Mozilla is Linux
September 17th, 2008
I think there’s been great progress on the Firefox first run experience. One thing that disturbed me about the initial response was the us vs. them mentality present in the feedback. It’s as though Linux users feel that Mozilla is a giant evil entity of some kind. The fact of the matter is that Mozilla is a tiny company that operates almost completely in the open, which means we make mistakes in public, and lots of us use Linux! We might have to run it on a macbook, because we need to fix bugs on three platforms minimum, but we do it. We’re also really small. Smaller than Opera, let alone Microsoft, Apple, and Google. We do employ a few lawyers. They believe in free software too.
Linux folks, please remember, we are you. As both users and developers. Here’s some Mozilla involvement you might not know about:
- Mozilla SpiderMonkey is used by many JavaScript embeddings, and distributed as a separate package on Debian.
- Mozilla developers actively contribute to Cairo, and Firefox 3 ships Cairo on all supported platforms. This was not practical or performant when Mozilla developers began contributing to Cairo.
- Mozilla developers have contibuted to libbpng, libjpeg, littlecms, pango, pixman, and other graphics libraries.
- Mozilla developers have actively contributed to valgrind, and built some amazing software on top of it.
- Mozilla developers now maintain both GNOME and Qt UI code, and contribute patches upstream.
- Mozilla helps to fund the SQLite Consortium.
- Many Linux projects use bugzilla.
- In 2007 alone, the Mozilla Foundation gave grants to the Perl Foundation, Creative Commons, the GNOME foundation, and the FSF, among others. It awarded contracts for work concerning OpenSSL, Accerciser, Orca, GNOME accessibility, and lots more open source accessibility work.
- Mozilla code and tests are used by WebKit and Chrome, so if you use one of those, Mozilla has helped make it real. It’s not Internet Explorer, and that’s what’s most important.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
* Mozilla’s work to promote the Web as an application platform (with Firefox and now with Prism) results in a world where users are considerably less dependent on the client side desktop applications that were previously preventing them from switching operating systems.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Well said, Rob. I didn’t even know about half of these contributions.
We’re totally gonna make mistakes from time to time. We’re totally gonna try to fix them. I think it’s pretty great that attention was paid due to the well-intentioned (if not always well-expressed) points raised by Ubuntu users and developers, and as a result the EULA experience will be improved. It’s something I’ve wanted to see for a while, but just never got through the prioritization exercises.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
The new proposals are looking pretty good. Unfortunately, until you fix your other problem[1], I can’t fully trust you.
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622
September 17th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Well, Kelly, Debian’s logo is “non-free” by their own definition. I don’t think it’s fair to fault Mozilla for having an open bug on an unsolved problem.
http://wiki.debian.org/ProposedTrademarkPolicy
Personally, I don’t think it is such a stretch to see the logo as a mark of authorship, similar to a name. Accordingly, I wish it was explicitly mentioned under section 4 of the Open Source Definition: “The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.” Some might say trademark law provides all the protection required here. I don’t think that is obvious, and neither does Debian, clearly.
September 17th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
for as long as I’ve been a Linux user ive been a mozilla user. Don’t quite know why this article has come about, isn’t every linux user at least a firefox user?? It’s not as if installing Ie is a straightforward option on Linux… Every one worth their salt knows the current best browser. Suppose you must be talking about the lesser known mozilla goodness
September 17th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Thanks Mozilla. keep the good work.
September 17th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Probably an unpopular opinion but I can’t help thinking that the FOSS community expecting developers to give up trademarks, names, logos, EULAs, etc is going to keep the open source movement a niche and prevent most companies from ever participating.
September 17th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I think the core problem is that of perception.
There’s been discussion for some time that Mozilla Corporation seemingly wants to cease spending money and effort on supporting Linux builds[0] and one needs only spend a small amount of time on irc.m.o to get a sense of the attitude toward Linux and Linux-using folks[1, one of which is yours].
People aren’t stupid.
Saying “Hey, we threw some money at open source projects that we use, or some code-that-we-would-have-had-to-have-written-anyway” doesn’t really address (and certainly doesn’t change) that perception.
Even regarding the Issue Du Jour, having widely publicized quotations such as “So we’ll have a license agreement but we won’t think of it as a EULA” *read* to people who care about OSS and who are well attuned at sifting through corporate-speak from years of listening to MS flail about with the antitrust trial and Linux as “We’re just changing what we call it, so you people will be quiet.”
To be clear, I’m not speaking for myself here; these aren’t my opinions as much as they’re a restatement of the sentiment I’ve heard over and over again, and which has grown in the last couple of years (which surprises me). In fact, that last quote was from a recent conversation with a leader of a prominent East Coast LUG.
[0] http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/browse_thread/thread/c0950d7a7b1c7a6e/2ce71304d847deeb?lnk=st&q=linux+distributions+group%3Amozilla.dev.*#2ce71304d847deeb
[1] http://quotes.burntelectrons.org/search?query=freedom+shaver
September 17th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
I am not sure what you mean. Mozilla donates to lots of projects it doesn’t benefit from except in the most community-oriented sense. Perl6 and coreboot are not going to alter the course of the project. We also don’t “throw code” at projects, we collaborate. It’s not like these are giant tarballs thrown over the wall, they’re patches submitted the right way. In some cases, Mozilla developers have direct commit access. That’s how open source is supposed to work, and insulting people for that is ridiculous.
I also take issue with the notion that these aren’t your opinions. It definitely is your opinion, and I think your lack of disclosure is pretty irresponsible. The rest of it
[0] is pretty much a non-issue, since the Linux community has made it clear that distro-packaged builds are how they want to get releases and updates of Firefox. We continue to provide beta, nightly, and tinderbox builds for Linux.
As for my attitude towards Linux in [1], it’s funny because I really do run 64-bit Ubuntu on my desktop. In fact, I’m typing in it right now. Have a sense of humor.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I do have a sense of humor about it.
Heck, for the longest time, I took a lot of flack as the lonely Gentoo user (and I took it in stride when Vlad stole my Gentoo LiveCD off my desk and put it in the microwave.
Believe what you want, Rob, but I really am merely repeating die-hard Linux users’ (including people that I think are just a bit too concerned about the “freedom” aspect over the “is it actually useful aspect”) commentary that I’ve heard on this (and other) issues.
I don’t agree with their analysis *precisely* because I know and worked with the people involved, and based on my experience, have a sense of what they’re intending and trying to work toward.
People making those statements don’t have that experience, and they can only go on behaviors they see and what gets published in the press and in forums.
My point was that it’s about _perception_… and I think those people don’t know about the things you listed, and it _is_ a shame. But unless those perceptions are addressed, specifically, directly, and honestly—and a laundry list of the things Mozilla does doesn’t do that—then they’re going to continue to color interactions with the Linux community, which is also a shame. It’s a nuanced thing that I think, we, as software developers, often don’t get quite right. I know I often don’t.
But then… nobody cares what I think, right? ;-)[0]
[0] Having a sense of humor, as you suggest.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Thanks for this.
You say you are part of us - if so how could you get it so spectacularly wrong? Anyone who knows the community would know this would have been unacceptable.
It’s great it’s getting fixed but I think you need to reflect a bit more.
Thanks for all you do.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:23 am
One huge part in this is that almost only those who feel that Mozilla “is bad” speak up. Why should all the others? Most people don’t spend time saying anything if they don’t have something to criticize. And even if they don’t perceive Mozilla as “evil” or whatever they probably only voice the things they are unhappy about. And you won’t ever hear from the happy user that is my mother who uses Linux and Firefox but simply doesn’t know about it.
For me it was actually Mozilla (as of M18 release time) that made me switch to Linux and I’m still grateful for that. And of all the browser makers out there Mozilla is the one with which I have the least issues. I think most of us even have some issues with our partners which doesn’t mean we don’t love them. *We do love you*.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:27 am
http://blogs.gnome.org/otte/2008/06/18/monetary-thinking/
It’s about _being_ Open Source, not just _making_ it.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I love ff and promote it every opportunity.
My default setting is Mozilla=Good.
But obviously someone on the team was pushing for this EULA, and was pressuring the various distros for months about it!
The really disturbing thing is no one took him to one side and had a quiet word, pointing out that this was not something Mozilla should be doing…
Thinking about this… what about the team behind this? There must have been meetings and memos etc…
… if it was as you say “Mozilla is Linux”, how come no one put their hand up and said “Eh guys this really sucks”?
September 18th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Oh, it wasn’t at all like that. The dialog that got turned on in Ubuntu is the exact same thing we have been shipping on Mac and Windows, and we were working to replace it. Its activation was untimely in that users got the old one. The good news about this little uproar is that the new content and presentation will be better going forward.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
The us vs them mentality comes from having private discussions with distributions without involving either the mozilla or distribution’s communities. Mark Shuttleworth used the example of talking to a hardware vendor about opening their drivers as a reason for confidentiality, but that’s an open company talking to a closed company, not two open companies talking to each other and involving their communities in the discussion.
September 19th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
[...] Mozilla is Linux: Mozilla is Linux [...]
September 20th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
The list of Mozilla’s open-source contributions is great; it would be nice to put a formal version of it on the mozilla.org website to help allay some of the ill feelings toward Mozilla.
September 21st, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I don’t believe it’s come to this, I’ve been using “Firefox” since phoenix 0.1 and there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that Mozilla would do the right thing.
Mozilla have (for many years) delivered a leading cross platform rendering engine and they’ve done so with a fraction of the resources of their competitors. I don’t think that the current level of openness on the web would have been realized but for Mozilla, nor that people doing important work should be taking time out, writing blog posts to appease “the community”. There was no doubt in my mind that this storm in a tea-cup would be handled appropiately.
So come on guys, some of us had full confidence this’d be worked out and appreciate everything you’ve achieved so far… but the web’s a moving target and there’s a load of work to be done for 3.1. So back on your heads, the world wide web is hanging on the results