Mozilla grant to PCF

When Mozilla distributes grants to individuals and other organizations, we are looking at leveraged ways to support our community. If you’ve read this blog, the message may be getting a bit monotonous, but it has really been one of the core ways we are thinking about how to make our distributions. For every proposal we receive and then review, we try to ask how any level of support we give will amplify impact to the community.

Using this methodology, we have been able to provide resources to both individuals and projects whose efforts represent what we’re hoping to support. For example, we gave a grant to Creative Commons last quarter because CC is an organization that very much pursues the same ideas and principles set forth in Mozilla’s mission and the Mozilla Manifesto. (Just to restate it, the Mozilla mission is to provide choice and innovation on the Internet.)

In our last board meeting, it was decided that Mozilla would give a $100,000 grant to the Participatory Culture Foundation, the makers of the Democracy Player. PCF, like CC, aligns well with Mozilla and its manifesto. Additionally, PCF has projects that are built partly on Mozilla’s technology.

More on Democracy Player…it is soon to be named Miro and it is a cool desktop application that’s sort of a mashup of a video player, an RSS reader, an FTP & torrent client, and a channel guide — the experience is that video is regularly delivered to your desktop. They also make a server and have built a ton of great docs to help you get started as a video publisher on the web. Please check it out.

Some might wonder how we came upon this opportunity. Mozilla decided to give support to PCF after the Moz board was approached by them and was asked for some level of meaningful support. John Lilly sits on the board of PCF, so he was able to represent the request, but willingly removed himself from the voting process. The Mozilla Board agreed to support them for the following reasons:

1. Their mission to ensure the continued rise of open source & open standards aligns with the Mozilla mission to encourage choice & innovation on the web.
2. They’re building something that can have influence on the way users browse web content, rich media, and desktop UI — and it’s based on Mozilla technology.
3. PCF is another example of that leverage we are looking for…they don’t have any venture backing, they’re running on a very lean budget, and they continue to seek creative resources to make a big difference in the way their users access content on the Web.

Mozilla is excited to support ideas like this. We are looking for those volunteer contributors and interesting experiments that align with our mission and manifesto. If you have any suggestions, please contact us. You can start by emailing me and we’ll find out the next best steps together.