Use Firefox?  Care about it, but aren’t the kind of person who files bug reports, or writes code?

Well, Firefox in your country, the survey which they’re already calling “not very onerous or intrusive“, is an opportunity to share what you think of Firefox and what could be done to make it better.   If you speak English, Spanish, Polish, German, Brazilian Portuguese or Indonesian, please take the time to answer a few questions if you care about Firefox, and pass it on to anyone else you know who does.  In fact, please do it even if you do file bug reports or write code…

Inspirational stuff from Cory Doctorow about the importance of Firefox in the face of Google Chrome. I think that those who think Chrome is intended to kill Firefox, or that think that Google will somehow do so inadvertently, underestimate the power of community, and of user advocacy.

That the user is paramount may mean to some the ability to block adverts, to others, increasing their security, and to others, simply changing the appearance of their browser. But when this freedom aggregated across a large proportion of users, it means that the Web remains in some sense literally democratic, that is, governed by the choices of people and not of monopolies or oligarchies. This is, after all, only the beginning.

My dad told me that Paris would be deserted in August, and right he was.  Les Parisiennes leave the capital en masse, leaving behind (so Pascal tells me) only those who work in the tourism industry, a grumpy bunch who would also rather be enjoying the crisp waters of the Bay of Biscay and and all points south.  Understandable.   As I look out of my hotel window in the IXe arrondisment, it ought to be bustling, and it isn’t.

But I’m here, meeting my new colleagues at Mozilla Europe, in the top secret Mozilla underground bunker once used by the Scarlet Pimpernel himself*.  This is the week that I started working for Mozilla, and if I’m permitted one deadly sin before breakfast, I’m proud to work for Mozilla.

On arriving at my hotel late on Tuesday night, I put the TV on for some company.   CNN makes a decent enough room-mate, he can be a little dull, and at times rather excitable, but at least we speak the same language.   Brushing my teeth, I half-watched an article about the development of an invisibility suit, which might go into production “in our lifetimes”.  Poppycock?  Possibly not, according to our presenter: after all, 50 years ago, who would have dreamed that we would have a robot on Mars?

The answer is, of course, absolutely everybody.  Most thought we would have men on Mars by 2008.  Heck, in 1975 they thought we’d have have people leaving our solar system by 1999. Had our presenter never heard of Jules Verne, or Isaac Asimov?  In 1958 I would think the consensus would have been that in 50 years’ time we would all be floating around on solar-powered scooters, eating pills instead of food, not suffering from incurable illnesses and generally being pretty space age.  But we’re not.  We’re still fighting wars, driving cars, eating Coco Pops and conspicuously not all swanning around in skin-tight silver suits.

Living memory in 1958 could recall a slew of incredible advances that challenged the imagination and only seemed to be accelerating: pasteurisation, the motor car, powered flight, the jet engine, nuclear fission, space travel – giving rise to incredible expectations.  While for some, it might be hard to remember a world before Twitter, I think it’s also fair to say that the pace of change could never meet the expectations of a half century ago.

Apart from in one area: information and communications technology.  The Internet, and specifically the Web, certainly does match my, and I suspect most other peoples’, childhood imagination of what the future would be like.  Moreover, I think we imagined many qualities about it which are still emerging today: its ubiquity, its unregimented nature, its fundamental openness.  In the late 1990s, there was a campaign at the time called “Any Damn Browser”, which argued (as I recall) for adherence to Web standards.  It failed.  By about 2002 if, like me, you were using a non-Internet Explorer browser, many web pages could fail to work.

Firefox changed that.  Its adherence to standards, customisability and source code have also been one of the chief stimulants to web development since.  Firefox opened the web, and at a time when such an achievement seemed highly unlikely.  We now have a competitive browser market.  And part of my new mission here at Mozilla is to help people in Europe to make a conscious choice for tool they use to participate on the Web, and to help make sure that the variety of choices they currently have endures.

The Web is developing at a bewildering rate right now.  Long may it continue.

* Not entirely true.

cross-posting to http://blogs.sun.com/patrickf

After 11 years at Sun, I hope you can forgive a little sentimentality as I write my last as a Sun employee. I’ve had a wonderful time here. In the week I joined Sun (SunExpress actually, which although it sounds like a budget travel agency, was in fact an inside sales division), the sales manager who hired me left. Unlike her, I am not making a leaving speech, but were I too, I would say the same thing: it’s all about the people.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with amazing, and more importantly, really good people. Although we may no longer be co-workers, we will still be friends. And happily, we will still be colleagues: I am remaining in the world of free and open source software to work at Mozilla, marketing Firefox in Europe. That such an opportunity was available to me was certainly in part thanks to Sun’s credibility in open source. This is the result of the efforts of hundreds, even thousands, of people at Sun, but of course much of the credit has to go to my boss, Sun’s chief open source officer, Simon Phipps. Simon is a marvelous man, from whom I have learned a great deal, (but I suspect only a fraction of what he could teach me). I literally do not know how he does what he does, and I will miss him.

As for the new waters Sun is charting in open source, I am proud to have had a small part to play in it. And I believe that Sun’s customers and shareholders will have reason to be pleased, even if the ride seems bumpy at times. I like to think that we’ve moved on from regarding Microsoft as ‘evil’. They are no more evil than they are brilliant. It just happens that they’ve been the chief beneficiaries of the IT sector’s natural susceptibility to monopolisation. But by the simple expedient of respecting the freedom of software’s users, we have the potential to avoid both the monopolisation or the fragmentation of the network; to keep the network as an instrument of human empowerment and not one of control, and to accelerate the growth of shared wealth in the form of accumulated learning. I feel very lucky to be able to identify this outcome in my work, in both my old job and my new one.

In my interview to join Sun, the soon-to-leave manager innocently asked why it was that Sun had no customers (or at least, relatively few), in my hometown of Liverpool, which was at the time enduring a bout of post-industrial malaise. I didn’t have a very good answer for her, but it’s nice to reflect that these days, Liverpool is European Capital of Culture (whatever that means, exactly), in Eskilstuna, Sweden, where I now live, there seems to be a higher level of awareness of Liverpool FC than practically any other institution, and even the head of Sun’s sales organisation is a scouser.

Finally, I turn to some advice that I got in my early days on the job, on getting my first account to manage. John, a senior colleague, took me to one side and said to me, “Patrick, this is important. Whatever you do, don’t f*** it up.” So, I am transplanting my blog here where I will endeavour to keep following this sage counsel.