Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

I agree with almost everything. The article is very clear and enlightening and it seems Mozilla foundation is the right idea. It should be noticed its willingness to cooperate with other similar open-standards-foundations.

I must disagree with the last. The world is full of good, smart people. Do not stop to imagine new and better organizations, for your own one could become even better, or become many. Somebody, anywhere could come up with a project just as good as this, never underestimate the power of human kind.

Finally, I humbly think the very last statement can be at least arguably. It might be the right choice to be fully committed to Firefox now, but what next? This is indeed a very long subject and I should write a lot about it, but I think it would be misleading for the article. Let's just say some other applications could be put into Mozilla's "commitment pool" and be just as successful as Firefox.

And yes, I partly refer to Thunderbird, but who knows... What might come next...

uh.. who still believes that Mozilla is non-profit ?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060308-6344.html

mors, Mozilla is a non-profit. The Mozilla Foundation is a Section 501(c)(3) public-benefit organization. The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned, and taxable subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation.

The only difference between having or not having a wholly owned taxable subsidiary is that revenues generated by the subsidiary are taxed rather than tax exempt. All revenues that are generated are invested back in the Mozilla project.

There isn't an IPO in Mozilla's future and people working for Mozilla will definitely not be getting rich as long as they're employed by Mozilla. (Though many others are seeing considerable wealth opportunities building on the work that Mozilla does.)

You either don't know what non-profit means (and it most certainly does not mean "does not generate revenue") or you're being deliberately misleading. Additionally, why would you care how US tax law treats this organization as long as our "shareholders" are the public rather than a select group of millionaires.

Regardless of semantics around U.S. tax code, Mozilla resources (all assets of the Foundation and Corporation) are employed to advance our public benefit mission: to promote choice and innovation on the Internet. That is very explicitly not the mission of any traditional for-profit public corporations I know of.

- A

@mors: The folks at GuideStar (which tracks nonprofits) do, as does the US federal government, which approves nonprofit status for organizations. http://www.guidestar.org

Mozilla Corporation has a single shareholder, which is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Mozilla Foundation.

"The Internet, this extraordinary system of interoperating and open standards, is not yet safe. Today it us under a renewed assault from shiny new proprietary systems like Silverlight and Air, and Mozilla must use whatever leverage it has to continue to defend open standards and interoperability so that no one is locked out of participation or locked in to the single-vendor solutions that are corroding the foundations of this amazing global shared resource."

Whoa, Asa, that sounds a little strong to me -- very militaristic. Is there any one thing in particular that you're worried about?

jd/adobe

John, one thing? It's certainly more than one thing. I've tried to distill it down for this post to something like "I'm worried about the health and well-being of the Internet."

I don't think of myself as the militaristic type, but I am passionate and I believe that the things that make the Internet so amazing, its distributed and participatory nature and the interoperable server and client implementations based on free and open standards that made that possible, are being threatened.

I believe that without Mozilla playing a very active role, those basic "features" of the Internet would have already been pushed aside for a shiny MicrosoftNet.

And I believe that we still have more to do to ensure that the Web platform is not replaced by the Microsoft platform or the Adobe platform or the Sun platform -- or any other system which is not based on free and open standards and propelled forward by a myriad of competing implementations.

- A

Thanks, Asa. I'm still unclear on the "replace" assumption though... goes counter to what I've seen myself, at Adobe at least...?

jd/adobe

Pray that the internet never stops being under assault. Many wild-eyed entrepreneurs are attracted to the lucrative nature of the internet. They are and always have been the key drivers of innovation.

Also, don't be fooled that for profits are the only entities that can stifle innovation. Any entity can cause stagnation when it has too much control. Its the freedom to choose that must be maintained.

I also think its easy to forget that the internet is for everyone, not just techno-weenies like us. Those shiny new proprietary plugins as you reference them allow developers to create beautiful interactive experiences. I don't see any open source alternatives at this point (You could make an argument for Laszlo, but most apps created with it are propped up on the Flash platform anyways). You may not value rich experiences over the standard html/javascript experience, but many others do. I'm not trying to trash the notion of open standards, quite the opposite. I'm just trying to make the point that proprietary technologies do fill a crucial role.

Chris, I'd argue that it's our job (and that of the other browser vendors) to make a competitive platform on the Web so that free and open technologies can fill that crucial role. There's no reason that browsers cannot, using free and open standards, offer a compelling and even shiny platform for developers.

- A

Why should the internet have to be synonymous only with browsing documents? Why should a browser have to be the only "right" way to do the internet?

We need to remain open to innovation, not closed to it.

This all sounds very closed rather than open to me.

Asa, I think you see Air as a threat to the web browser. Air will just be another platform, and you will still need to use Firefox to browse to the website that hosts the Air app you are interested in. Sure, the Air runtime is proprietary, but it's all based on open technologies (Action Script, HTML, JavaScript, XML, etc.). Firefox itself could be considered proprietary, but like Air, one uses the "proprietary" Firefox to consume open standards (HTML, XML, CSS, etc.)

I realize that Firefox is open source, and that anybody can contribute. But when it comes down to it, the final feature set that gets shipped as Firefox 2.x is decided by you and your counter parts at Mozilla. Unlike the web standards, Firefox features don't get voted in by Microsoft, Opera, and Apple.

I would like to put it like this: at 80s states haven't realized both the importance of software and need of regulation of this industry. Eventually, proprietary standards resulted in monopoly (interesting enough, this didn't happen with hardware industry, though it was possible).

At some point market made reaction to bring back balance and that was open-source. So, Bill's claims that open-source is something anti-capitalistic are actually quite wrong, Microsoft is anti-capitalistic, while open-source is just a form to restore competition.

So I would like to say that probably it wouldn't be wrong for profit company to make Firefox, but if that was possible it would happen.

enefekt said: "Why should the internet have to be synonymous only with browsing documents?"

Um, it shouldn't. It isn't. Have you been offline for the last few years?

"We need to remain open to innovation, not closed to it."

Not just open to it, we need to build it. We need to build it on the same free and open foundations that yesterday's internet was built on.

"This all sounds very closed rather than open to me."

Then you're not paying very close attention. The whole point here is to move the internet forward with the tried and true free and open process, tools, and infrastructure that's allowed it to become the amazing resource it already is. The point is to not let it become the common thinking that the web is done and so now we have to go back to the old days of single-vendor solutions built on closed and proprietary stacks.

- A

Jake, you said: "Asa, I think you see Air as a threat to the web browser."

Not quite. I don't see these shiny new proprietary stacks as a threat to the web browser. I see them as a threat to the web. There's a big difference.

The web is what it is today because it was built on a free and open infrastructure and anyone could participate, without concerns around expensive and necessary proprietary tools and other pitfalls of single-vendor solutions.

"But when it comes down to it, the final feature set that gets shipped as Firefox 2.x is decided by you and your counter parts at Mozilla. Unlike the web standards, Firefox features don't get voted in by Microsoft, Opera, and Apple."

Um, wrong. You're clearly not paying attention to what's going on with Firefox. 90% or more of the code and the work going into Firefox is exactly about implementing legacy and forward-looking web standards that are most definitely designed by groups that include the major browser vendors. Are you saying that major vendors didn't have any input in HTML 4, JavaScript, CSS, SVG, HTML 5, etc.? Or were you just being deliberately obtuse.

- A

asa said: "Um, it shouldn't. It isn't. Have you been offline for the last few years?"

Last time I checked Firefox was still a web "browser", and still had mandatory UI and chrome catered to browsing. Implying a browser, let alone Firefox, is the only path to more choice, and for the Web as a platform is wrong.

asa said: "The whole point here is to move the internet forward with the tried and true free and open process, tools, and infrastructure"

So what is wrong with Sun, or Adobe's efforts with this? They are doing just this, especially Adobe. Heck, just look at the Tamarin donation by Adobe as an example.

Asa, you said "90% or more of the code and the work going into Firefox is exactly about implementing legacy and forward-looking web standards".

I realize that. What I am saying is that Firefox and Air are basically the same thing. They are both tools that the end user can use to access web based content.
Both Firefox and Air support these open standards that are decided by the W3C.

The main difference between Air and Firefox is that Air allows developers to create web apps that can run offline, and can access the user's system for data storage and other such functions. But these web apps are created with the same standards based code that I use today when I build web sites that run in Firefox. Air is basically a shell wrapped around the WebKit rendering engine, that has hooks into the operating system.

So that is what I meant by Firefox being just as proprietary as Air. Sure, Firefox runs standards based code, but so does Air. I'm not sure I see your beef with Air. If you don't like Air, than you shouldn't like Safari, Opera, or any other software that allows the user to run web based apps.

"The main difference between Air and Firefox is that Air allows developers to create web apps that can run offline, and can access the user's system for data storage and other such functions."

Horseshit. Offline support is actually an area where Firefox 3 and Air are going to be close in terms of developer features, along with all of the real open Web standards that Gecko and Webkit are or will collaboratively and competitively implement.

"Air is basically a shell wrapped around the WebKit rendering engine, that has hooks into the operating system."

I get the feeling that you're just playing dumb here. You're deliberately avoiding and obscuring the real issue with Air which is that it's not just Webkit, it's Flex and Flash.

Until Flash is a free and open standard with a spec that allows for competing implementations, your argument that Firefox is just as proprietary as Air is complete and total horseshit.

"What I am saying is that Firefox and Air are basically the same thing."

I'm curious, Jake. Are you simply uninformed or is this some dishonest, partisan attempt to confuse and mislead?

- A

Asa said "I'm curious. Are you simply uninformed or is this some dishonest, partisan attempt to confuse and mislead?"

I guess I am simply uninformed, if what you are saying is true. I am NOT trying to confuse and mislead. In fact, if you look at my blog post about Air (formerly Apollo), you'll find that I am NOT an Air fan (no pun intended):
http://techfeed.net/blog/index.cfm/2006/12/19/Is-Apollo-Really-Important

"You're deliberately avoiding and obscuring the real issue with Air which is that it's not just Webkit, it's Flex and Flash."

Ok, now I see why you have a beef with Air. If I understand your point, it's that Adobe is trying to use Air as another launch pad for Flex and Flash. I suppose that may be true, but that doesn't mean that developers HAVE to use Flex/Flash for Air apps, unless I am totally misunderstanding things. If I want, I can go get the Apatana plugin for Eclipse, create Air apps using open standards, and not have Flash anywhere in my app. But I am going to have to research Air some more, because if you are right about the Air/Flash tie, I am clearly misinformed here.

OK, Jake. I see.

You just don't see that Adobe and Microsoft are battling here and while the winner is unsure, if either of them come out with significant penetration, the web is the loser because the battle they're fighting is whether it will be Silverlight or Flash that will be _the_ web platform of the future.

I believe that Mozilla must be in this fight and do all it can to ensure that the real web platform, HTML4+5, CSS, and JS, is not only viable and exciting to developers, but that it gains enough mindshare and marketshare that neither Silverlight or Flash can take over.

- A

"if either of them come out with significant penetration"

I've got news for you, Flash is already installed on almost 99% of most desktop computers, if you go back to version 6. But I don't really think that means that they have taken over the web. Most web developers I talk to (outside of the Adobe fanatic crowd) don't like Flash. Flash has a lot of problems. It doesn't integrate well with the mouse scroll wheel, Firefox plugins don't work with it, it can take over the web browser, the developer has too much control over what the end user can do with the flash app, etc.

Personally I don't like Flash, and I will never make Flash my development platform of choice (unless some serious changes are made). If you ask most of my ColdFusion friends, they'll disagree with me, as they have fully drank the Adobe marketing spin. But personally I hope Flex/Flash NEVER takes over the web.

What would it take for Flash/Silverlight to take over? Most web developers would have to jump on board. I could be wrong, but I don't think that's going to happen. Most web developers might use the shiny new toys for certain applications (like video), but I don't think they will completely throw HTML/JS/CSS out the window.

Right now Flash is a pain because, among other things, it lives inside the plugin box and cannot interact with the containing content well. If those pages become Flex+Flash pages, or Silverlight pages, that problem goes away mostly and the platform becomes much more appealing to web developers.

Flash today is not a huge problem because most sites do not simply go full-page Flash with their sites, but many do. Imagine the current problems with full-page Flash if it or something like it came to dominate the Web.

You may not think it has a chance to take over, but Microsoft and Adobe are betting on it and battling each other for it. This worries me and that's why I mentioned it in this blog post which was otherwise about something quite different.

- A

"You may not think it has a chance to take over, but Microsoft and Adobe are betting on it and battling each other for it. "

If you're averring "Adobe wants to own the Web", then some citations or other evidence would help establish a case. The evidence I see does not point in such a strange direction.

(Just in case it's not clear, you're sounding really, really freaky to me here, Asa. I can't change that, but starting with a sound, supported argument might help you find your way.)

jd/adobe

Asa,

As you know, Tim Berners-Lee's original concept of the Internet is an awesome thing, however I think that MS and Adobe are only trying to fill in the gaps that DHTML and/or AJAX has been trying to fill--browser refresh--or statelessness.

I, for one, don't like the stateless nature of standard HTML web applications. And as a result we have the other bummer--web page re-loading for every server interaction.

I work with multiple types of media (multi-media), and unless you can come up with a customizable video player, scalable vector graphics, and a stateful web browser, that's free and Open Source, and only a small download, then the gap will be filled by proprietary software.

(Another topic) If all of the web browser's would only support all of the "open standards" then it wouldn't be such a pain to build a consistent interface across all platforms. And I'm sorry, most applications don't have a command line interface--thankfully for me anyway.

Sounds like Firefox 3 will be awesome.

Shep

All i can say is, thank God for Mozilla! Keep up the good work guys.