June 2007 Archives

JT and I have just wrapped up 8 days of community development in Brazil.

We started our community outreach in Rio de Janeiro with a visit to the Center for Technology and Society at the FGV School of Law where we met an amazing team of lawyers and learned a ridiculous amount about how people use the internet in Brazil. See JT's post here.

Next in Rio, we met with a large gathering of grad students at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. A number of students and professors are very interested in making Firefox and Mozilla projects part of their coursework. That night, we met with about 20 students who wanted to talk in more depth about how to spread Firefox in Brazil. They came up with some great ideas and made commitments to help in the lead-up to Firefox 3. On Saturday and Sunday, we met with an employee from a major media outlet in Brazil and participated in an interview with a local Rio newspaper/website. Once again, JT had the earlier and better post on this.

After Rio, we traveled to Sao Carlos, Marcio Galli's home and the home of Federal University of Sao Carlos and the University of Sao Paulo in Sao Carlos. Once again, the students and professors were amazing. The enthusiasm for Firefox and open source at schools here in Brazil gives me a lot of hope. JT has the photos

Next, we made our way to Sao Paulo and Campinas, where we met with the top web companies in Brazil, students at Unicamp and University of Sao Paulo main campus, some huge Firefox fans, and members of our Firefox translation team. This was a full but amazing two days. See JT's wrap-up for the details and pics.

I'll have a lot more to say about this trip in the coming weeks. I'll close here by thanking all of the wonderful "friends of Firefox" who helped make this trip possible and who came out to teach us about Brazil, learn more about Firefox, and spread the Mozilla vision.

We're headed to Brazil and Argentina. If you're in Brazil or Argentina and you're not too far from one of the events, I'd really enjoy meeting with you to discuss ways that we can further empower our communities in your area. If you're not already on one of the RSVP lists, please email me and let me know. While it's pretty tight, we've still got a bit of room in the schedule to add another event or meeting, so if you have ideas, please email me.

Here's a quick summary of the planned events:

Rio de Janeiro Arriving the morning of Thursday, June 21.

Events for Thursday, June 21
Asa and JT meeting with Ronaldo Lemos and team at the Center for Technology & Society at the FGV Law School.

Events for Friday June 22
12:15 to 15:00 - Presentations and discussions at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Room G-122.
17:00 - Mozilla community gathering at Devassa.

São Carlos Arriving the evening of Monday, June 25

Events for Monday, June 25
20:00 - small Mozilla contributors dinner.

Events for Tuesday, June 26
Mozilla Community Development Day at the University of São Paulo campus in São Carlos, Campus I at USP, ICMC department.
13:30 - stand by - intros, preparation etc
14:00 - Presentations
15:00 - Birds of a feather discussion groups.
~17:00 Snacks and casual/social gathering

São Paulo city Arriving the morning of Wednesday, June 27.

Events for Wednesday, June 27
09:00 to 14:00 - Meeting with UOL.com.br / UOLINC
15:15 to 16:15 at University of São Paulo main campus
17:00 to 20:00 - Mozilla community gathering at Golden Tulip Paulista Plaza, Alameda Santos 85 - Jardins.

Events for Thursday, June 28
AM - Asa and JT meeting with Buscape.com.br
15:00 to 18:00 - hours tentative - Mozilla Community Development event at Unicamp University of Campinas - Federal.

Buenos Aires Arriving the evening of Sunday, July 1

Events for Monday, July 2
AM - tentative Community Development event at UAI.
18:00 to 22:00 - Mozilla Community Development event at Universidad Argentina de la Empresa.

Events for Tuesday, July 3
AM - tentative Press interviews and business meetings (may switch with UAI Community Development event.)

Thanks to every one that's put in so much time and effort to make this happen. A special thanks to Marcio, Deanna, and the amazing group of organizers in Argentina. See you all shortly.

There are lots of bogus security metrics out there, not the least of which is the often quoted number of vendor disclosed patched vulnerabilities. I've complained about this being used as a primary metric in the past and suggested that a more important metric was the time it takes a vendor to fix the problem.

Window adds another piece to that by talking about the time it takes to actually deploy the fix to users. This is an area where Firefox does a pretty amazing job, and as you can see from Window's post, we're getting better with each release.

Quickly fixing bugs and getting fixes in the hands of as many users as possible is a major cornerstone of our approach to security. No software of any complexity is bug free and with so much money to be made and havoc to be created, the bad guys are going to find and exploit software flaws. Our ability to update the overwhelming majority of Firefox users in just a few days is pretty amazing and means that our users are going to be some of the most secure on the Web.

John Slater, our creative and brand guy, has posted the first round of Gran Paradiso paraphernalia.

We've also got posters and stickers and I'm hoping to bring some with me on my South America community engagement trip. (I'll be posting an updated itinerary shortly.)

Digg it.

For anyone that's followed Apple even casually over the last couple of decades, there's just no doubt that they've got their own perspective on and beliefs about how the world should be.

Mozilla's John Lilly watched Steve Jobs deliver the Apple WWDC keynote and he offers some, I think, really spot on insight into Apple's worldview.

In their Safari for Windows announcement, Steve Jobs and Apple marketing claim some serious performance advantages over IE and Firefox. My understanding is that they're using an outdated test suite that doesn't really measure real-world situations. These kinds of benchmarks are easy to cheat, too. A vendor could, for example, add code to a browser that reported to the test suite that the test was completed long before it actually was. A vendor could also implement a feature incompletely or fail to implement it at all, cutting way down on the time it takes a particular task or set of tasks to complete. One could certainly imagine a page rendering faster if images weren't loaded or divs weren't positioned correctly, or some other web feature were disabled, not implemented, or implemented incorrectly.

Now, I'm not saying that Apple has done any of this. What I'm saying is that these kinds of benchmarks can be misleading and can easily be manipulated.

So what's a user to do? My suggestion is try out the browser for a while and see how it fairs on the sites you regularly visit. If it's faster and functionally complete, great, but don't just take a vendor's word for it.

I use a lot of contemporary web applications from companies like Google, Yahoo, Zoho, and others and for me Firefox is considerably faster and more functional than Win Safari or IE 7. Michael Calore, at the Wired blog Compiler, seems to have compared the three browsers and his experience is also that Firefox is faster on Google services.

Have you done side by side comparisons? What's your experience with the mainstream browsers, Firefox, IE, and Safari?

A Mozilla project near and dear to my heart, Quality.Mozilla.Org (QMO) is looking for your input on the colors and branding for this new community hub. If you've been, are, or want to be a part of Mozilla's quality assurance and testing community, head over to the alpha QMO site and vote for your favorite.

I think my favorite is the green and orange, but I'm not really sure why.

Alaska was, as with previous trips, absolutely beautiful. I'll post some photos soon (and by soon, I mean some time in the next couple of years :-)

Today Apple Inc. announced that they're going to offer their Safari web browser for Windows. This is exciting news and I'm thrilled to see that the world of web browsers, stagnant for so many years, is really moving again. I think that Mozilla and Firefox can take a lot credit for this revitalization and having one more "modern" browser on Windows -- where the overwhelming majority of users are accessing the internet, is good for everyone.

This will certainly solidify Safari's spot as the third most used browser, behind IE and Firefox and well ahead of Opera, but it's going to be a while before we see how much they can actually penetrate the Windows desktop. A lot will depend, I think, on how Apple choses to distribute it. Jobs' answer to that question was to reference the success of iTunes on Windows.

iTunes on Windows is a bit of a different creature, though, with a wildly successful hardware product, the iPod, pulling it onto Windows. Their other Windows offering, QuickTime, has two main channels onto the Windows desktop, the pull from the proliferation of QT files on the web, and the push from bundling it with iTunes for Windows.

There's no hardware pull, like the iPod, that I can see for Safari on Windows, and given the open formats of the web, there's not an obvious content pull like there is for QT. I'm guessing that they'll pursue a similar bundling strategy to QT and they're likely to get a decent installed base pretty quickly using that push. Speculation on how many of those users actually switch from IE to Safari, though, is much more difficult.

How successful they are at growing market share will be the main factor in how much they help web developers and the health of the open web. Anything that moves more users out of the IE experience and into a standards-based browser will make the lives of web developers better. Another successful implementation of agreed-upon web standards will definitely promote a healthier web. A healthy web and happy web developers is certainly a good thing.

There are still a lot of questions about how this unfolds, but there's one definite winner here: people who use the web. Choice and innovation are the real backbone of the internet and the more they are fostered, the better for everyone.

I'm gonna be away from the computer (and the blog) for the next week or so. Deanna and I are headed to Alaska for a short vacation. See you all in a bit.

Sam has blogged about a noble cause. If you're a Firefox fan and you'd like to get more seriously involved with the project, this is a great place to start. This is the kind of activity that I started out with back in 1998 and it's how I met all of the developers and testers on the project. This is also how other valuable contributors (including the Firefox co-creator, Blake Ross) first got involved with the project.

I mentioned a few days ago that JT and I were coming to Brazil and Argentina. The tentative schedule I posted was still in early development. While we haven't filled everything in, we have purchased tickets and arranged lodging so these items are finalized. I'll be posting more about specific events and locations as we get closer. If you're a part of our community, and you live in or near these locations, we'd love to have you join us.

Depart: San Francisco Wednesday, 20 June
Arrive: Rio de Janeiro Thursday, 21 June

Stay in Rio de Janeiro: Thursday morning [9:00am], 21 June - Monday morning [9:00am], 25 June

Depart: Rio de Janeiro Monday, 25 June
Arrive: São Paulo city Monday, 25 June Drive to São Carlos

Stay in São Carlos: Monday evening [6:00pm], 25 June - early Wednesday morning [5:00am], 27 June

Drive back to São Paolo city

Stay in São Paulo city: Wednesday morning [9:00am], 27 June - early Friday morning [6:00am], 29 June

Depart São Paulo Friday, 29 June
Arrive Iguazu Falls, (Cataratas do Iguaçu) Friday, 29 June

Stay in Iguazu Falls: Friday, June 29 - Sunday afternoon, July 1 -- VACATION

Depart Iguazu Falls, (Cataratas do Iguaçu) Sunday, 1 July
Arrive Buenos Aires Sunday, 1 July

Stay in Buenos Aires: Sunday evening [10:00pm], July 1 - Tuesday afternoon [4:00pm], July 3

Depart Buenos Aires Tuesday, July 3
Arrive San Francisco Wednesday, July 4

We are planning on meeting with community members, open source advocates and members of other open source projects, university students and teachers, government officials, and internet companies. It's going to be a great opportunity for all of us to get together and discuss the future of the Mozilla community, Firefox, and the Internet.

Stay tuned for further details, and if you're interested in helping to shape the agenda or set up meetings, interviews, presentations, etc. please email me! Thanks.