Agenda
- What is Mozilla
- What is not Mozilla
- Gendarmerie Nationale: a Mozilla reference
- How to contribute to the Mozilla project.
What is Mozilla?
- Mozilla Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization created in July 2003
- The mission is to promote choice and innovation on the Net by creating standards-based, open source products and technologies
- Stewards of the Mozilla Project, we provide the infrastructure to manage the project
- Mozilla Corporation, a fully-owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, manages business relationships with partners and offers products:
- Firefox, a Web browser;
- Thunderbird, an e-mail client;
- International Affiliates: Europe, Japan, China.
Mozilla by the Numbers
- Employees - 40 at the Foundation;
- Full-time contributors - 100, including engineers from Sun, IBM, Redhat, Novell, Google, others
- Code contributors - 800 in total
- Localizers - products available in 35+ languages
- Testers - 10,000 pre-alpha testers file 70 to 100 "bugs" a day, more than 100,000 beta testers
- Advocates - over 100,000 advocates of our products through Spreadfirefox.com project
- Extension Developers - over 1.000 extensions for Firefox
Great reliance on each of these "communities" to make the project successful
The Mozilla Recipe
- Open source development model
- Great products that matter
- Web browsers and email clients matter
- Cross platform, multiple language support, extensible, easy to use and migrate to
- Involves many communities including design and marketing
- Products are complete
- Includes cd, guidebook, support documentation, marketing support, and t-shirts
- Relentless focus on the end user
- And lots of luck, right product, right time
Mozilla Firefox web browser
- 161.934.015 downloads in 17 months
- Key Features:
- Streamlined user interface and functions
- Tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking
- Live bookmarks, RSS feeds
- Integrated search
- Auto-update, Standards support, Clear private data... (1.5)
- Web developers are excited
Marketshare on January 8th, 2006
Source : XitiMonitor.com. Figures from Sunday 20060108.
More than 20 million Firefox 1.5 users (downloads+updates)
Probably around 50 million Firefox users worldwide.
What is NOT Mozilla
A traditional software vendor
- ... with large pre-sales teams;
- ... with technical support;
- ... with long-supported versions.
- ... which keeps control over the source code.
It's actually a virtual place where enterprise and individuals contribute together to provide Internet technologies and products...
Mozilla References in France
Mozilla has no knowledge about most large customers, who have downloaded the products and deployed them without telling us.
A few of them
- Gendarmerie Nationale
- Ministry of Culture (done)
- Ministry of Equipment (deployment pending)
- A major public Health-related large account
- ...many others I can't mention.
If you have deployed our products, please let us know and talk about it publicly: it's a very cost-effective way to contribute to the Mozilla project!
What if...
... you are not happy with the features you miss in our products?
- Write an extension to Thunderbird or Firefox. It's easy (XML+JS).
- Ask someone to write the extension.
- Ask some company to contribute to the source code. Mozilla is not some magical vendor that produces free (as in beer) software.
There is an entire ecosystem being built to address various needs.
Mozilla Corporation is not going to cover it all.
Mozilla and Gendarmerie Nationale (1/2)
- Gendarmerie Nationale: half of French Police forces, with Military status
- 70.000 IT users
- Already had migrated to OpenOffice.org
- Limited budget
- Fed up with too expensive license costs.
- Strong commitment to Open Standards
- Need for secure solutions.
Need for technology independance
Mozilla and Gendarmerie Nationale (2/2)
Reasons for choosing Firefox and Thunderbird:
- Available on most platforms (Win 98 to XP, Linux, OS X)
- Web standards support (e.g. Web applications not tied to a specific browser vendor)
- Need to open up to other homeland security partners
- New browser versions not tied to a platform upgrade
- More secure, more reactive in case of security alerts.
- May consider shifting to Linux Desktop over time.
Firefox roadmap: Firefox 2, codename Bon Echo
- Scheduled for Q3 2006
- Based on Gecko 1.8, like Firefox 1.5
- Many User-Interface improvements:
- Undo closing tab
- Close tab button on each tab
- Tab session restore
- Automated spell checking
- Better handling of Search engines (add/remove)
- Improved extension management (black listing dangerous extensions)
- See http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox2/Features
Firefox roadmap: Firefox 3
- May be released on first half of 2007 (all dates are subject to change)
- Based off a new version of Gecko (1.9)
- Will run on top of XULRunner
Participating in the Mozilla Project (1/2)
As an individual:
- Marketing community: Spread the word, http://spreadfirefox.com
- Testing community: download builds, provide feedback, and file bugs
- Web development: code to standards, push the limits
- Localization: localize and translate the browser
- Extension development: easy way to start developing
- Application and platform development
A truly rewarding project
Participating in the Mozilla Project (2/2)
As a large organization:
- Talk publicly about your deployment
- Promote Firefox on your Website
- Testing community: download builds, provide feedback, and file bugs
- Web development: code to standards, push the limits
- Hire Community members
Help us promote choice and innovation on the Internet!