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Why Mozilla?

As somebody who is on record as believing that web browsers are a transitional technology, people occasionally ask me why I decided to go to work for a “browser company” like Mozilla. You can find a big part of the answer here:

As we move deeper into The Next Era of Computing there are still many questions about which technologies, organizations, and business models will define it. In every previous computing era and sub-era, a single proprietary “platform” emerged to dominate it. Will this happen again for the Ambient Computing era? A common platform is essential because it provides the foundation that everything else is built upon. This enables innovators to focus on creating their unique value rather than wasting most of their time recreating necessary infrastructure. It also enables, these technical innovations to be made ubiquitously available.

The current foundations of the emerging computing era are open web technologies. Can the standards-based open web maintain its role as the universal platform for this era? If so, it will need to continue to evolve and embrace innovation. Having just returned from a JavaScript standards meeting, I’m again reminded about how messy and slow consensus driven “standards” processes can be. Standards committees are not places where rapid innovation can or necessarily should occur. Proprietary platform vender have a real advantage in their ability to unilaterally make innovative choices about the evolution of their platform. However, those choices are always first and foremost driven by the business interest of the organizations and their shareholders.

If the standard’s based open web platform is going to continue to be the dominant platform for this era, its evolution needs to be driven by agile innovative organizations who are dedicated to its success. We need pragmatic organizations who are driven by the interests of computing users and not just their own dominance and profitability. Mozilla is such an organization. I think it has an essential role to play in advancing the next generation of computing technology and I’m really excited to be a part of it. so, I encourage everybody to find out more about Mozilla and how you can contribute.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • tjones March 26, 2011, 9:41 am

    Mozilla is too obsess L all this standards bs that it lost focus on what a browser should be. Devs can already do so much with a 2008 html5 draft that most devs don’t even use it to all its potentials. Sure people would love to be creative with what they can do in a browser and they can already, even with FF3.0 (just slower, but possible). And even IE9 (which certain moz employees hate with a passion), dev can do stunning html5 “effects” if they wanted too. So all this standards rhetorics is unnecessary.

    FF4 is a disappointment of a release. Its is one of the worse piece of software I have use to date. It is sluggish and inefficient piece of coding. The XUL layer slow the whole browser down that even with all the new jaggermonkey and gecko, it feels like the ubuntu os in a browser. Just frustratingly sluggish compare to chrome and ie9. Now is that the new “standard” Mozilla want its browser to be? Excuse the pun. With low quality browser?

    Let me assure you that IE won’t be Firefox main competitor. If the whole flat growth trend for Firefox and increasing growth of Chrome in 2010 doesn’t tell Mozilla anything, then you guys are out of touch with reality. Mozilla is too obsess with taking IE down that it forgot there are players in the field. Firefox is not competing with IE alone anymore, the sooner Mozilla realize that the less Firefox decline in the mainstream. My entire campus is poping up with Chrome from the faculties to that guy on the Mac.

    I will not use FF4 until it is much more improved. For everyday browsing, I’m using Ff3.6. For any html5 intense sites, IE9 is the best performer that work with most graphic drivers including mine that refuse yo work in Ff4. If that irony that Mozilla created doesn’t tell you guys something, then I’m not sure Firefox will grow any more than it is since Dec 2009. Hoping for for a better FF7 (abandoning your version # philosophy Moz?) by years end.

  • Ethan March 27, 2011, 12:07 pm

    Woah. Just a tad out of touch with reality, tjones? Or just bitter about something…

    Anyway, thanks for the awesome post. I hadn’t seen that video. Really great!