
What I Love about Mozilla - mihneadb
http://www.mihneadb.net/post/what-i-love-about-mozilla/
======
gum_ina_package
With the amount of Mozilla intern related HN posts I'm seeing lately, I'm
really considering pursuing full time employment there after graduation.
Working for an organization that has a mission bigger than maximizing
profitability is really attractive.

~~~
cpeterso
An easy way to get started is "Bugs Ahoy", a Bugzilla search engine that lets
you search by programming language and feature area among bugs tagged as "good
first bug" with a Mozilla mentor's contact info:

[http://www.joshmatthews.net/bugsahoy/?unowned=1](http://www.joshmatthews.net/bugsahoy/?unowned=1)

~~~
GhostHardware
Thank you for this link. I wanted to help Mozilla for quite some time but
didn't know where to start, this should simplify things a lot.

~~~
Yoric
We're waiting for you :)

Ideally, the best place is irc.mozilla.org, channel #introduction.

~~~
saturdayplace
Again, thanks for this. I've intended to get involved but never got around to
figuring out how. Having this run across my screen motivated me to get a nick
registered, and say hello in the channel.

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quadrangle
Not a great article, but totally correct. Mozilla and Wikimedia are the two
most ethical big entities in the internet world.

~~~
noufalibrahim
There's also the Internet Archive which is much older than atleast Wikipedia
and is often, in my opinion, under appreciated.

~~~
quadrangle
Indeed, Archive.org is superb!

------
millstone
I wish the article did not so freely mix The Web and The Internet. Laymen may
not understand the difference, but surely Mozilla employees do.

~~~
mihneadb
Indeed, the intention was to make it easier to follow for everybody. Maybe I
made a mistake :). Also, I'm not a Mozilla employee. Thanks for the feedback!

------
treenyc
I found this to be inspirational!

I have being a Mac user since System 6 on a little Apple II. I started my
development career on 4D a mac only database back in 90's. And I have being a
Web/Database Developer ever since and I am really grateful for what apple has
provided me so far.

I always found Apple and Steve Job to be inspirational and have always
supported Mac even when no one around me used them, because I do find that
company to be true to their words

"Think Different"

That inspiration has now gone to Mozilla! Apple still makes great products,
but it has already lost it's soul and it hasn't found a new one yet! (Revisit,
Steve Job, Stanford Speech please!)

This is not apple's fault. This usually happen with company that had a super
charismatic and powerful leader and when that leader leaves or die that leaves
a big gap in the company.

“We need leaders who can lead in any situation,

    
    
           with or without positional authority,
    
               with or without formally allocated decision rights,
    
                 with or without designated followers,
    
                   with or without an approved set of traits
    
                   and characteristics,
    
                     and often in conditions in which there is no
                       agreement as to what the right answer is.”
    
                                                     (Granger, 2009)

Granger is a female captain in the us military that lead her group out danger
and was awarded many metals. Her words really resonated with me now more than
ever!

What we need now is for everyone in the company willing to take leadership.
Like this intern at Mozilla.

So thanks Mihnea.

~~~
mihneadb
Thanks for the kind words! I would say Mozilla is in good hands and it seems
to me that it's getting better and better.

------
nosymoz
I still find it odd that the "mission" collides with the origins of the name
"mozilla" standing for mosaic killer.

Mozilla public name was renamed to netscape and introduced support for the
dreaded frames it strated the trend of stupid user-agent sniffing which then
lead internet explorer to pretend to be mozilla and then came the browser
wars. Not exactly in tunes with the "mission".

~~~
panacea
Probably not a brilliant branding exercise to intimate you're a dinosaur out-
the-gate, either.

'We're the Rosetta Stone of cutting edge tech! Rawr! Rarw? Rarw.'

------
exo_duz
Wonder what Mozilla's stance is about W3C approving DRM for HTMl5...

~~~
ubernostrum
I am not empowered to speak for Mozilla.

But personally, I'm kinda sick of people referring to the EME draft as "DRM
for HTML5", since... well, that isn't what it is. Five minutes with the EME
draft would clear up that misconception.

~~~
chris_wot
_Edit:_ I just realised that I'm replying to someone other than the author.

Hi, I'm the guy who logged the bug that used the words "HTML5 DRM". [1] That
was, of course, a bit of a simplification. However, for a number of reasons,
EME is bad for the following reasons:

1\. A key distribution mechanism for _only_ playback and for one element
indicates that this is the first stage in wanting to apply this sort of
rubbish to the rest of the standard

2\. EME requires a CDM. While there is a well defined interface to the CDM,
the CDM itself is a binary blob that won't be documented, might use OS
specific features (e.g. The DRM system of the OS), and will need to be built
for each individual browser and potentially operating system.

3\. The EME draft is specific to encrypted playback. This is to allow
Hollywood and others the ability to produce walled content. It's somewhat
obtuse to say that EME will be used for anything _other_ than implementing a
DRM system. So far, the only CDM implemented is Google's Widevine DRM for
Chrome only. I believe that Microsoft have something waiting in the wings,
along with Netflix.

For that matter - let's look at the case where a specific DRM system is not
used, and an encrypted key is sent to the CDM, which just decrypts the
content. How is that _not_ a form of DRM?

The post gives the following as to why Mozilla is great:

 _1\. The Web should be open: The Internet is a public source of information
that must be open to and accessible to anybody around the world._

 _2\. The Web should be interoperable: People should not be locked in to an
ecosystem and they should be able to use the technology they prefer to access
the Internet._

 _3\. The Web should be ours: People should have the ability to shape the
Internet experience and be able to contribute with content without requiring
permission from a central entity._

How is enabling Encrypted Media Extensions for the sole purpose of _only_
preventing the playback of video and audio of the web enabling _any_ of those
important pillars of Mozilla's raisin d'être?

1\. See previous HN submission here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6493510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6493510)

~~~
makomk
Last I heard, Google's Widevine EME wasn't just restricted to Chrome, it was
restricted to ChromeOS running on official Chromebooks that are in locked-down
mode so that the user can't run any of their own code. It's not just DRM, it's
really _restrictive_ DRM compared to what it's replacing.

------
untog
It's in London, so I know it will only be of interest to a minority of HN
users, but the Mozilla Festival takes place at the end of this month:

[http://mozillafestival.org/](http://mozillafestival.org/)

It promises to be a fantastic conference. They have a couple of interesting
talk tracks like "Look Who's Watching" on surveillance on the internet, as
well as more traditional tech topics.

Even better, tickets are only £40 (£3 for under 18s) and it takes place over a
weekend. So it should be accessible to nearly everyone.

------
alan_cx
"The Web should be ours: People should have the ability to shape the Internet
experience and be able to contribute with content without requiring permission
from a central entity."

Honest question: Why?

No other network is supposed to be "ours". Roads, telephones, mobile networks
and so on. Why is the internet supposed to be different and special?

I mean, yes, as a Utopian ideal, but realistically, I dont see how long term
that flies. I cant help thinking that up till now we have been lucky and
spoiled, but in the end, everything gets controlled and regulated.

~~~
perlgeek
Because it works _really well_ in the long term if it's ours. It means that
innovation can come from many more people than if it were a regulated network.
And that's not just a possibility, that has actually happened lots of times.

A possible contribution is "write a search engine", and see where Google is
today.

~~~
001sky
_It means that innovation can come from many more people_

Like democracy, the purpose is not "efficiency" but epistimology. By opening
up, we have the potential to get betting understanding of the world and tools
to explore it. Granted, that brings risks (of abuse). But there are more
abuses that those who seek to contol it will ultimately commit if for no other
reason than the temptation (NSA, classic example).

------
adrusi
this is honestly not a "crystallization" of ideas about why the author likes
mozilla, it's just restating mozilla's core goals that cab be found on its
homepage

~~~
mihneadb
I'm just starting out on this road, so this is what I see right now. I'm sure
my thoughts will become more nuanced and elaborated in time. Thanks for the
feedback!

------
chestnut-tree
I really like Mozilla too. A key differentiator from other online companies is
that they aren't trying to track your every online move and you feel you can
trust them on important issues like privacy (unlike some companies who I won't
mention).

------
oakaz
1) The web should be open should not mean that you can not create an app that
is able to stream videos with different kinds.

2) It creates too main-stream web browsers. A non-profit organization should
be encouraging browsing new experiments.

