Mozilla in Asia

I’m catching up on some older info so there’s some articles from last week here but all relevant to Asia.

• Firefox 3.0.0.x Intel Mac build
• Firefox lzyc build: Firefox G4/G5/Intel optimized build for Mac OSX.
• フォクすけはクリエイティブコモンズが適用されたぬいぐるみ Foxkeh is a Creative Commons licensed plush toy
• AOL Launches Taiwan Portal: AOL? In Asia? That’s very 90’s.
• Rumor: Former Kingsoft CEO Joins Browser Company: English / Chinese
• Asia’s Fight for Web Rights: excellent Rebecca Mackinnon essay in the Far Eastern Economic Review.
• Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang says company is ‘committed to freedom of expression’
• Yahoo’s Yang: No easy answers in China Net-censorship debate

John Markoff of the New York Times has a good piece on ‘hybrid’ organizations of which Mozilla is a good example.

They’re often referred to as “social enterprises” because they pursue social missions instead of profits. But unlike most nonprofit groups, these organizations generate a sustainable source of revenue and do not rely on philanthropy. Earnings are retained and reinvested rather than being distributed to shareholders.

The new companies, like thousands of Silicon Valley start-ups before them, typically begin as small groups of intensely motivated people dedicated to the goal of building a product or service.

The best-known examples are efforts like the Mozilla Corporation, which maintains and develops the Firefox Web browser, and TechSoup, an organization that was started two decades ago to connect technology experts with nonprofit groups. It now distributes commercial software to nonprofit groups in 14 countries. (Mozilla’s mission is to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet, which it considers a social good.)

When Tech Innovation Has a Social Mission

Just a quick note to those of you who are in or near Boston.

Mozilla is sponsoring the first (?) conference on Internet memes: ROFLCon.

Mozilla Partners Up With ROFLCon

A number of friends of mine, including Anil Dash, Matthew Haughey, David Weinberger, and Joshua Schachter will be speaking so I highly recommend you go. I’m sorry to miss this one.

Chris Beard, VP of Mozilla Labs, will be in Tokyo this week for two speaking engagements.

On Feb. 28th, Chris will be keynoting at ZDNet Japan’s “builder techday: open apis and beyond.” David Recordon and Tatsuhiko Miyagawa from Six Apart will be speaking about open ID and the social graph (Brad Fitzpatrick, Read/Write Web, Google code repository.) Chris will be speaking about the “open web” from Mozilla’s perspective and will probably touch upon many of the subjects Recordon will speak about but also aspects of information that we keep in the browser and how we might share that as well. I’m afraid registration for this event is already closed.

On Feb. 29th, Chris will be keynoting at the Open Source Conference (Tokyo) - Spring 2008.  Registration (jp) will be closing soon so please sign up asap if you plan to attend.

Chris Beard will provide an overview of recent activities at Mozilla including information on exciting new Mozilla Labs development projects currently in the works. He will talk about his vision for the future of the Web and the role of open source in improving our online lives.

This is the first time for any presentation on Mozilla Labs projects in Japan and we’re very excited to have Chris in Tokyo.  Hope to see you at either of these events.

Although not Asian, Chris Ilias saw a nice overview of Mozilla’s efforts by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, featuring Mozilla’s Toronto office as well as the Seneca College students who are working on Mozilla.

Japanese Internet media coverage of the Firefox 3 Beta 2 release.

パフォーマンスを大幅に改善「Firefox 3 Beta 2」リリース

Firefox 3のβ2リリース

Firefox 3β2、予定より早くリリース

Firefox 3.0のβ第2版が公開 - β1以降の改良箇所は900以上

Firefox 3 最新β版登場、新機能追加とパフォーマンス改善

Beta 1から約900箇所の改良が施された「Firefox」v3.0 Beta 2 日本語版が公開

Firefox 3 次期βでパフォーマンス改善、ファイナルは2008 Q2が妥当か

Mozilla，次期ブラウザ「Firefox 3」のベータ2版を公開，安定性が向上

Firefox 3 Beta 2レビュー：これは便利！な「スマートブックマーク」

(This last review covered Smart Bookmarks.)

Emumozilla-san (of the Mozilla community in Japan) blogged the release.

Firefox 3 Beta 2 がリリース

Ken over at What Japan Thinks reports on a survey of 330 Japanese people (220 of whom are working in the public sector in Japan) on the topic of Linux and open source software (OSS.)

Compared to last year, the Mac usage has doubled since 2006 and the Linux usage has tripled, but the small sample size makes the data quite untrustworthy. The vast majority of Japanese public sector surveyed this year still use Windows on the desktop as well as on the server.

Japan’s public sector still not moving to Linux, OSS - 世論 What Japan Thinks

This is in stark comparison to the Netherlands, who recently announced that the Dutch Government will preferentially use open source software and any one in the government who requires the usage of closed-source software will need to explain the necessity.   It’s fascinating and encouraging to see Europe embrace OSS even at the highest levels of government.

For those of you who use Flickr.com, the popular photo sharing service, the new uploading application, Flickr Uploadr 3.0, is based on Mozilla’s XULrunner platform and is now open source software, as well as being cross-platform, and available in 8 languages (sadly not Japanese, but in Korean and traditional Chinese.)

Chang-Won Kim calls for an Asia-wide Internet conference in 2008:
An open letter to Asia’s web industry people - What do you think about AsiaWeb 2008?

But I don’t think I’ve seen many “pan-Asian” web conferences so far. So I think we could imagine a conference where things like these are happening…

- Keynote speeches being made by well-known tech entrepreneurs in China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hongkong, Taiwan, etc. as well as a host of internationally renowned speakers.

- An international launchpad where new ventures in Asia can showcase their newest products (Think TechCrunch 40 or the Demo). English translation will be provided - we all know English-speaking skills and product-development skills are two different sets of skills. VCs are more than welcome to join.

- Panel discussion between professionals from different countries where different web cultures and business environments can be compared, perhaps in search of some universal success strategies across the Asian web industry.

I think language is one hurdle but I think English will end up being the defacto language of such an event.  More importantly is location, sponsorship and organization.  That will be the challenge.  Japan only had a “Web 2.0″ event in 2007 (many years after the first “Web 2.0″ event in the US) and the Japan event was very different than any of the US ones.

I would be happy to see such an event happen and would do what I could to make it happen, but I think finding an appropriate site, an organizer and anchor sponsors is critical (and a full-time job for a team of people.)  Even if discussions started today, 2008 may be too early for such an event (if the goal is to make a very large event.)  I look forward to such an event but I don’t see any of the current incumbents (event organization incumbents) stepping forward for such an event.

Matt Asay of Alfresco blogs at CNet about a very interesting paper - Putting a Value on Openness: The Effect of Product Source Code Releases on the Market Value of Firms - by Oliver Alexy of Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) Business School.  Alexy’s paper evaluates how Wall Street has reacted to firms who have announced open sourcing of their software and how that has affected the company’s value over the past 8 years.  Alexy also looks at whether the street values open source more as a cost-cutting tool than as a competitive advantage and decides that it is the former than the latter.  Tim Lee adds his take at Techdirt.