Mozilla Names New Chief, but Reaffirms Open-Source Commitment
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John Lilly, the chief operating officer of Mozilla, the developer of the open-source browser Firefox, will succeed Mitchell Baker as the firmâs chief executive.
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Window Snyder, formerly of Microsoft, now heads up security at Mozilla, the company best known for its open-source Firefox Web browser.
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Mozilla should soon be experimenting with some novel user-interface technologies for its browser and other products, according to a UI developer that&#160;joined Mozilla this week from startup company Humanized.Aza Raskin, who until Wednesday was president of Humanized, a five-person startup in Chicago, is now user experience lead for the Mozilla Labs team, he said Thursday. He will be working on technology to let people &quot;do anything you want to do, anywhere, anytime on your computer,&quot; he said.Mozilla announced Wednesday that it had hired three of the principals from Humanized, which is known for its innovative work with the Enso project to create more intuitive user interfaces. Mozilla did not identify the people it hired, and Raskin was hesitant at first to say which of his colleagues had joined him at Mozilla. Eventually he acknowledged that Humanized&#39;s Jono DiCarlo and Atul Varma also have joined the company known for its Firefox browser.Enso user-interface software was designed to make it easier to perform daily tasks that require the use of multiple applications or functions. The software runs in the background and allows users to type in simple commands to access applications, instead of leaving the window or application they are in to use another one.For example, if a user wants to open Firefox from the current screen, instead of having to find the Firefox icon or go to the Start menu in Windows, Firefox can be opened by pressing the Caps Lock key and typing &quot;open firefox.&quot; Performing calculations and acquiring word definitions can be executed in a similar way from whichever window the user is in at the time.&quot;Those ideas need to be explored at Mozilla,&quot; Raskin said, though &quot;it&#39;s unclear yet what form that will take.&quot;He and his Humanized colleagues were attracted to Mozilla because the company &quot;has a lot of vision&quot; to extend the Web beyond the browser, he said. The Firefox browser remains the company&#39;s primary product for now, however, although it also offers the Thunderbird open-source e-mail client.Raskin said that many advances on the Web, in terms of online services and mashups, have been designed with the developer in mind, and because of that they run the risk of making the browser a mere delivery vehicle for streaming applications -- much like what the desktop has become. He aims to use technology and ideas from the Enso project to add more human interaction not just to the browser, but to anything people do on the Web itself.&quot;I want the power of mashups not in the hands of the developer but in the hands of end-users -- in the hands of your grandmothers and your teen-aged son,&quot; he said. &quot;So you really can be writing an e-mail and say, &#39;Now I want a map in there.&#39; Things like that -- a place where you can actually start having a conversation with your computer.&quot;Raskin said that most people, whether they know it or not, are captive to their computer -- they do their work on it or use it only in the way the computer allows, and have very little control over that interaction. The idea behind Humanized, and now the work Raskin and his colleagues will do at Mozilla, is to change that for everyone, not just people who know their way around a computer.Mozilla did not actually acquire Humanized, and Raskin said its Web site will be up for some time, but the company is effectively now part of Mozilla. He and his colleagues are working out which pieces of the Enso project will be relevant to their work at Mozilla, he said. Raskin posted on his blog about his new position.Of the remaining Humanized employees -- systems architect Scott Robbin and Treasurer Andrew Wilson -- only Robbin&#39;s next move is clear for now. Raskin said Robbin is running the company&#39;s music-search-engine project, Songza.&#160;
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Mozilla has tapped John Lilly to become its new chief executive officer. Lilly, who served as the CEO of software-maker Reactivity prior to becoming Mozilla's vice president of business development in 2005, will be responsible for leading the Firefox developer's ambitious plans to dramatically extend the reach of its Web-based applications into the mobile and services arenas.
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Mozilla has hired former Microsoft executive Window Snyder to take charge of its security strategy.
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Mozilla COO John Lily is taking over for Mitchell Baker, who is stepping down.
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Firefox, the Mozilla-based open-source browser has grown by more than a third over the past month, according to WebSideStory, an independent Web metrics firm.
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For those who have been technology enthusiasts for years, there is a familiar war brewing in the technology industry. Mozilla, an open-source community of developers and testers that was started by Netscape
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(InfoWorld) - With the release of its latest Firefox 2.0.0.5 browser, open-source software maker Mozilla claims to have fixed a number of potentially serious vulnerabilities in its flagship product. According to the firm's chief security officer, the company is working harder than ever to keep its users protected. Through the launch of Firefox 2.0.0.5 late on July 17, Mozilla moved to patch nine individual flaws resident in previous iterations of the program. Patches built into 2.0.0.5 included those meant to address multiple memory corruption bugs, a cross-site scripting vulnerability, and a flaw that could give attackers access to the browser's cache. Among the other problems the company addressed in the update was even an unusual vulnerability that could cause malicious code to run on a PC if the browser is launched using Microsoft's rival Internet Explorer software -- a flaw that Mozilla could have easily pinned on Microsoft, despite denials from the software maker that it is at all responsible for mending the issue. And while some security experts still maintain that open-source products are ill-fitted for use inside enterprise businesses as they may leave the door open to savvy attackers who can take advantage of the readily-available nature of the products' widely-published source code, Window Snyder, whose official title is "chief security something-or-other" at Mozilla, claims that the firm's very makeup has led Firefox and the vendor's other products to offer stronger protection for end-users than proprietary systems with which they compete. "Transparency has been one of the key factors to our success in improving security; some see doing development with the whole world watching as an obstacle, and at times it can be a challenge, but we see it as a unique strength," Snyder said. The security expert, herself a former employee of Microsoft, said that Mozilla currently enlists more than 10,000 people in regular security testing of its nightly product builds. Compared to a standard Web browser development team operating under one company's roof, the virtual legion of open-source contributors provides a far deeper pool of talent to try to assault its products to find any vulnerabilities, she said. Companies including Microsoft often point to the comparatively large numbers of bugs reported in Mozilla products by security researchers as an indicator that the technologies are less secure than their own. However, the volume of issues being uncovered in Firefox and other open-source products is actually an illustration of the high level of scrutiny such applications receive, which is more than their proprietary counterparts, Snyder maintains. Microsoft sends out a set of patches only once every month, but the virtual Firefox security testing team is helping Mozilla turnaround updates almost as quickly as it receives reports of any flaws, she said. Patching vulnerabilities as quickly as possible is a more effective approach to thwarting attacks as hackers often have longer periods of time to craft assaults on proprietary systems before they are fixed, according to the expert. Mozilla has also added real-time vulnerability updates for its users in the past year, easing the burden on people to stay abreast of any fixes on their own. "This community approach is the reason we're able to ship patches so quickly. It's more important to communicate with people and let them know what is going on versus waiting and sitting on the information," said Snyder. "If people start looking at the amount of time it takes for companies to get updates out as the best measurement of overall security versus the number of problems that may be identified, more people are going to change their minds about whether open source is indeed the most secure model." Questioned as to whether it becomes a challenge to respond to 10,000 independent security contributors helping in the review of its programs, Snyder said that an unofficial hierarchy has created itself among the people who regularly make helpful suggestions to Mozilla. "It's a challenge and an opportunity trying to do development with that many different voices, and often the most adamant people make significant contributions, but people also make points and build a consensus and ideas bubble up through the group that way," she said. "Even if it makes for more work, we think it's always better to listen to the voices of many than it is to limit the process to only a few."
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(InfoWorld) - While stopping short of volunteering to host the event, Mozilla chief security official Window Snyder said that it could prove helpful for the open-source community to meet at its own conference to debate secure coding, vulnerability reporting, and product patching issues. In a recent interview with InfoWorld, Snyder -- whose official title with browser maker Mozilla is "chief security something or other" -- said that she would back a meeting of open-source software developers centered on a discussion of security issues. Working at Microsoft as part of its Secure Windows Initiative prior to joining Mozilla in 2006, Snyder helped organize Blue Hat, the software giant's now annual closed-door meeting with security researchers. Security has vastly improved in the open-source community over the last several years as an increasing number of contributors have stepped up to identify software vulnerabilities and help ward off potential attacks, but such a meeting of the minds could help developers improve their products even further, Snyder said. The event wouldn't likely adopt the same closed-door approach as Blue Hat, to which media members and other security industry onlookers remain uninvited, and security researchers and open-source developers would need to focus on both existing issues, such as improving vulnerability disclosure methods, and emerging topics, such as new threats aimed specifically at open-source technologies, according to the expert. If created, the event would likely take on the same grassroots feel of smaller security research conferences, such as the annual ShmooCon gathering in Washington, she said. "It would take a lot of work to coordinate, and we would need a lot of people to organize it, but something like [an open-source Blue Hat] could be very useful," Snyder said. "Anyone who wanted to contribute would have to be welcomed, and the idea would have to be to help people make their own security decisions more intelligently rather than to put pressure on people to change the ways they build things." Backers of the open-source model have long defended that they enjoy a significant advantage over makers of proprietary software -- such as Microsoft -- in the area of finding and patching security flaws in their products. Unlike Microsoft, which keeps its code under wraps and issues monthly updates that typically contain patches for multiple vulnerabilities that have been publicly identified by researchers, open-source companies like Mozilla -- perhaps best known for its Firefox browser -- have legions of contributors who attempt to find and fix any problems in its freely-distributed code on an ongoing basis. The ability to respond to problems so rapidly, and tap into a wider group of security experts in the form of the larger open-source community currently makes Firefox a more secure alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer and other proprietary software products, Snyder contends. By meeting as an industry, open-source security experts could also glean more detailed feedback from researchers, she said, as open-source flaws are typically only approached as an element of any published papers issued by security technology vendors. "The majority of reports that come out of the security researchers have a tremendous amount of knowledge, and we would love to get further involved in the overall process and understand the coding implications of what they find," Snyder said. "We could get more suggestions on building out our architecture in the future, which is something we always want to have an eye on." Overall, the security expert said that the open-source model continues to prove itself as advantageous in fighting off attacks, especially as Mozilla continues to hear from a growing number of people who are actively scouring its products for potential issues. "Transparency continues to be one of Mozilla's key factors for success," she said. "Some people might see it as an obstacle in terms of doing security with the whole world watching, and at times it can be a challenge, but we have ten thousand people testing our nightly builds, which is a lot more than you find on your typical browser development team."
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The Mozilla Foundation has unveiled at least part of what lies ahead for its popular browser, Firefox, as it moves into its second iteration.
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The debut of the full-release version of an open-source browser that can actually challenge Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Internet Explorer has been cause for celebration among open-source advocates.
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Mitchell Baker has stepped down as the CEO of Mozilla Corporation, where she helped make the Firefox Web browser a potent rival to Microsoft&#39;s Internet Explorer.Baker is handing over the CEO job to John Lilly, Mozilla&#39;s chief operating officer, who becomes responsible for pushing out the updates to Firefox and Mozilla&#39;s Thunderbird e-mail software, the company announced Monday. Baker will retain her role as chairman and stay active within the group, she said.Baker has been with Mozilla since its inception. She was an attorney with Netscape Communications in the late 1990s when it created the Mozilla Organization, and she stayed with the group after AOL bought Netscape and helped to create the Mozilla Foundation in 2003.Since then the open-source browser has built a worldwide market share of about 15 percent, according to estimates, and as high as 30 percent in some European markets. Mozilla says it now has 125 million Firefox users worldwide.In a blog posting Monday, Baker said she&#39;d been thinking for some time about the best way to use her time and about which of her duties could be handled equally well by someone else. Those duties, it turns out, are the day to day management of Mozilla&#39;s software, while Baker sees a wider role for herself in improving the Web experience for end-users.&quot;I have a vision of the Internet and online life and a positive user experience -- and of Mozilla&#39;s role in creating these -- that is far broader than browsers, e-mail clients and even technology in general,&quot; she wrote.She said she&#39;ll focus on efforts to make the Web standards process more effective, make security &quot;understandable enough that people can protect themselves,&quot; and encourage more &quot;hybrid&quot; organizations like Mozilla -- &quot;organizations which serve the public benefit but support themselves through revenue rather than fund-raising.&quot;&quot;I want Mozilla&#39;s influence on the industry to go beyond the bits we ship as software. More particularly, I want to use the impact Firefox gives us in the market to get openness, collaboration and user control embedded in other products, services and aspects of online life,&quot; she wrote.Lilly, her replacement, will be focused on getting the next version of Mozilla&#39;s Web browser, Firefox 3, out of the door. He also wants to be more open about how Mozilla operates and how it will support itself in the future. &quot;I&#8217;d like us to start talking more in public about how the future looks for Mozilla,&quot; he wrote on his blog.Baker remains chairman of both the Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit side of the project, and the Mozilla Corporation, which was formed a few years ago to help raise funds and manage product releases.&quot;I&#39;ve been involved in shipping Mozilla products since the dawn of time, and have no intention of distancing myself from our products or [Mozilla Corporation,]&quot; Baker wrote.
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Mozilla has hired top employees at Humanized, a small company known for its innovative work in intuitive user interfaces.
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InfoWorld - Mitchell Baker has stepped down as the CEO of Mozilla Corporation, where she helped make the Firefox Web browser a potent rival to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
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(Article Central) The Mozilla Foundation is set to release a preview of FireFox 1.0, the latest version of the open source Web browser.
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Following up on the success of the Firefox open source Web browser, released by the Mozilla Foundation last fall, open source software developers are readying some new products aimed at a consumer market still dominated by proprietary software.