Archive for the ‘Mitchell’s Blog’ Category
November 20th, 2009
Today we are posting our audited financial statements and tax form for 2008. We have also posted our FAQ. As in past years, I’ll use this event as an opportunity to review both our financial status and our overall effectiveness in moving the mission forward.
Financial
The financial highlights are:
- Mozilla remains strong financially despite the financial crisis of 2008. Our investment portfolio was somewhat reduced, but overall revenues remained steady and more than adequate to meet our needs. We continue to manage our expenses very carefully.
- Mozilla remains well positioned, both financially and organizationally, to advance our mission of building openness, interoperability and participation into the Internet.
Our revenue and expenses are consistent with 2007, showing steady growth. Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenues (Mozilla Foundation and all subsidiaries) for 2008 were $78.6 million, up approximately 5% from 2007 reported revenues of $75.1 million. The majority of this revenue is generated from the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox from organizations such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and others.
2008 revenues include a reported loss of $7.8 million in investments in the Foundation’s long-term portfolio (approximately 25%) as a result of economic conditions and investment values at the end of 2008. Excluding investment gains and losses, revenues from operational activity were $86.4 million compared to $73.3 million in 2007, an annual increase of 18%.
Mozilla consolidated expenses for the Mozilla Foundation and all subsidiaries for 2008 were $49.4 million, up approximately 48% from 2007 expenses of $33.3 million. Expenditures remain highly focused in two key areas: people and infrastructure. By the end of 2008, Mozilla was funding approximately 200 people working full or part-time on Mozilla around the world. Expenditures on people accounted for roughly 58% of our total expenses in 2008. The largest concentrations of people funded by Mozilla are in the U.S, Canada, and Europe with smaller groups in China and New Zealand and individuals in many parts of the world.
Total assets as of December 31, 2008 were $116 million, up from $99 million at the end of 2007, an increase of 17% to our asset base. Unrestricted assets at the end of 2008 were $94 million compared with $82 million in 2007, a 15% increase. The restricted assets remain the same as last year: a “tax reserve fund” established in 2005 for a portion of the revenue the Foundation received that year from the search engine providers, primarily Google. As noted last year, the IRS has opened an audit of the Mozilla Foundation. The IRS continues to examine our records for the years 2004-2007. We do not yet have a good feel for how long this will take or the overall scope of what will be involved.
Total grants, donations, and contributions in 2008 were approximately $1 million matching the approximately $1 million of 2007. Mozilla supported projects such Mozdev, Software Freedom Conservancy, and accessibility support for the jQuery library, HTML 5 video, and Firebug.
We believe that Mozilla’s financial setting will continue with relative stability. We continue to use our assets to execute on the mission.
Moving the Mission Forward
2008 was another exciting and robust year for Mozilla. Our scope of activities continued to grow, our community of committed contributors and users expanded, our geographical diversity deepened, and our effect on increasing openness, participation, innovation and individual empowerment in Internet life is significant. Here are some examples.
In February we launched Mozilla Messaging to develop Mozilla Thunderbird as well as new possibilities in the broader messaging arena. 2008 was primarily a start-up year for Mozilla Messaging. In 2009 we’re starting to see the Mozilla Messaging team deliver on the promise. The final version of Thunderbird 3 –- a vastly improved product — is due to be released shortly. In addition the initial developer version of Raindrop — a prototype for a new way of integrating different kinds of messages — has been released.
In 2008 we developed a set of two-year goals (the “2010 goals”), setting out major areas we’d like to see the Mozilla project address in 2009 and 2010. The 2010 goals build upon the Mozilla Manifesto, which articulates the values underlying the Mozilla project and our products. Two of these are familiar — openness in general and continued vitality of Firefox. Two are newer: the mobile web and helping people manage the explosion of data around us. These reflect our desire to see the values of the Mozilla Manifesto infused into these areas of Internet life.
We began an on-going process of strengthening some of the Mozilla project’s basic assets. We began broadening our “module ownership” system beyond code to include governance activities. We began a long-overdue update of the mozilla.org website. In September Mark Surman joined as the new Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation. These activities continued in 2009, along with new Education and Drumbeat programs.
We expanded the scope of our innovation efforts under the “Mozilla Labs” banner. We launched a range of projects including our first Design Challenge, Test Pilot (user testing program), Ubiquity (natural language interface to browser interaction), and a Developer Tools program. We also expanded existing projects like Weave, Personas and Prism. This focus on innovation continues during 2009.
The activities of Mozilla’s support, localization, campus representative and design communities expanded significantly through 2008 and 2009, reaching more people in more ways.
Mozilla continues to grow ever more global. In June 2008 Firefox 3.0 launched simultaneously in 46 languages. A year later, Firefox 3.5 featured 70 languages. In 2008 Firefox became the majority browser in specific countries. This started with Indonesia, which passed 50% in July 2008, and grew to include Slovenia and Macedonia by the end of 2008. Since then, Slovakia, the Philippines, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Bosnia Herzegovina, and Ghana have joined this group. Our local communities also work with other Mozilla products and activities such as Thunderbird, Seamonkey and Service Week (in 2009).
We intend to continue to invest significantly in global participation.
Product and Competition
The number of people using Mozilla products increased dramatically throughout 2008 and 2009. This user base makes Mozilla relevant to the Internet industry, helping us move the Internet to a more open and participatory environment. It also helps us build public benefit, civic and social value as components of the Internet’s future.
The number of people using Firefox on a daily basis increased from 28 million in 2006 to 49 million in 2007. In 2008 we moved up to 75 million daily users. As of November 2009 the daily number has grown to 110 million, bringing the total number of users to approximately 330 million people.
Our market share rose to approximately 21.69% in December of 2008. This breaks out into U.S. market share of approximately 20.2%, and more than 32% in Europe. Our statistics for Asia are similar, with our own estimates around 20%. Our South American market share rose to 27% by the end of 2008. These numbers have all continued to rise in 2009 as well. In February, 2008 we crossed the half-billion download mark; in July, 2009 we exceeded 1 billion downloads. As of November, 2009 Firefox’s market share worldwide reached 25%.
In June 2008 we released Firefox 3.0, bringing dramatic improvements to the online browsing experience. These improvements included features to help users quickly navigate to favorite websites, manage their downloads more easily, and keep themselves safe from malware attacks. Firefox 3 was downloaded over 8 million times in the first 24 hours, earning Mozilla a Guinness World Record. In June 2009 we released Firefox 3.5, with additional performance and feature improvements. In November 2009 we celebrated the fifth anniversary of Firefox.
Work on Firefox for mobile devices began in earnest in 2008 with the first development milestones released. We expect to release the first product versions late in 2009. The mobile market has many challenges for us, in particular the fragmentation of the development platform (a plethora of operating systems, handsets and carriers) and a market where touching a consumer directly is more difficult. However, the market is beginning to change and a great, open browser will both help that process and benefit from it. We have much more to do, but have laid a good foundation for long-term contribution to the mobile Web.
SeaMonkey remains a vital project with millions of users. Bugzilla continues as a backbone tool for numerous organizations. A revitalized Thunderbird 3 should ship in 2009.
Looking Forward
The past few years have seen an explosion of innovation and competition in web browsers, demonstrating their critical importance to the Internet experience and marking the success of our mission. In 2008 not only did Microsoft and Apple continue developing their web browsing products, but Google announced and released a web browser of its own. Competition, while uncomfortable, has benefited Mozilla, pushing us to work harder. Mozilla and Firefox continue to prosper, and to reflect our core values. We expect these competitive trends to continue, benefiting the entire Web.
The Internet remains an immense engine of social, civic and economic value. The potential is enormous. There is still an enormous amount to be done to build openness, participation and individual opportunity into the developing structure of the Internet.
Hundreds of millions of people today trust Mozilla to do this. This is an accomplishment many thought was impossible. We should be proud. We should also be energized to do more and to try to new things. It’s a big challenge. It’s important.
We’ve made this opportunity real. Let’s go surprise people once again by showing how much better we can make the Internet experience.
November 10th, 2009
Five years ago a small-ish group of exhausted, wound-up but excited people began the final preparations for the launch of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. We gathered in many places; with a core of us in Mozilla’s Mountain View office. This was a small, funky room hidden away in the far corner of an office complex, leased to us by friends of the Mozilla project. Our website folks gathered 4000 miles away. Thousands of people joined us virtually. We knew this because we could see the number of pings to the download site going wild in the hours before the release, as people kept checking.
We knew we had something big in the works — bigger at least than anyone had expected from Mozilla in a long time. We knew we were coming out of the dark days of “failure” of the Mozilla project. We knew this because some 3 million people were already using the 0.9 version of Firefox, and the number of people paying attention to us in the 6 months before the release had been skyrocketing. We knew we were coming out of dark into a place with light. We had no idea just how bright it would be. Here’s a detailed description of the events of Nov. 9 2004, which I wrote shortly afterward.
I can still feel the knotted, sick-to-my-stomach feeling that was a constant part of life in the weeks leading up to the Firefox 1.0 launch. Today, Nov. 9 was no different. Most things were done, but critical pieces still remained. My personal last minute items were finishing our discussions with Yahoo and Google, which were on track but nerve-wracking in the extreme nevertheless.
The general stress went beyond the specific tasks, and beyond getting a product out the door. The period leading up to Firefox 1.0 was a time in which we had redefined ourselves, becoming a true consumer-facing organization for the first time. This was a big change. It was absolutely necessary, it was hard, and it was immensely stressful.
Today the world is different. Firefox has 25% world-wide market share, 330 million users, and a significant impact on the shape of the internet experience. The idea that a non-profit, public- benefit organization like Mozilla can have such an impact on keeping the Internet open, participatory, and innovation still surprises people, but it’s not longer seen as naive and impossible.
Our core approach has not changed though. Now, as then, each individual person remains critical. Each person who contributes to Mozilla, each person who demands that Mozilla represent our hopes for the Internet, each person who helps others find the benefits of Firefox and understand the goals of Mozilla — each one of us is what makes the Mozilla mission successful.
Five years is a great marker. And equally important, the future calls. There is great potential for making Firefox and the Internet as a whole even better at empowering people. There are also many threats to the openness of the Internet.
Mozilla has a unique voice. We have a unique opportunity to build an Internet where the people using it — us — are safe, secure, in control of our experience, and excited by new possibilities.
That’s cause for celebration indeed.
November 3rd, 2009
There’s a lot of info about Mozilla Drumbeat available, and I felt the need for an overview. Here is mine. Mark also posted a summary over the weekend.
Drumbeat is Mozilla’s nascent effort to find, energize and build a Mozilla community of people who are — or want to be — working with technology to build participation, understanding and control into Internet life. This is a complementary effort to building the core technologies themselves, as we do with the Firefox and Thunderbird.
Drumbeat will have tools for interested people to try ideas out — much as Spread Firefox, our product extension framework, and the Mozilla Labs efforts provides ways for interested people to try out ideas closely related to our products.
With Drumbeat we also expect to identify a few projects as an initial focus of the Drumbeat effort, much as we have identified a browser and communications client as the focus of our technology efforts. These Drumbeat projects are areas where the Mozilla Foundation will actively be working to build communities and create impact. Drumbeat projects may vary in their life-span; some may be quick and sprint-like, some may be longer projects.
Drumbeat will use many of the components we’re familiar with at Mozilla — a massive online presence, with work done in the open; lots of local and regional communities and gatherings. One difference is we’re thinking of an annual event as a very significant aspect. We’re thinking that this may be more important since the efforts aren’t likely to be as tightly coordinated as a product team, which becomes very tightly bound during the latter part of a product release.
More detailed thinking on Drumbeat can be found at the wiki, and of course there is an open invitation to get involved.
October 23rd, 2009
Most of us receive messages from many online sources — email, instant messages, tweets, Facebook messages, links. Raindrop is a new, experimental Mozilla project exploring how to manage all these sorts of messages. Raindrop aims to make communications more about the person and less about the technology in which the message was created. It’s the brainchild of the team responsible for Thunderbird.
You can find Raindrop over at Mozilla Labs, among a range of other projects exploring how to innovate at scale.
October 8th, 2009
Today the European Commission announced a formal settlement proposal in the Microsoft tying investigation. The ultimate effectiveness of this remedy depends in part on the implementation specifics and can only be determined over time. Once the EC and Microsoft have agreed to a final settlement, Mozilla hopes to work closely with Microsoft and the EC to implement the settlement in a way that creates the best user experience possible in the ballot setting.
Mozilla will continue our work to help internet users across Europe understand the choices available to them and why it is important to make an informed decision about the software one uses to access the web.
September 29th, 2009
Last week Google released a new product in the browser space called “Chrome Frame.” Chrome Frame aggressively address a serious pain point for web developers. However, the overall effects of Chrome Frame are undesirable. I predict positive results will not be enduring and — to the extent it is adopted — Chrome Frame will end in growing fragmentation and loss of control for most of us, including web developers. Here’s why.
The Chrome Frame plugin is essentially a browser-within-a-browser. Chrome Frame inserts an alternative “rendering engine” into your browser, and allows websites to determine which rendering engine you end up using. (The “Why Chrome Frame” section below has a slightly longer description of the problems developers face and of Chrome Frame, for those not so familiar with browser technology.)
Chrome Frame and Loss of Control
Once your browser has fragmented into multiple rendering engines, it’s very hard to manage information across websites. Some information will be managable from the browser you use and some information from Chrome Frame. If the Smart Location Bar in the “browser” doesn’t show the sites you’re trying to return to, then you need to find a way to open Chrome Frame and search there. Your “browser” can no longer aggregate information for you across websites. This defeats one of the most important ways in which a browser can help people manage their experience.
For many people Chrome Frame will make the web even more unknowable and confusing. Image you download Chrome Frame. You go to a website. What rendering engine do you end up using? That depends on the website now, not on you. And if you end up at a website that makes use of the Chrome Frame, the treatment of your passwords, security settings, personalization all the other things one sets in a browser is suddenly unknown. Will sites you tag or bookmark while browsing with one rendering engine show up in the other? Because the various parts of the browser are no longer connected, actions that have one result in the browser you think you’re using won’t have the same result in the Chrome browser-within-a-browser.
Getting different results will be awkward even for those of us who understand clearly what is going on. Then imagine someone who isn’t immersed in browser technology. Imagine trying to explain to a neighbor that one day he went to a website, clicked on a button to “add web capabilities to your browser”, ended up with a duplicate “rendering” technology that surfaces and disappears based on website controls, and this now means that the search bar, location bar and other basic UI elements will work in different ways at different times. This affects individuals directly, and web developers indirectly. It doesn’t help web developers if basic ways of interacting with the site be
come awkward,for example if I don’t know where my password was stored and how to access it.
Chrome Frame and Fragmentation
Google is not the only website developer that would find this idea useful. Google is providing the set of features it believes are helpful for making powerful websites. Other websites will have browser features they would find useful for their applications. Imagine having the Google browser-within-a-browser for some sites, the Facebook browser-within-a-browser for Facebook Connect sites, the Apple variant for iTunes, the mobile-carrier variant for your mobile sites — all injected into a single piece of software the user thinks of as his or her “browser”. Each browser-within-a-browser variant will have its own feature set, its own quirks, and its own security problems.
The result is a sort of browser-soup, where a given user action serves up some sort of response, but it’s not clear what the result will be: are my passwords and history stored in chrome frame? some other variant? in what I think of as “my” browser? This makes the web less knowable, less understandable, and certainly less managable.
Why Chrome Frame?
Web developers and website applications face a painful and seemingly never-ending problem: wanting to implement capabilities that some browsers don’t support. The degree of pain this causes is high. Imagine trying to cook a really fine meal with an oven that can’t get above 250 degrees F. In some cases it’s just impossible, in other cases it requires rearranging ingredients, cooking time and the order of preparation. Web developers go through this regularly.
One way of fixing this is to get people to use a new browser. This is effective, but hard. Mozilla Firefox has reached some 300 million people, but hundreds of millions more continue to use the browser that came on the machine they bought, sometimes years ago. Google began offering its own browser — “Chrome” — a year or so ago, but this has yet to gain significant traction. This week Google offered a different solution — a version of Chrome repackaged as a plugin for IE.
For those not familiar with the ins-and-outs of browser architecture, you can think of a browser as having two essential parts. One part we humans don’t see — it’s the part that “speaks” computer languages and talks with web servers. This is often called the “platform” or the “rendering engine”. The other part is the set of things that human beings see and interact with, which is often called the “front-end” or the “application layer.” The application layer includes the basic browser user interface -the window around content, the buttons, menu items, search box, etc. It also includes parts of the browser that appear based on what you are doing — the dialog boxes, the download manager, the password manager, the security warnings and the other messages.
Chrome Frame breaks this connection by inserting a separate rendering engine into your browser, and allowing websites to determine which rendering engine you end up using. If you download Chrome Frame you see the basic front end of your previous browser, but websites cause your browser to toggle back and forth between the rendering engine of Chrome and the rendering engine of the browser you selected. The application layer of your browser and the platform part of your browser are no longer connected.
At first glance this looks like it might be a useful option, offering immediate convenience to website developers in alleviating a very real pain. But a deeper look reveals significant negative repercussions.
September 22nd, 2009
A while back I wrote a post about Firefox that concluded with the idea that each one of us should be the center of our online lives — not a company, not an application, not a business plan. One common response has been: That sounds awesome, but how do we get there? Where do we start?
Well, no surprise — I start with the browser. The browser is the piece of the web that human beings interact with directly; it’s the tool through which people “touch” the web. I have an immense degree of control over my browser. With a website I have the degree of control the website chooses to offer. I am one of many users at a website, but the browser is mine.
These traits make the browser the logical tool for a user -centric (”you-centric” ??) world.
An early step was customizing the browser by hand, adding extensions, bookmarks, settings, themes and personas. More recently browsers have begun offering automated customization as well. For example, the Smart Location Bar (aka the “awesome bar”) automatically offers easy access to websites we’ve visited before, automatically tuning to each person’s browsing habits.
The awesome bar presents automated customization to the user. It aggregates information about my usage across many websites and presents the information back to me. It’s immensely helpful. One area to explore in building a user-centric web experience is other examples where this sort of automated customization would help the user. For example, perhaps knowing my own search history across many website would be helpful to me.
Another form of automated activity to explore is the presentation of customized or individual responses outward, to websites. For example, the browser could automate the current dysfunctional process of logging into and out of websites. There are unquestionably other things we do regularly that the browser can automate and run in the background. Sharing of information is becoming increasingly common. Perhaps the browser could automate response to certain types of requests. There are obviously privacy and control issues with sharing information. That’s why the browser — where I have the most control — is a logical choice.
September 18th, 2009
I’ve been reading about Anthony and Lucas’s trip to their local library as part of Mozilla Service Week. Only a few people came to their “Ask a Geek” table, but Anthony describes a memorably experience nonetheless. I realized that my local library might be a good place to do this as well. It’s on the San Francisco peninsula, but not in Palo Alto or Mountain View, and has a community that isn’t entirely techie. And the library is near the local high school, and I think it fills up with high school students in the afternoon.
One of our mighty system administrators lives in the same town, is an active LUG organizer, and is the perfect person to join me. Now all I have to do is go talk to the library folks and see how welcoming they will be! Also, if anyone wants to join us in the mid-peninsula area drop me a note here.
September 17th, 2009
The online world is new enough that many of us aren’t really sure how we can keep ourselves as safe as possible. In the physical world we have generations of experience about how to minimize risk (beware of dark “shortcuts” through unknown neighborhoods alone at night), and well-developed social institutions to mitigate risk (police forces, insured accounts at banks, etc.). In the online world most of us are still learning what we can do as individuals to improve our own safety. Sometimes it’s daunting.
It turns out that one important thing each of us can do is keep our software up-to-date. By doing so we get a regular flow of security improvements. Firefox has a good update rate. But it’s easy for people to forget to update software that we don’t think about very often. One type of software that’s easy to forget about is a category known as “plugins.” Plugin software works with a browser to display additional types of content. Plugins are not created by the browser developers; they are separate teams and separate software. Because of the interaction with the browser, many people don’t know or forget about updating plugins. And a crash or security problem in a plugin often feels like a problem in the browser. So it’s easy for people to think that they’ve fixed the problem by updating the browser when in fact the plugin is still a problem.
Last week Mozilla tried something new to help people help themselves. The results so far have been encouraging. We realized that a lot of people are using old version of the “Flash” plugin. We suspected that this is because people didn’t know they should update or that updating is an important safety habit. Flash is not a Mozilla product — it’s from Adobe — so updating the browser doesn’t update Flash. And nearly everyone uses Flash to view video. So we put a notice on the Firefox update page, letting people with old, less-secure versions of Flash know that Adobe offers an updated version with security fixes.
The response to this notice has been very high. The percentage of people viewing this (in the English language, US version) and then following the link to update flash is about 30%. This is a very high response rate. A typical response rate for this page is around 5%. A more detailed analysis can be found at our metrics blog.
We’re very careful about putting anything on the Firefox update page, so asking people to deal with a different product is new. The response suggests that people are receptive to clear information about how to keep themselves safer. That’s encouraging. It benefits the individual doing the updating, and also provides a system wide “public health”- like benefit as well.
Online security is a tough problem. It will be with us constantly, just like questions of physical security never go away. There are things each one of us can do to improve our setting. At Mozilla we’ll keep thinking about how we can help people figure out and do these things. And hopefully we’ll be part of a growing community of people doing this.
September 16th, 2009
Jono recently posed the question “What is ‘The Open Web’ and why should you care“. When I’m talking with people who drive cars regularly, I sometimes describe the Open Web by saying it’s a place where there is a decentralized “aftermarket.” “Aftermarket” is the term used to describe replacement parts or equipment that a person uses to maintain or enhance a product. It’s a well known term in the auto industry.
For example, imagine if you bought a car and were forbidden from replacing the windshield wipers or the battery or the tires unless and until the car manufacturer allowed you to do so. Imagine if you could only use a battery that the car manufacturer provided, or approved. And imagine that the only place to buy batteries or windshield wipers or new tires was from the car dealership. In this case your ability to keep yourself safe is reduced — if the manufacturer has only poor quality tires, that’s all you can get. If you want tires for snow but the manufacturer doesn’t offer them, you’re out of luck. If the tires are wildly expensive, your stuck. In this setting we would also say good-buy to the variety of independent developers, stores and maintenance centers; everything would be controlled by the automobile manufacturers. Innovation would also be channeled through these same small number of manufacturers. Develop an innovative tire or better stereo system and you have to get the manufacturers to adopt it, you can’t go directly to consumers.
This ability to change components, to enhance or maintain a product the way to meet individual needs is at risk in the online world. Similarly, the ability of independent creators to try new things is at risk. Technology manufacturers use both technical and legal means to restrain this freedom. Some make it difficult technically to change a component. Others try to make it illegal. Some do both.
The Open Web embodies the legal and technical flexibility so that I can decide what combination of products best suit my needs. I may be very happy to stick completely with what the manufacturer of a piece of technology gives me, just as I might be happy to have all my automotive maintenance done by the dealer using exclusively “official” products. I may want to make only a few changes and the options the manufacturer has pre-approved are fine for me. But somewhere in my life I am very likely to want something slightly different, something attuned to me and the quirks of my life. I may need to find a technical guru to help me, but fortunately there are lots of technical communities building interesting things. The Open Web makes this possibility real, a vibrant part of online life.