Mozilla do for me, or what do I want it to do for me? How do we get involved? Why is Mozilla important to us as individuals, as companies and as a community? How do we contribute?
• Background reading: Mitchell Baker on Mozpad, John Lilly on Leverage, AllPeers

Notes:

(initially added by DeborahHartmann, but participants please correct or add as you like)

Mozilla in the context of "saving the world" (or not?)

Background: on saving the world from web monopolies ("hide source" etc.) see remarkk's blog (it seems no one but mark made it to the end of Chris's rant, lol)

Messina's assertion: In order to compete with Silverlight, Apollo, (next gen of Flash and ShockWave) Mozilla needs to be presented as a a platform (did I get that right ?).

Q: What is Mozilla? A browser? A platform? ...

Mike (of Mozilla Corp?) Beltzner's perspective:

Mozilla is more - a community beyond coders, that care about some basic principles: wino kredyt mieszkaniowy sprzedam mieszkanie sprzedam bilet

• Princples of Open Source - not just to benefit programmers but the societal and economic ecosystem around the programmers. Give away their own source code free.
• more innovation, more equal opportunity... see Mozilla Manifesto
• "Encourage Freedom and Choice on the Internet" freedom to take your data with you, to use any platform you want etc. Freedom to be free from ties to specific technologies, in order to allow greater innovation.
• Mozilla project: larger encapsulation of Freedom & Choice on the internet.
• Mozilla Foundation: aim is to enable the project. Example: involved in OLPC,e tc.
  • Q: other high profile activites than FF?
  • A: Thunderbird, behind the scenes advocacy (tech groups with IBM etc. pushing XULrunner etc.).
  • Q: (rhetorical?) Should it be "behind the scenes"?
• Mozilla Corporation: wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation to allow advertising, is in service to the Foundation. Goal right now: ensure FF never dies, it's a wedge in the door of "openness" - pushes the market to good moves. Needs to get FF marketshare to 30% to remain stable.
• FF: a browser build on top of Mozilla Foundation platform. Can build XULrunner to create rich ui apps. (Other examples are Flock, etc.)

Further Discussion:

Mozilla is cross-platform ui.

Is minimo going to replace opera?

Norm: When the desktop disappears, browser will be a dev platform?

Mark B: the internet is becoming commoditized.

ReMarkk: if we are moving to browser based applications...

Bryce: The new platforms get around limitations or difficulties of browser technologies... they're attractive because they're easy. But require platform implemented on the client - it's not "the internet" anymore. Getting into issues of control of the client? Therefore hidden source...

Mark B: communications to enterprises is very resource intensive. Deb: At least: put digested, business oriented stuff on the new blog.

ReMarkk: David Eaves - new forms of governance, etc. which creates a role for the community to engage in the creation of these forms...

Mark B: IBm's website - why os software better than any other kind. Mozilla cannot invest in the enterprise... annual reports, investment in linux, java. Google "IBM open source"

Deb: Enterprises don't only need features - they need language and facts for selling why NOT to use these new platforms, if they are a bad idea *&from a business-value viewpoint**

Mark B: Examples of community extending further than Mozilla can reach: MozPAD: platform application developers. Mozilla contributing servers and resources to do their work. Antenna? building IDE for developing on top of Mozilla platform. Etc.

Mark B: Standards: WG Html5 (web get-it-done feeling) vs W3C Xhtml (IBM feeling)

Dan Kurtz: Ex: John Russig (jmigrator) trying to help Mozilla make the web compete with RIA platforms. I.e. creating offline rich applications (Gmail offline, for ex).

Messina's Q: Where are the Mozilla communities geographically?

• A:Toronto is one. Soon 8 fulltime employees. On Richmond St.

Mark B: Moz Corp keeps deprioritizing things that make it easier to understand what's going on at Mozilla. Ex: "Mozilla Governance" group is available but not obvious or easy starting point to enter the conversation. There is lots of info but you have to look for it. Seneca is doing good work trying to get open source subject into curricula. Also FOS Free and Open Source symposium.

Deb's Q: can the journalists present at TorCamp be of help air the issues? (to be continued over lunch)

Ran out of time, conversation ended for now.