Mozilla in Chinese

As soon as the term started in September, we (Mozilla Online) immediately went about looking for campus ambassadors who share the passion for open internet, innovative technology, and Firefox, and who can help spread Firefox on the campus. We have so far named four ambassadors for the following universities: Nankai University in Tianjin, BUAA (or Behang), Tsinghua University, and Peking University. As the first public event, last Saturday we sponsored the annual student festival at Tsinghua’s Institute of Software. Tomorrow (12/7) evening at 7:30pm Jia Mi will speak on Firefox technologies and Firefox 3.0 at BUAA. For a glimpse of the ambassadors, refer to http://mozillaonline.com/marketing/amba-show.html. Those interested in becoming an ambassador for Firefox can check out http://mozillaonline.com/marketing/ambassador.html for more program details. I should note that given that we are in China, these events (including various information such as announcements and reports) will be primarily in Chinese.

自从九月各高校开学以后，我们就一直在寻找合适的学生作火狐的校园大使。日前已正式任命四位，分别是 南开大学的杨波，北航的张照宇，清华大学的张佳，和北京大学的阮肖。他们的信息和活动内容参见http://mozillaonline.com/marketing/amba-show.html。上周六（12/1）晚上，通过张佳联系，谋智网络独家赞助了清华软件学院一年一度的学生节。明天（12/7）晚上七点半，张照宇在北航组织火狐技术论坛，由谋智网络的北航校友米嘉主讲，欢迎大家参加。（我到时也去“凑个份子”，聊聊职业规划之类同学们关心的事。）

我们计划在目前四所学校的基础上，逐渐发展更多的校园大使。有兴趣的同学可到http://mozillaonline.com/marketing/ambassador.html了解这项活动的详细内容。祝大家学习顺利，生活愉快。

I am sitting here talking to Bill Xu, founder of ZEUUX, a China-based open source, free software, organization, and quite inspired by his initiative to get Chinese banks to support non-IE, non-Microsoft users in their online banking systems.

The Mozilla Manifesto stated very eloquently that the internet is an increasingly important element in modern life and it is crucial to keep it open, innovative, and accessible. One way towards ensuring openness is to provide users with choice. It is the lack of choice that Bill has issues with some Chinese banks, notably China Merchant Bank (CMB). Like some other Chinese banks, CMB got sold a Microsoft-based online banking solution and is offering its services via only ActiveX, a component that is proprietary and available on Windows but not other systems. As a result, if you are a Linux or Apple user, or even if you use Firefox on Windows, you would not be able to complete login.

So Bill started a campaign earlier this year (see http://www.zeuux.com/) with an open letter to CMB. It has generated a lot of following, with tons of comments on the forum and around 200 similar open letters written by supporters. The US-based Free Software Foundation also issued a letter in support of this initiative (see http://www.fsf.org/news/open-letter-to-cmb).

So far CMB and other ActiveX-only banks are not responding publicly but according to some sources the campaign has instigated a lot of heated debate inside these banks. It is ironic that, although it is well publicized that the Chinese government has officially been backing open source and has spent a lot of fiscal money into efforts to promote Linux and other programs (see Red Flag, Red Office, etc.), right under its nose the banks are locked into proprietary systems such that these government-supported computer systems could not be used to access day-to-day banking services. A side note — it is said that some MII (Ministry of Information Industry) public service sites are locked into proprietary Microsoft features, thus precluding the very people who support MII’s own Linux initiative.

But not all banks are Microsoft-only banks. One shining example is Shanghai Puding Development Bank, whose Firefox friendly website has fans celebrating. See for example http://yx.takeback.net/175/pf-ebank-is-better.html, where the customer was also able to use this platform-neutral feature to complete transactions on the popular Taobao C2C site, which recently officially declared to support only IE, which drew a lot of protests.

Bill and his cohorts keep a close watch on the Chinese banks and maintain a list of “good banks” that support non-IE, non-Microsoft platforms (see http://www.zeuux.com/moin/CampaignBankStatus). Interestingly, most if not all western banks operating in China are on the good-bank list. And many of them are getting RMB licenses in the very near future.

The Mozilla Manifesto prescribes that the simplest way to support Mozilla and its principles is to use Firefox. An extension of this is to put your savings into only banks that support open platforms. Money talks, and the banks will listen.

Ever since Firefox released its simplified Chinese editions (zh-cn), its user based in China has been increasing steadily. There are also many websites devoted to Firefox. Many of these are genuine efforts at promoting Firefox, but some are poorly designed and constructed, and more worryingly some are misleading.

Mozilla Online in the past weeks have announced its online promotion program — the affiliates program. The full extent of the program can be found at http://www.mozillaonline.com/marketing/affiliate.html, where you can also see a list of websites that have joined as members.

Please help us spread the word and ask your friends (and everyone else) to have their websites join as official promotion members!

Last week I attended the International Conference on Open Source (ICOS) held in Taipei. The 3-day event was well attended by open source community activists (including geeks, techies, and school teachers, Chinese and westerners, among many others), government officials, and corporate sponsors. There were a lot of the usual “soul searching” on what an open source based company should be doing, how to counter Microsoft, etc. So by the time my speaking turn came on the second day, I gave a talk that focused on what Mozilla is and why it has been so successful. I include my slide deck here for those interested — Mozilla and Its Success Factors.

My main points for Mozilla’s success are as follows (not in any particular order):

• Mozilla is a successful product (something that a lot of users love);
• It is an open platform (that enables the building of numerous add-ons and standalone applications);
• It is a movement supported by an ever expanding community where members drive, contribute, and participate in all facets of the movement;
• Mozilla’s primary interest is for public benefits, not for commercial gains (as demonstrated by the Mozilla Manifesto);
• Mozilla is well run with maximum transparency and accountability.

It is hard to find any other entity that matches the above profile. In particular, I strongly believe that the last two points are benchmarks that truly distinguish Mozilla from other pretenders.

I wrote about a pending translation of Mitchell’s Mozilla Manifesto into traditional Chinese. Bob Chao, who is based in Taipei and previously translated the Principles section of the Manifesto, just posted the entire translation at http://blog.bobchao.net/2007/10/mozilla.html. Much appreciated!

After a quiet period around the national holiday golden week, I am here to announce another event at our offices. This coming Saturday, 10/27, at the usual time of 3pm, we will be hosting a webmaster forum; or in Chinese terminology, this is more like a forum for heads of websites. We would like to exchange experiences and discuss ideas around promoting Firefox on the web. Mozilla Online will also use this chance to unveil its “affiliates program”. There will be a number of webmasters attending, but the event is open to everyone and all are most welcome to drop by. Light refreshment will be provided.

There is a more detailed announcement, in Chinese, posted at http://groups.google.com/group/firefoxer-china/browse_thread/thread/d2e618369198469. See you Sat!

A couple of month back Rachel Zhang of Sun Microsystems in China volunteered an initial translation of Mitchell’s Mozilla Manifesto and posted it on my blog. After planning this for quite some time, this week Rachel and I finally sat down for a few hours and together we went again and again over the original text and revised the translation substantially. We still feel that the result could be further enhanced but decided to put this version 0.2 out for now. We invite comment and feedback and will work on it again at a later time. I have enclosed the (Simplified) Chinese version below; and for ease of reference and propogation, I also enclosed a PDF file here that includes both the original English text and our translation (Mozilla Manifesto Chinese Translation v0.2 (2007.10.17)) Finally, rumor has it that Bob Chao in Taipei is going to produce a Traditional Chinese version. I will link to it as soon as it is available.

Now the translated text.

Mozilla宣言

作者：Mitchell Baker

原作版本及日期：v.0.9, 2007.02.13

翻译：张羽， 宫力

翻译版本及日期：v.0.2, 2007.10.17

引言

互联网作为人们生活的一部分，其重要性日益增加。

Mozilla是一个全球化的社区。社区成员们坚信开放，创新，和机遇是互联网持续健康发展的关键因素。作为一个社区，我们从1998年开始为确保互联网的发展造福所有用户而共同努力。我们因创作Mozilla Firefox网络浏览器而广为人知。

Mozilla基于社区创建世界一流的开放源代码软件，并且开拓各种新式的合作活动。我们志同道合，致力于改善广大互联网用户的上网体验。

通过共同努力，我们总结出一系列准则并相信它们是保证公共利益和商业活动能够受益于互联网的决定性因素。我们在以下的Mozilla宣言里列出这些准则。

这些准则并非自行可以实现的。互联网的开放和参与需要大家的个人努力，团队协作，和发挥领导作用。Mozilla基金会承诺推行Mozilla宣言里制定的准则。我们邀请更多的同仁加入我们，共同奋斗使互联网变得更好。

准则

1. 互联网是现代生活不可分割的一部分，是教育，交流，合作，商业，娱乐，以及整体社会的关键组成部分。

2. 互联网是全球公共资源，必须保证开放性和可用性。

3. 互联网应该丰富人类生活。

4. 用户的网络安全是基本要求，不可忽视。

5. 互联网用户必须能够按照个人意愿决定如何使用互联网。

6. 作为公共资源的互联网其有效性取决于在网络协议，数据格式，以及内容上的互联互通，创新，和世界各地用户的自主参与。

7. 自由和开放源代码软件有助于互联网作为公共资源的持续发展。

8. 透明的社区流程有利于提升社区的可参与性，责任制，和诚信度。

9. 互联网发展过程中的商业化参与有众多优点。维持商业目标和公共利益之间的平衡至关重要。

10. 扩展互联网的公共利益层面是一个非常重要的目标，值得我们赋予时间、精力，和承诺。

推行Mozilla宣言

推行Mozilla宣言里的准则有多种途径。我们欢迎广泛的活动并期待参与者发挥像在Mozilla其他项目中那样的创造性。对于尚未深入参与Mozilla项目的个人，支持宣言的最简单而

有效的办法就是使用Mozilla Firefox以及其他体现Mozilla宣言准则的产品。

Mozilla基金会的承诺

Mozilla基金会承诺支持Mozilla宣言。具体地，我们将会：

* 建立和支持符合宣言准则的开放源码技术和社区；

* 开发符合宣言准则的优秀消费类产品；

* 利用Mozilla在知识产权（诸如版权和商标），组织机构，资金，和声誉等方面的资产使互联网保持为开放的平台；

* 提倡为公共利益创造经济价值的模式；并且

* 在公共言论中和互联网业界推广Mozilla宣言。

Mozilla基金会的部分活动，目前包括消费类产品的研发和推广，主要通过基金会全资子公司Mozilla公司进行。

邀请

Mozilla基金会邀请所有支持Mozilla宣言准则的同仁一起探索，将宣言里对互联网的构想变为现实。

On Saturday 09/15/2007, Mozilla Online sponsored and participated in Software Freedom Day in Beijing, which was part of a gloabl event held around the world. The Beijing event was held at the FIT building at Tsinghua University — FIT stands for Future Internet Technology, which houses the Institute of Information Sciences that consists of all the IT related departments and labs. (Reportedly, the futuristic name FIT was insisted upon by the main donor of the building, Li Ka-Shing.)

Mozilla Online had a booth, manned/womenned by Jack Guo, Jia Mi, Wendy Zhao, and Doris Wang, who sacrified another weekend. Jia Mi also gave a talk on Mozilla/Firefox Past and Future. The event was well attended, especially by students, and we already received resumes from some of them A few photos of the event are kept on http://picasaweb.google.com/lgatlarge.

We anticipate to continue sponsor, support, and participant in events that promote open web and open standards.

Today’s technical talk by David Baron (dbaron) was attended by close to 60 people, another full house at Mozilla Online. As usual, photos of this event are posted on http://picasaweb.google.com/lgatlarge.

The main part of the talk lasted just over an hour, with Q&A lasting another hour. One of the more intriging questions raised (by someone who once wrote a home-grown browser) is how IME events, especially those associated with inputing Chinese characters, are handled by Firefox.

The audience included participants from a few large companies (Google, Sun, Sohu) and a number of startups. A person living in Shanghai who could not attend in person asked one of his friends from Beijing to join the event. We also got a request from Hong Kong to provide an audio link so people could listen in. (We did not get the request in time to set things up this time, but will consider providing such an option in the future.) The session was videotaped by IT168.com and will be made available there. (I will provide a link here as soon as I get it.)

The fact that David got involved in Mozilla the year he entered Harvard reminded me of a true story. It was 1996/7 and I was at JavaSoft. One day a message came around from a youngster who wanted to become an intern. The only “problem” was that he was still in high school and Sun did not take interns that early. When Sun politely responded by saying that we would consider him once he started college, he replied that he could not wait that long — he wanted to be part of the Java moment then and there and felt that it would be too late if he waited.

Until next time …