Powered by Mozilla?
The Mozilla Project has grown to the point where it is now inspiring developers to use Mozilla technology to create something new. The “Powered by Mozilla” mark was created to recognize technology that shares Mozilla code and values. This term, though, presents some hurdles to clear. It’s important to maintain high quality as creative new projects emerge, and encourage the creation of safe and useful software. As more products start to use this mark, it’s time to define what it means to be “Powered by Mozilla” and set some guidelines for who gets to use the term.
As this discussion gets started, it’s very important to include the community in the discussion process, establishing broad guidelines as a basis for discussion. We need to begin with basic criteria, and in brainstorming, we’ve started with three basic conditions technology should meet in order to say that it is “Powered by Mozilla.”
• Lineage: Enough code or concept came from a Mozilla product or platform that the lineage can be clearly seen.
• Spirit: The product is in harmony with Mozilla’s vision of a broad, open Internet. It’s not exploitative, deceptive, illegal, hateful, or malicious.
• Quality: It doesn’t tarnish the Mozilla brand name and meets our high standards of quality.
Of course, this just sparks many more questions. How do we decide who should get to use the term “Powered by Mozilla”? Who gets to be involved in that decision-making process? Will there be blanket criteria, or will this be judged on a case-by-case basis? How do we keep from stifling creativity or becoming snobbish about labels?
Mozilla’s goal is offering high quality products that enhance the end user experience, and encouraging others to do the same. “Powered by Mozilla” should actually mean something so we can protect the integrity and value of our name, but not violate our core value of openness and protecting the right to fork. We want to be permissive, but not taken advantage of, maintaining high standards for the sake of the community. Which sparked the idea for the solution: if standards are for the sake of the community, then the community should have ownership of those standards.
The Mozilla Community is overwhelmingly benevolent and full of people looking out for the common good. We already benefit from Community scrutiny of code, and have an existing framework for public review and discussion. Why not involve the Community in self-policing and keeping an eye out for malicious or substandard code bearing the “Powered by Mozilla” logo? At the very core of the project is a push for distributed authority, and the less centralized, closed-door decision making that needs to be done, the better.
Is it possible to develop a segment of the Mozilla community that scrutinizes and reviews developers wishing to use the term “Powered by Mozilla”? This presents a huge advantage, as it prevents Mozilla from having to police developers or stifle creativity by shutting out public involvement. This also could give the Community a sense of ownership in preserving the integrity of the Mozilla Project.
A possible solution would involve the development of terms for the “Powered by Mozilla” program. These terms would be made available online, including usage guidelines and examples of approved work. Requests to use this trademark could be submitted on a wiki, with samples of the goods. A community group can review the application and make a recommendation to Mozilla’s marketing team, which grants final approval. Licensees of the “Powered by Mozilla” mark would be subject to periodic review to make sure that they’re continuing to provide a product worthy of the Mozilla name.
It’s important to get some conversation started about this issue so that the public can be involved from the very beginning. John Slater has blogged about this topic, and I hope others will too. Those who are interested in participating in the dialogue or contributing as a community reviewer should speak up and get some discussion going! Perhaps a wiki page can be set up in the future, once this moves beyond early discussion in blogs and boards.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
The concept of involving your community in the policing the standards of what “Powered by Mozilla” means is a solid one. Communities are, by nature, self-policing. The online power of this can already been seen on such sites as EBay, FaceBook, MySpace, and many more. By granting your community the tools, power, and responsibility of maintaining their own part of the digital world, it empowers them and also provides an incentive to take greater pride in their work and the work of others.
In my 14 years of experience in the games industry, I have found that making your community work for you is an amazingly powerful and effective thing. Our players are the first line of defense for our product, let us know when we’re doing things right (and wrong), and are driven by their passion for what we create to be the best it can. With an open-source project such as Mozilla, this is increase by the fact that your community is more than users - they are creators. They will strive that much harder to have the “Powered by Mozilla” branding mean something if their projects can earn the seal.
It very much follows some of the concepts we see in Guild memberships in Role-Playing Games. You want someone in your guild who is a great player, is well-known in the community, and represents your organization well. If the community has a vested interest not only in using the Mozilla code base, but also being responsible for ensuring the quality required to bear the label “Powered by Mozilla” you will have a dedicated group of users making the overall experience more positive.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I think question you raised is true. What happens to quality and reliability ? If Tomorrow someone comes up with an credit card app based on Xulrunner and tht guy has not fully integrted code for security fix or he is actually stealing data and installing malware through plugi or extension it will definitely damages mozilla’s goal of open and safer web. I think as mike says is right . Application should follow some basic and most important guideline to be allowed to have “Powered by mozilla” logo. The rights should remain with communiy