
Mozilla Awards $585k to Nine Open Source Projects - kibwen
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/08/04/mozilla-awards-585000-to-nine-open-source-projects-in-q2-2016/
======
GFischer
The actual title is "Mozilla Awards $585,000 to Nine Open Source Projects in
Q2 2016", and text says "one additional award – to PyPy, the Python JIT
compiler, for $200,000".

The other projects awarded are:

Tor - [https://www.torproject.org/](https://www.torproject.org/) _Tor is a
system for using a distributed network to communicate anonymously and without
being tracked._

Tails - [https://tails.boum.org/](https://tails.boum.org/) ( _" secure-by-
default live operating system that aims at preserving the user’s privacy and
anonymity. "_)

Caddy - [https://caddyserver.com/](https://caddyserver.com/) _Caddy is an HTTP
/2 web server that uses HTTPS automatically and by default via Let’s Encrypt_

Mio - [https://github.com/carllerche/mio](https://github.com/carllerche/mio)
_Mio is an asynchronous I /O library written in Rust._

Dnssec - [https://www.getdnsapi.net/](https://www.getdnsapi.net/) _This
project is standardizing and implementing a new TLS extension for transport of
a serialized DNSSEC record set_

Godot Engine - [http://www.godotengine.org/](http://www.godotengine.org/)
_Godot is a high-performance multi-platform game engine which can deploy to
HTML5._

Pears - [http://pearsearch.org/](http://pearsearch.org/) _PeARS (Peer-to-peer
Agent for Reciprocated Search) is a lightweight, distributed web search engine
which runs in an individual’s browser and indexes the pages they visit in a
privacy-respecting way._

Nvda - [http://www.nvaccess.org/](http://www.nvaccess.org/) _NonVisual Desktop
Access (NVDA) is a free, open source screen reader for Microsoft Windows_

Edit: added project descriptions from

[https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-
awards-3850...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-
awards-385000-to-open-source-projects-as-part-of-moss-mission-partners-
program/)

Also, moderators changed the title to the one in the article (original
submission mentioned PyPy only).

~~~
smallbag
I hate how firefox force users to go to about:config to disable javascript,
and to disabble css is more work. The dumb message in about:config, pocket and
hello. I don't like any of this /end rant.

Each add-on increases the surface attack area. I only wish a better lynx

Edit:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=873709](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=873709)

~~~
icebraining
Firefox was never intended a better lynx; hating on Mozilla for that is a bit
ridiculous. Have you considered using surf or xombrero?

~~~
anonbanker
That's technically true, but before it was firefox (before it was Firebird,
even), It was intended very much as a stripped-down gecko frontend written in
XUL, much closer to Lynx than the firefox we all use today.

Servo is very similar in useability to lynx right now, if grandparent is
interested in trying it out.

~~~
icebraining
Stripped-down compared to the Mozilla Suite, which came with an email client
and HTML editor, but the browser itself was intended to match _and extend_ the
Mozilla featureset.

~~~
anonbanker
this is very much not true. Phoenix was not intended to extend the featureset.

~~~
icebraining
From the release notes of Phoenix 0.1:

 _> Not only does Phoenix aim to match the featureset of Mozilla --
subtracting features deemed geeky and better offered as add-ons -- but it
extends it. For example, it adds customizable toolbars and quicksearch in
bookmarks and history. It will soon offer an add-on manager, a better wallet,
and a new downloads sidebar pane._

[http://website-
archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_r...](http://website-
archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-
US/firefox/releases/0.1.html)

~~~
anonbanker
Yeah, it was really nice when it didn't have the add-on manager yet. just a
small, XUL-based browser. Made me switch from Galeon.

Still didn't ever complete the suite, though; Thunderbird tackled email,
Sunbird handled contacts. Good thing, too; Seamonkey was a pig on my pentium
133 w/32MB RAM. Played quake fine, but just couldn't handle Seamonkey. Phoenix
got me extra life out of my ancient hardware.

~~~
groovy2shoes
These days, Xombrero is getting me the same sort of extra life out of my
ancient (or otherwise under-powered, e.g. Raspberry Pi) hardware. It's a very
light frontend to GTKWebKit with a glorious vi-like UI.

Now I wonder if it would be worth making something similar in XUL...

------
mangeletti
Just some quick numbers:

$585,000 comes out to 0.1778116% (almost two tenths of one percent) of
Mozilla's 2015 revenue of $329,000,000.

As an avid Firefox user since 2007, upon learning a few years ago how much
revenue Mozilla takes in, I've always wondered where the hundreds of millions
of dollars are spent... I was talking with a colleague about Servo, and was
saying, "If they spent allocated 5% of that revenue on Servo, they could hire
70 developers year round at $235,000 each to work on Servo full time, year-
round."

~~~
nwah1
Servo is one of a hundred initiatives that they have. They have been
developing the Rust Language itself, and all the tooling around it. They are
trying to kill PDF plugins with PDF.js. They are trying to kill closed source
video codecs with Dalaa. They have been trying to improve online
collaboration, multimedia, 3D, and a zillion other things.

They also help with web standards, documentation, legal battles, and advocacy.

[http://www.mozillalabs.com/en-US/projects/](http://www.mozillalabs.com/en-
US/projects/)

~~~
_dark_matter_
We also have a web browser with a decent following. That takes a good chunk of
engineers to keep up and running.

~~~
ATsch
what's it called?

~~~
perfectfire
Netscape Navigator 2.01

~~~
phillc73
Forget it. Stick with Mosaic.

------
cookiecaper
>We made one additional award – to PyPy, the Python JIT compiler, for
$200,000.

This is great. I sincerely hope the PyPy developers see the light soon and
start focusing on Python 3.x support, and that this money can help get it
done. Haven't written a Python 2 app for something like 4 years? Python 3 is
mature now.

I also sincerely hope that this portends Firefox bundling a Python runtime
with the browser, providing a DOM API, and letting sites provide client-side
scripts in Python. JavaScript has been allowed to reign for much too long.

~~~
pcwalton
> I also sincerely hope that this portends Firefox bundling a Python runtime
> with the browser, providing a DOM API, and letting sites provide client-side
> scripts in Python. JavaScript has been allowed to reign for much too long.

Not going to happen. Web Assembly is the one "alternate runtime" (which isn't
really an alternate runtime) that is ever going to exist.

~~~
wyldfire
'twould be interesting if one could take a JIT'd or even partially JIT'd
python program as input and get WASM out. You could have it be like a http
server feature.

~~~
sanxiyn
Someone developed asm.js backend for PyPy, so it's definitely possible.

------
davidf18
I wish the money would go towards lobbying the government for more direct
support for open source projects in the $1 billion range. It still is a great
ROI for the feds and other governments.

Companies that use open source software as well as create it should lobby the
government for funding open source as well. This would include Google, IBM,
Redhat, Microsoft, Facebook....

~~~
jondubois
Agreed, and the money would be more fairly distributed.

Many of the open source projects mentioned already have a pretty strong vested
financial interest behind them. They are no longer true open source projects.

I think it's natural for popular open source projects to eventually turn into
businesses but I think there is a point where they really shouldn't be
considered 'open source' any more and Mozilla is definitely one of them.

~~~
windlep
If 'open source' isn't about having.... I dunno, all your source-code being
licensed under an OSS license... then what exactly is it?

I think the word you're having more of an issue with isn't 'open source', but
defining what exactly a 'project' is vs. a business. On that latter point, I
would agree with you that a project doesn't seem as much of a 'project' when
most of the core people are employed to work on it towards specific goals the
funders have designated.

~~~
Retra
That's how most projects work. This one just isn't a hobby.

------
noobermin
I'm all for them donating money for FOSS projects, but I had the impression
that Mozilla doesn't make the most amount of money, being a non-profit and
all. Can someone who knows more comment on this?

~~~
leejoramo
In the United States, a non-profit does not earn money for owners or
investors. NP's do make money via donations and services provided. While many
NP's make very little money or mostly distribute donated funds, other NP's can
make large amounts of money. Money retained in excess of expenses, must be
used to further a NP's mission.

A NP Hospital uses its excess funds to provide free services to those who
cannot afford healthcare and does community outreach and eduction.

Mozilla uses its money to supports other OSS projects, advocates for OSS.

(This is a very simple explanation with many details of how NP's operate
ignored, or the various legal types of NP's.)

~~~
Scarbutt
So is this just Mozilla being forced to make donations?

~~~
tn13
They could have hired more developers, returned the money to doners, increase
the salary of their employees and what not. The only thing they can not do is
give the money as dividend to the owners the way for-profit companies do all
the time.

~~~
igravious
I am sure if they had chosen the second option the heirs of Hacı İskender
would be very happy.

------
ComodoHacker
This is the first time I hear about PeARS project. (Quick search on HN shows
nothing relevant.) Its goals look great and ambitious. Wonder why it doesn't
get more publicity?

P.S. And they should consider changing the project name.

------
coppolaemilio
If you are into video games and you haven't tried Godot Engine yet, you should
totally do!

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I must second this. Godot is… well, it's hard to believe it's actually a free
and open-source project. It's a cross-platform 3D and 2D game engine with a
fully integrated development environment (including a friendly visual editor
for 3D and 2D scene graphs) and its own custom scripting language. Akin to
Unity 3D in the proprietary world.

I decided to try it out this week to make a (3D!) game, and I've been
consistently surprised by how pleasant an experience it has been. The
community's been helpful when I've had problems, too.

------
cpeterso
How does Mozilla use PyPy today? On web servers or the Firefox build tools?

~~~
mintplant
The Push Server [0] and ap-loadtester [1] both use PyPy. I believe it's in use
elsewhere as well but that's what I could dig up quickly.

[0] [https://github.com/mozilla-services/autopush](https://github.com/mozilla-
services/autopush)

[1] [https://github.com/mozilla-services/ap-
loadtester](https://github.com/mozilla-services/ap-loadtester)

~~~
cpeterso
Interesting. Thanks!

------
AdmiralAsshat
Huh. I've been donating to Mozilla via Amazon Smile, but it seems like they've
got cash to spare. Maybe I should switch to the EFF.

~~~
lucb1e
Cash to spare? That's like saying "oh this shop gives people discounts, I
guess they have cash to spare" and then shop elsewhere out of spite.

------
based2
alt [https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/eu-
fossa/og_page/imple...](https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/eu-
fossa/og_page/implementation)

------
kuldeeps48
Awesome.

------
knocte
Given their investment in Rust, I really don't get what's the point of this.

~~~
rch
Maybe PyPy.js could emit WebAssembly in the not-too-distant future?

~~~
kim0
Maybe you want to check out
[https://github.com/pybee/batavia](https://github.com/pybee/batavia)

~~~
rch
> Batavia is an implementation of the Python virtual machine, written in
> Javascript.

Interesting, but I'm not sure that's the ideal approach.

It looks like WebAssembly is going to be a much easier lift:

> Hopefully we can get initial support almost-for-free by just asking
> emscripten to spit out the new format.

[https://github.com/pypyjs/pypyjs/issues/145#issuecomment-113...](https://github.com/pypyjs/pypyjs/issues/145#issuecomment-113004068)

~~~
allendoerfer
[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-
death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-
javascript)

------
lowglow
If you're running an open source software project, we're doing awesome stuff
with makers/inventors/developers over on Baqqer[0]. We want to help grow and
foster more open creation and community building by building a healthy and
supportive ecosystem of people sharing, building, selling, and even
crowdfunding together.

[0] [https://baqqer.com/](https://baqqer.com/)

and we even dog food the product ourselves
[https://baqqer.com/projects/baqqer](https://baqqer.com/projects/baqqer)

~~~
a_shallow_age
Selling shovels?

~~~
lowglow
We're bringing capital, resources, and community to people building the
future. It actually started because I was trying to get people on-board when I
was building Playa ([http://getplaya.com](http://getplaya.com)) and found my
VC friends (even VC strangers [https://medium.com/@sinkorswim/launching-at-
launch-my-entire...](https://medium.com/@sinkorswim/launching-at-launch-my-
entirely-crazy-week-862d9cacdcd8)) didn't know what I was talking about, but
my technical friends did. So I thought it would be cool to build something
that might help people building other cool stuff that might not have/desire
the need for traditional funding, and also provides all the tools
(newsletters, updates, engagement, shops, knowledge-share) needed to build a
real and viable community of supporters for whatever you're
sharing/building/selling/crowdfunding.

I see a lot of founders who don't include community through every step of
building product, so they have a hard time with distribution and finding
reception of their products at launch. We're getting people to understand that
without tons of unicorn money it's essential to build an organic following by
including their communities in the feedback loop early and often -- simply
building alone is itself not enough. :)

