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Ask Mozilla Foundation Chief Mitchell Baker

Posted by Roblimo on from the open-source-means-open-debate dept.

There have been several recent reports of squabbles and problems involving Mozilla and Firefox development. In an attempt to clear the air about what's going on inside the Mozilla Project and the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker has agreed to answer 10 - 12 Slashdot questions. Please look at some recent interviews with Ms. Baker and check her blog before posting in order to avoid duplication. We'll publish her answers within the next week.

7 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. What will be the testbed? by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now that the Moz suite is apparent non-official, how will new code be tested? Will there be some sort of "beta" Firefox release for testing? Or a new very minimal piece of code that is a testbed yet not useful to consumers?

  2. Funding by ites · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Could you explain how the Mozilla Foundation currently gets its funding and what your vision is on the long-term funding for open source projects like Mozilla?

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  3. Consider affect on large corp customers? by sphealey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Prior to making the decision to not release a final 1.8 version of the Mozilla Suite, did you analyze the affect this would have on large corporate customers doing internal deployments? Although we are small, I work with some fairly large entities who are using 1.4/1.7 for internal deployments (>10,000 seats in one case) and were expecting there is be a 1.8 final - even if that was the last one.

    Does this decision to drop Suite 1.8 in mid-stream as it were affect the credibility of Mozilla Foundation in the long run?

    sPh

  4. Calendar by EvilStein · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Are there any more plans to put weight behind the calendaring solution?

    I know that Sunbird exists and there's now Lightning but the project details are quite vague. The Mozilla Suite could benefit greatly from a fully functional calendar, especially in the small business realm.

  5. Corporate-scale Firefox usage by Tuxedo+Jack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Given how easy it is to deploy Firefox across a campus (load it into a Ghost loadset, then deploy in your next periodic reclone), why, in your opinion, are medium-to-large companies loathe to deploy anything but IE, especially given the tendencies of employees to use office machines for distinctly non-work purposes, which often leads to malware infections?

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  6. Raising the bar by Grip3n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Clearly the fact that Microsoft had a monopoly on the browser market reared its ugly head; we haven't seen any improvements to IE for around 5 years. However, as soon as the hint of competition comes, MS is back on their feet.

    Now that MS has put people back on their IE development team, it seems inevitable that IE will soon have the same features that Firefox does: tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, 24-bit PNG support, etc. What is the Mozilla Foundation's move to keep people excited about installing Firefox over being content with IE? Many of my friends who are less than computer savvy are more than content staying with what Windows already has unless there are some compelling reasons to switch. Firefox at the moment has those reasons in spades, but a quick tune-up to IE would undermine Firefox's natural advances.

    In short: how are you planning to keep Firefox ahead of the curve?

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  7. SVG graphics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When will there be a real effort to support SVG and have it turned on in the builds by default?