The list is long here. The Mozilla Open Source Project has over 80 full-time contributors that work at the Mozilla Foundation, IBM, Sun, Redhat, Novell, Google, and many other companies. We have academic researchers and interns putting in full-time effort helping to improve the code. There really is a collaborative effort among all these participants to make great software. It’s a scientific approach to developing code that involves lots of peer review and open discussion about every change. This helps not only in the area of security, but the quality of all feature and bug fixing work.

There is a long trailing edge of part-time contributors. 884 Contributors provided over 17,000 patches for features and bug fixes during 2004. The part-time contributors help to grind off the rough edges and improve quality. These are things that a commercial software company would not find it economical to do.

Firefox 1.0 is now shipping in 35 languages. The translation of Firefox into all these languages is entirely a volunteer effort. In some cases the translators in these countries become national heroes that bring the web to their people. Mozilla Technology has been translated for use in over 100 languages. The scope of this effort is far beyond anything that could be provided by a single commercial vendor.

There are about 10,000 testers of our ‘nightly development releases’ that help continually assess quality and keep the development effort on track as incremental changes are made to the browser.

There is a passionate community of browser users and promoters at http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ that helps spread the word about Firefox and amazingly raised $250,000 for the Firefox 1.0 marketing effort which included a two page ad in the New York Times. There is a large community of system administrators and mirror sites that provide the hosting and bandwidth needed to distribute over 66 million downloads.

There is a very active community of extension developers that are providing hundreds of small innovative ideas for the next generation of browser features, and are building on top of the Mozilla and Firefox platform.

That is just the start of a long list that describes a very active and passionate community that helps to develop, test, extend, and promote Firefox.

None of this incredible volunteering occurs around proprietary products—nor should it. And this will be the ace up open source’s sleeve. Last month I wrote that the interface is the software—to go further down the tangent of unqualified punditry, I’d say that Firefox’s widespread success demonstrates another rule: The Community is the Product.

And it’s under a Creative Commons Attribute-Sharealike 2.0 license. Wow. Jason has posted a great, inspirational essay about his rationale: Why the BBS Documentary is Creative Commons:

Now, under copyright law in the United States, I have, as a content creator, an amazing arsenal of statutes and legal decisions at my disposal to make your life, assuming you are playing the part of someone copying my films without my permission, into a bitter fucking hell. [...]

And yes, it’s so easy, having now created something that has the potential to cost me a lot of money, to reach out and want to use these tools for my own end. Even though, in my own high school and college years, I made songs that used samples from professional productions, even if I took screengrabs from films and put them on a website to make a funny parody in 1995, I see my own work and the temptation is there to go “No, this is different. This is my stuff and you can’t have my stuff without paying for it.”

But that’s not what I did. Instead, I stayed true to my belief system and licensed it under Creative Commons, giving away a lot of the tools that US copyright law grants me, because they’re are By the Jerks, for the Jerks, and should perish from this Earth.

It was in some ways a tough decision, because you want to “protect” yourself, but then you realize you’re not really “protecting” anything; all you’re doing is being a paranoid twitch-bag. And once you realize this, then it becomes a little easier.

The eminently quotable Mark Pilgrim makes an appearance in the comments:

When my son grows up, if he has a homework assignment on the history of computers, I will point him to your documentary and tell him that he’s allowed and encouraged to take your footage and remix it. I’ll tell him that he’s allowed and encouraged to take the sound effects from your DVD and sample them in OpenGarageBand 2015 and create music around them. [...]

And I’ll be sure to tell him that it wasn’t always like this, that when I was growing up, there was no open content. And maybe — just maybe — there will be so much open content in the world by then that he won’t believe me.

Gavin Baker, one of the three directors on the new board, is a good writer; go check out his summation of the issues now facing them in the linked post. My input on the matter is mostly summed by “w00t!”

How nice. Here’s a flag, then, from Xeni Jardin.

Also, in a CNET interview, Gates says,

In terms of our agility to do things on the browser, people who underestimated us there in the past lived to regret that.

Look who picked up the gauntlet! Asa Dotzler of the Mozilla foundation responds:

We will continue to provide choice and innovation, a better, faster, and safer browsing experience, and we will grow our community and continue to lead open source software into the mainstream.

Realistically, I don’t think Mozilla will sustain momentum in the long term because of the browser itself—anyone can clone a feature. Mozilla’s strength lies in their software’s richness as a development platform, such as Firefox’s extreme customizability.

Another issue is that when alternative browsers gain enough momentem, IE’s pathetic standards-support is going to start haunting MS. When it comes to core technology, IE’s broken rendering engine is going to be playing catch-up with Mozilla, Opera, Safari & co. for at least three years to come.

Personally, if I may have the temerity to comment on behalf of the alternative browser community, I’d just echo the words of Ben Goodger, lead firefox engineer:

Bring It On

The New York Times advertisement for Firefox 1.0 runs today. The initial goal was to pay for it by raising 2,500 contributions in 10 days. They ended up with $250,000 raised by 10,000 contributors.

Asa Doltzer has a PNG version. It’s a well-designed ad. Two full pages.

Your intrepid reporter was there, by the way:

Ben Goodger, lead engineer:

Market Dominance

Netscape had it by being first.
Microsoft has it by being everywhere.
Firefox will have it by being best.

We’re coming.

But let’s assume the RIAA is right, and all of the decline in CD sales is because of Internet sharing. Here’s the rub: In the same period that the RIAA estimates that 803 million CDs were sold, the RIAA estimates that 2.1 billion CDs were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 percent.

Then a new study emerged, denying that file sharing leads to major losses in sales. I figured it would slip under the radar as one of the many writings about the file sharing phenomenon. Downhill Battle, being their usual provocative selves, said:

It’s crucial to remember that we aren’t here to convince the big 5 labels to reform their businesses; good people have tried and failed at that for decades. Instead, we’re here to finally break the major label monopoly, and filesharing is one of the most potent tools we have.

Then the The New York Times mentioned ‘A Heretical View of File Sharing‘. The banner is raised!

Kottke: “NY Times wonders if we (meaning the RIAA) have it all wrong on this whole file-sharing thing, coming to the same conclusion the rest of us arrived at 3 years ago.”

Carson McComas: “They have terrorized, threatened and intimidated their customers. They can’t go back on all that now, can they?”

Willabeast puts it best: “I want my napster back.”

I want my Napster back, you scare-mongering, technology-crippling, stupid fucks.