Celebrity team lead by Sophia Bush is the winner of $25,000 prize for F Cancer

Mozilla is pleased to announce that the Mozilla Firefox Challenge, powered by CrowdRise, wrapped up last night and raised more than $680,000 by thousands of people around the world for social and humanitarian causes, turning individual action into global impact.

Mozilla builds products, like Firefox, that put users in control of their online experience and shape the future of the Web — not for profit, but for good.  As part of our commitment to make a difference in the world, we set out to get everyone in the spirit of doing good.

We brought together 12 cause-minded celebrities, and started each team with a $5,000 donation and  then invited the world to take part by donating to a celebrity’s cause or fundraising for their own cause.

The cause that raised the most money during the challenge would receive an additional $25,000 donation from Mozilla.

Sophia Bush, actress, director and spokesperson, will be claiming that prize for raising more than $110,000 for F Cancer. F Cancer has set out to educate everyone to recognize crucial early warning signs of cancer and inspire them turn around and spread the word to loved ones who may be at risk.

It was a close challenge and we would also like to  recognize the runners up who include Hilarity for Charity with the support of Seth Rogen, The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust with the support of Edward Norton and Nothing but Nets with the support of Jonah Hill.

Mozilla would like to extend our congratulations and sincere gratitude to all participating individuals and organizations that made the Mozilla Firefox Challenge a major success. Thank you all for helping us do a world of good.

We are excited to release the latest Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo. You can get Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta from the Android Market to test on your Google Android device or go here to get Firefox 4 Beta on your Nokia Maemo device. This release is the fastest performing Firefox 4 Beta for mobile yet. You will notice faster start-up, page load times and responsiveness to panning and zooming. The Firefox Mobile Add-ons Gallery also offers more than 100 add-ons to customize the features, functionality and look of your Web experience.

You can watch this video to see some of the popular Firefox 4 Beta for mobile features in action.

In response to valuable feedback from the previous beta, this release greatly enhances performance. Our recent tests on JavaScript benchmarks show Firefox 4 Beta is faster than the stock Android browser; roughly three times faster on Kraken, about twice as fast on SunSpider and slightly faster on V8. Everything from start-up time and page load time to responsiveness and panning and zooming are snappy in this release. Other advancements in this release include increasing stability, reducing installation memory usage, improving readability with zooming, and fixing some keyboard issues.

Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo delivers the Firefox experience, complete with performance, customization and security users expect, to mobile devices. Firefox 4 Beta for mobile is built on the same technology platform as Firefox 4 for the desktop, optimized for browsing on a mobile device. It includes features like Firefox Sync, Add-ons and the Awesome Screen, to give users a personalized and effortless mobile browsing experience. Firefox Sync is integrated into Firefox 4 Beta to synchronize history, bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form data across multiple computers and mobile devices, delivering one seamless Web experience with minimal typing.

The growing Mobile Add-ons Gallery offers more than 100 add-ons to customize the features, functionality and look of Firefox. Developers can now create mobile add-ons for Firefox that allow a user easily install and use that add-on without the need to restart their browser. With Firefox 4 Beta for mobile, developers can use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to build fast, powerful and beautiful mobile apps and add-ons that can reach millions of people. Firefox 4 Beta already has many useful mobile add-ons to choose from and we can’t wait to see what developers build next.

We were able to accomplish many great additions and improvements in this release thanks to the feedback from our beta testers. As we continue to work on adding features and enhancing performance, we need help from our beta testers to build the best Firefox.

• Give feedback – Tap on Give Feedback on the Firefox for mobile Start page
• Get Help – Ask a question and get answers with Firefox for mobile Support
• See the release notes for a full list of features, updates and improvements included in this release.

It has come to our attention that there are reports on the popular Thai forum Blognone, มีบริษัทไหน โดนคนจาก Mozilla โทรข้ามประเทศมาเช็คยอดคนใช้ Firefox บ้างไหมครับ, and from Mr. Paiboon’s blog เมื่อมีฝรั่งแปลกหน้าโทรเข้า ออฟฟิศของผม !!, of someone called ‘Edison’ calling Internet businesses in Thailand and using the Mozilla Foundation name. These callers are asking about how many computers in the company are using Mozilla Firefox and are connected to the Internet. Mozilla has no representatives named Edison and no representatives in Thailand doing any telephone-based market surveys. If you receive a phone call from a ‘representative of the Mozilla Foundation’ they are not a representative of Mozilla Corporation or the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla has done web-based surveys from the Mozilla website and other websites and does market research via email, but not via phone in Thailand. If you receive a phone call in Thailand from someone saying that they are from Mozilla, please do not provide any information and take their name and number and send it to press at mozilla dot com for confirmation.

Thank you very much for your support of Mozilla and Firefox in Thailand.

Last week, we took the International Mozilla Store offline as a precautionary measure after being notified of the GatewayCDI security breach that impacted the North American Mozilla Store. After verifying the security of the International Store, we brought it back online earlier today and it is now completely operational again.

During the downtime, the IT teams from both Mozilla and Merchandise Mania, the operating vendor for the International Mozilla Store, performed diagnostic tests and confirmed that the appropriate security procedures were in place. The International Store was not affected by the GatewayCDI breach and no personal information was exposed at any point.

We’d like to thank Merchandise Mania for their cooperation and prompt response to this matter, and want to assure customers that the International Store has our continued confidence.

Today, Mozilla discovered that GatewayCDI, the third party vendor entrusted to run the backend of the Mozilla Store, suffered a security breach. Once notified, we took the immediate preventative step of shutting down the Mozilla Store to ensure that no additional users could be compromised.

Mozilla immediately reached out to GatewayCDI and encouraged them to quickly inform individuals whose data had been compromised.  GatewayCDI is currently investigating their systems and determining the cause and extent of the breach.  Mozilla Store customers who are affected will be contacted directly by GatewayCDI.

Mozilla is committed to user privacy and the store will only be reinstated once we have a satisfactory assurance of ongoing login security and data privacy.

The International Mozilla Store, although run by a separate partner company, has also temporarily been shut down as a precautionary measure. The Mozilla Community Store is operated on a wholly separate system and was not impacted by the breach.

Wow! was the only word that can really sum up the Open Video Conference last weekend in New York City. It was an amazing confluence of people from the worlds of online video, art, free culture, open content and web technology. This is not a group that comes together often, but it turns out sparks fly when they do (in a good way).

Photo: Kid Kameleon, CC BY SA NC

…

Of course, the big take away is that open video is both important and fun. Dean, Elizabeth, Ben and all the volunteers did an AMAZING job organizing an event that showed this. They invited the right mix of people, programmed the right content and threw the right parties. The organizations that backed the event also showed tremendous leadership and prescience — Participatory Culture Foundation, Kaltura, the Yale Information and Society Project and iCommons. All of these people and orgs deserve a huge thank you (I hear clapping!).

Next steps: start doing the small and easy things (open video awareness and documentation), and figure out a way to pick up some of the hard stuff along the way (better codecs, easy tools, deeper connections to the people who make video). The good news is there are alot of people and orgs that want to make it happen, and they are gathering around this idea of an Open Video Alliance (the umbrella for the conference). Good things ahead.

PS. A full video archive of the conference sessions is coming soon. In the meantime, you can see one of the demos that Blizzard and Paul Rouget gave here and Blizzard and my slides here.

Read Mark’s full wrap-up of the Open Video Conference.

Editor’s note: This is a repost of the Mozilla Labs announcement of the Extend Firefox 3.5 contest now underway at ExtendFirefox.com.

The Extend Firefox contest is back challenging developers to make the next great web experience!

This global developer contest awards prizes for developing new Firefox Add-ons for the upcoming production release of Firefox 3.5. Last year’s contest received over 100 add-on submissions of some of the coolest and most innovative add-ons to-date and with Firefox 3.5 really raising the bar in terms of features, you can expect this year’s competition to be intense!

We’ve worked hard to line up great documentation and resources for contestants along with awesome prizes for the winners. Along with MacBook Pro laptops, the contest’s sponsors are providing professional development tools, software and books which are sure to complement any developers toolkit & library!

All entries will be judged by a panel of experts, with Grand Prize and Runner’s Up prize packages awarded for add-ons that take advantage of the new capabilities being introduced in Firefox 3.5 and that demonstrate excellence in user experience, innovativeness, and use of open standards. In addition, we’ve added two new categories this year for the best shopping add-on and the best gaming and entertainment add-on. Hot!

Special thanks to our sponsors, Manning Publications, InformIT, MacroMates, Sofa and ExpanDrive, for offering up some cool prizes and for helping to promote and get the word out to the wider development community!

Extend Firefox 3.5 is open now and runs through October 2nd, 2009.

Official contest rules and information are available at http://www.extendfirefox.com/.

Editor’s note: Lucas Adamski, director of security engineering for Mozilla, has posted a response to Secunia’s recently released 2008 security report (PDF link). We’ve reposted the full post from the Mozilla Security Blog here.

Beware the Security Metric

Security metrics are very difficult to do well, and easy to do poorly. For example, take a look at the recent Secunia “2008 Report” (http://secunia.com/gfx/Secunia2008Report.pdf). It tries to break down vulnerabilities reported by browser, and specifically states:

31 vulnerabilities were reported for Internet Explorer (IE 5.x, 6.x, and 7), including those
publicly disclosed prior to vendor patch as well as those included in Microsoft Security
Bulletins.

Safari and Opera each had 32 and 30 vulnerabilities, whereas 115 vulnerabilities were registered for Firefox in 2008.

From a quick read it appears as though Firefox had almost 4 times as many security issues as IE or Safari! Like, OMG! However, that conclusion would be painfully incorrect. Mozilla discloses and releases bulletins for all security issues fixed in Firefox, regardless of how they were discovered. Unlike other vendors that only disclose issues reported by external independent parties, but not by internal developers, QA or security contractors.

So presenting those numbers as comparable is worse than useless, it is in fact very misleading. It’s like comparing traffic accident rates for two cities of equal size, but one only reports accidents that make the news while the other reports all traffic accidents. Directly comparing such numbers is meaningless.

Some vendors make the point that the number of internally found issues is small and not meaningful. That would unfortunately imply their internal testing and security processes are incapable of finding security issues, and rely entirely on the generosity of random strangers (security researchers). I would find that pretty scary.

Fortunately, having worked in-house and consulted to a number of large software vendors, I can assure you that is not true. In fact they generally have very capable security teams and QA processes, which are so good at finding security issues that they usually find far more internally than they ever disclose to the public.

The Secunia report is deeply disappointing on a number of levels. Frankly, it’s disappointing that security researchers aren’t taking the “research” part of their jobs as seriously as they once did. It’s also disappointing that Secunia would publish something like this as one really expect better from them. This sort of reporting only encourages companies to hide as many security issues and fixes as possible, which moves the state of security backwards. And this is perhaps the most disappointing thing of all.

Lucas Adamski
Director of Security Engineering

Comment on this post at the Mozilla Security Blog

In response to questions that have been asked about Mozilla’s involvement with the recent European Commission (EC) conclusion regarding Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system, we’ve prepared this brief set of questions and answers.

What is Mozilla’s involvement in the EC’s complaint against Microsoft?
We are following it closely and are obviously interested in the outcome. Mozilla has received “interested third party” status in the EC’s investigation. As a result, we may see the Statement of Objections confidentially. We may participate in a hearing if the EC concurs. Mozilla’s role as an interested third party best enables us to contribute our knowledge of the browser industry to the EC. Mozilla is not a complainant; we have not “joined the suit”, despite some reports to the contrary.

Why is Mozilla getting involved?
The EC has taken a position that Microsoft’s actions harm competition among web browsers. The EC is currently developing a response based on this conclusion. A good remedy could be helpful; a bad remedy could create more damage. Mozilla has relevant and unique expertise in the web browser industry, both as to the nature of the damage and the complexities of possible remedies. We believe it’s worth offering that expertise to the EC. Ultimately, this case has huge potential impact on our mission of supporting an open and participatory web.

What does Mozilla want to have happen?
We want any remedy imposed to support an open and participatory web. By the same token, we seek to avoid any remedy that causes unintended damage.

There have been a number of opinions shared by individuals affiliated with Mozilla. What is Mozilla’s official stance on the EC complaint?
As with any dedicated and enthusiastic community, ours is one of diverse opinions. Our official stance: (1) we want to offer our knowledge to the EC as it considers its next steps; and (2) we intend to continue public discussions of this topic.

What remedies does Mozilla propose?
Mozilla has not proposed any remedies at this point. We have started a discussion to help figure out what the options are and how helpful they might be.

When will you have an opinion on remedies?
We’re synthesizing feedback from our community, our own previous experiences and from the EC. We don’t have a preset timetable.

What will the EC’s decision mean for Microsoft in other parts of the world?
Mozilla has no way of knowing this – we’ll learn what this means along with everyone else.

For additional information, please refer to the following blog posts by Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation chair:

• The European Commission and Microsoft
• EC and Microsoft: Discussion Themes
• EC: Foray into Remedies
• EC Theme: Building Firefox is the only appropriate activity for Mozilla