Standblog

This is how we, Mozilla, define what we do in our Manifesto:

We create communities of people involved in making the Internet experience better for all of us.

What’s interesting here is that — in this sentence — we don’t mention Firefox at all. The goal is to make the Internet better for all of us, and that’s why we make Firefox (along with the very promising Firefox OS project). But a big piece of what we do, even if it’s not very visible from the outside, is to create communities of people. These people — that we call Mozillians–, in turn, build the products that make the Internet better. What makes makes Mozillians — most of them are volunteers — contribute to Mozilla?

French-speaking communities in MozCamp EU in Warsaw, cc by Flore

Keep reading the article on Beyond the Code.

I've just read This photograph is not free on Petapixel.com, and I should explain why I disagree with the author and decided to give away the picture below:

The photo above is free. You can reuse it, as explained in its Licensing terms. Actually, you will not be the only one. Many publications have already done so, and I've seen this pictures used in dozens of places.

I think it's a fine photo. It has cost me quite a bit of money in order to create it. A Canon SLR camera, a high-end lens, my time to take the picture, edit it, publish it. Not including the cost of the computer. Several thousands of Euros overall. But that's a silly way of looking at things. I have taken literally thousands of pictures with this camera, so the actual cost is under 1 EUR per photograph...

I took the picture because I like taking pictures. I've invested a lot of money into camera gear over the past 27 years or so and never made a dime from it. On the other hand, it has given me a lot of joy and pride. The joy to take beautiful pictures. The pride of building the reputation of being a decent photographer. The pleasure to give away my work and see people smile. The satisfaction coming from the fact that my work is useful, seeing it's reused by others^[1].

Of course, after taking this picture of the Eiffel tower in Paris, I could have said that it cost me a lot of money. So I should not share it. And the picture would have stayed on my hard drive, far from the eyes of people who could "steal" it.

But I gave it instead to Wikimedia Commons^[2] so that it could be reused by other people on Wikipedia articles and elsewhere. I also gave dozens of photos to Wikipedia. Some of them have been published in highly successful books.

I don't regret giving this photo to people I don't know. It has cost me a little, but brought me a lot more in return.. because I made it available to the world. It would not have happened if I decided to leave it hidden in my hard drive. So if you want to reuse it, please be my guest: I'd rather see my artwork used than forgotten. Most of all, I have realized a long time ago that in a world where everyone has a camera, a lot of free time and fantastic tools to publish stuff, there is not a lot of money to be made anymore by taking pictures.

Update, Jan 12th, 2012

Hundreds of comments later^[3], I'm revisiting this post and the issue it discusses. For the record, I understand the position of professional photographers, as explained in This photograph is not free post. I should mention that my younger brother is a pro photographer, shooting fashion here in Paris, for large publications and famous brands such as Hermès and Levi's. I don't want all pro photographers to die from starvation. I completely agree that someone can refuse to see his work reused for free. I do it myself (this post for example is not under a free license).

But the world is changing, with 141 million cameras sold in 2010 (not counting gazillions of smartphones) and the ability for people to publish on the Internet and potentially reach millions of people with a touch of a button.

It's a tough world for pro photographers, but it's a great progress to see millions of people being able to do art. Thanks to the comoditization of photography (and tools that enable creativity, from music instruments to computers), we're likely to see more and better talent emerge. The downside is that average photographer will be less likely to live from their craft. I can live with that. The other option is to prevent distribution of cameras and shut down the Internet in order to come back to the "good old days" of publication scarcity. Not what I want, really.

I'm very excited to announce that the next Mozilla Camp Europe will take place in Berlin (Germany) on November 12th and 13th, 2011! I'm also very happy to announce that Mozilla Camp concept extends to Asia: it will take place the following week end, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on November 19th-20th, 2011. For those who aren't familiar with the event, Mozilla Camp (aka MozCamp) is a large 2-day regional Mozilla summit that brings together Mozilla staff and active contributors from a region for (an intense!) weekend of presentations, discussions, brainstorms, workshops, hackathons around specific areas of the Mozilla project, all with a special focus on a region. The event is, of course, also the opportunity for Mozillians to meet IRL, put a face on a lot of quirky IRC nicknames, and spent some quality time together!

So mark your calendars and stay tuned! William and I will be giving regular updates and more information on the event, its schedule and the sponsorship policy for participants. Feel free to get in touch with William or myself if you have questions and/or suggestions to make these Mozcamps a huge success!

I'm looking forward meeting you in person in Berlin!

Part of the Berlin Wall, Potsdamer Platz

Mozilla is changing, as everybody has noticed. It's not change for the sake of change, but the whole environment is changing. Here are a list of things that have changed over the past few years, from the top of my head, in no particular order:

• Competition in the browser space is now really strong, with 3 browsers with more than 20% market share.
• Microsoft releases a browser every year now (sounds crazy when you think about it!). Every version is getting better at supporting Web standards (Yay!)
• Google marketing budgets for Chrome are much larger than Mozilla's annual revenue.
• Open Web technologies are moving forward faster than ever, under the "HTML5" name (which includes all the related technologies, from the DOM to the numerous new APIs and CSS evolutions).
• JavaScript is now really fast.
• Mobile is everywhere. It's actually the new frontier. This year, the PC market will be smaller than mobile (in terms of units sold).
• Tablets are taking off as a market.
• In the mobile space, not all platforms enable the user to choose what Web browser to use. This trend may also be coming to the PC world with Chrome OS, which only runs Chrome.
• The notion of App Stores has been widely accepted by the public. The upcoming version of OS X, Lion, will be sold via the Mac App Store, without physical media.
• The general public is now becoming aware of online privacy issues, but it's still something that needs to be addressed.
• "Cloud Computing" is so common that it's now a household word.
• Social Networks are so important now that many pundits say that Google may fail for not being social enough (then Google Plus changed it all).
• Hardware is changing too. Not just the form factor (from PC to tablets and smartphones), but the processors themselves, with ARM becoming a very strong contender and multiple cores becoming the norm.

I'm sure I'm forgetting many things when describing the changes happening around Mozilla (please leave a comment below if you think I forgot something significant). Anyway, we're far from the days when IE had a monopoly, while the Web technologies where stagnating, everybody on the Web was developing for IE6 and the PC was the center of the IT world.

Basically, everything around us (Mozilla) is changing: the landscape is changing. The battlefield is growing. We need to change, to adapt.

The good news is that we've started changing already in a significant way, for example with the Rapid Release Process. The not-so-good news is that change is uncomfortable, for two reasons:

1. it takes some time to get adjusted to the new situation, for some people more than others.
2. we're going to make mistakes along the way (I know for a fact we've made a couple already).

We're going to fix these mistakes as much as we can, just like we're going to get used to do things in a different way. We'll have hard decisions to make. We'll have to revisit some of these decisions if they're really bad. It's not going to be all easy and fun, but the history of Mozilla has not been a walk in the park either.^[1]

So change is taking place because it has to: in such a changing environment, we need to demonstrate leadership, take initiatives, or we'll become obsolete.

Although there are things that will not change. At least two things come to my mind:

1. Why we^[2] pursue the Mozilla mission as described in the The Mozilla Manifesto.
2. How we do it: within a community, in an Open way, around Open standards, using Open source and Free software.

Some details^[3] on the how part will change, or have already changed. The Rapid Release Process comes to mind, but while it's a significant change, it does not touch our principles. It certainly impacts our community, both for Add-ons developers and Enterprise users, and we're working on addressing these issues. As Mozilla evolves, we'll keep on making mistakes, because we're going to places we've never been before. It's OK: we need to learn how to take risks, make mistakes and learn from them. We also need to learn to over-communicate, as communication becomes even more important as we change. It's already happening in the add-ons world^[4] and we've just announced the Mozilla Enterprise User Working Group.

So change is happening because it has to and it's uncomfortable for many of us. Maybe too uncomfortable for a few of us. We'll see a handful of people leaving the Mozilla project. It has happened before, and it was unpleasant^[5]. I just don't think we should stop evolving because we're scared that people may leave.

Now as long as the course of the project is in line with our goals and values - like it is right now - you can expect me to be here, committed and working hard. I'm sure I can count on you for this too.