That’s enough Spotify news for now. Back to reviews, car rentals and gaming! Let’s take a look at some interesting iPhone info here.

A few days ago, the idea of Firefox coming to the iPhone saw a glimpse of hope from Mozilla and mobile broadband fans everywhere, as Om Malik explains here:

Earlier today when I interviewed Mozilla CEO John Lilly onstage at the Play conference, an annual confab organized by the students of the Haas School of Business at the University of Berkeley, he hinted that the company was going to launch a brand new application for the iPhone, though he declined to reveal any details. “Mozilla will release an app to the iPhone App Store in the next few weeks,” Lilly said. “It’ll surprise people.”

Could we finally be seeing a replacement for Safari? Or is Om Malik correct in thinking it could be Weave:

Later, I sat around gabbing with Lilly and Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s VP of Mobile, talking about Weave and the Awesome Bar, which is a way to get access to all your browsing history and bookmarks by just typing them in the URL bar on your browser. And while we were talking about Weave, I asked them if it was going to be part of this new, mysterious iPhone app. Lilly and Sullivan smiled and remained silent. Interestingly, they didn’t correct me.

Sounds interesting, but would Weave sync with Safari? I have no idea. It would be awesome to be able to sync the iPhone browser to Firefox though. We’ll have to sit tight for now.

With little or no chance of ever being able to make it through the draconian approval process of Apple’s (s AAPL) iTunes App Store, Mozilla, the not-for-profit organization behind the Firefox browser, is betting on two major, if emerging, mobile operating platforms: Maemo, Nokia’s (s nok) new Linux-based operating system, and Google’s (s goog) Android OS. But don’t count on Mozilla supporting RIM’s (s rimm) BlackBerry OS anytime soon.

This weekend, during my onstage interview with Mozilla CEO John Lilly, I asked him what his plans were to get Firefox going on mobiles, especially since Webkit had gained so much attention and market share. “It is a different day, same story on the mobile as it was on the desktop,” Lilly quipped. On the desktop, Firefox continues to try to disrupt the entrenched incumbent, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. “Sure, we are behind, but we didn’t want to do a browser that didn’t do the whole web,” Lilly said. “We wanted to build a browser that did everything — Javascript, CSS, Flash, SVG, video and audio. What that meant was we had to wait for a while for devices to get better to handle this modern browser.” Lilly said that Mozilla’s mobile browser, code-named Fennec, is Firefox with the most advanced rendering engine. “It is the most advanced mobile browser,” he said. Fennec is based on the Firefox 3.6 engine, which is not even available on the desktop just yet.

And Lilly isn’t just tooting his own horn. I’ve been playing around with an early version of Nokia’s N900 device, and Firefox is perhaps its single biggest standout feature. It works just like it does on a desktop and, thanks to the seamless integration of AwesomeBar, a smarter version of a URL bar that uses Mozilla Weave, I can get access to all my bookmarks, my browsing history and other preferences. (Related Post: “Coming Soon: A Mozilla App for the iPhone“)

When I asked Lilly about why Mozilla is interested in the Nokia Maemo, which is still not a viable platform, he explained that Mozilla was betting on the future and Maemo was a modern mobile OS built with the Internet in mind. “Nokia is invisible in the U.S., but that is not the case in rest of the world,” Lilly said. Even if N900 doesn’t prove to be the device that gets explosive adoption, then the next Maemo device will be the one that gets traction. Mozilla will release Firefox for Windows Mobile and then Android, he said.

Why? Because he thinks there is a lot of overlap among folks who use Firefox and those who might buy Android-based devices.  When I asked why not develop Firefox for BlackBerry, Lilly said that because the BlackBerry is a Java-based platform, Mozilla had no interest in building a browser for it, regardless of the number of devices in use. Mozilla also has some misgivings about Symbian, preferring to develop for Maemo instead.

“Until recently, Android was Java, but they released Android NDK which uses C/C++ and that is what we program in, so we are now looking at developing Firefox for Android,” said Jay Sullivan, vice president of Mobile for Mozilla.

“Mozilla Firefox will be the first mobile browser to support add-ons,” boasted Sullivan, pointing to the fact that nearly 2 billion Firefox add-ons have been downloaded to date, and they’ve spawned successful companies such as StumbleUpon. He expects similar traction for Firefox on the mobile. “We have been spending a lot of time on making sure that JavaScript and our engine work really fast on ARM processors,” Sullivan said. “That has taken some time.”

Subscribe to GigaOM Pro and get this indepth analysis of the mobile apps market for $79.

The reason: Mozilla wants developers to embrace the more open HTML5 standards instead of developing separately for different mobile platforms. “For a company of 20 people, it is hard to support multiple platforms,” Lilly said. “Even if one platform takes 20 percent of the  market, there are other platforms you still need to develop for, and that isn’t easy for a small company. So that is why we are with Google in supporting HTML5 technologies.”

Like Lilly, Sullivan acknowledges that they have their work cut out for them: Webkit-based browsers and Opera are the dominant players in mobile, and Firefox will need to prove itself.  The good news is that mobile is a much bigger market than desktops; multiple browsers and companies can thrive. With Nokia, Mozilla has a willing (and somewhat desperate) ally, and that is a good start.

Dolphins Into The Future
On Sea Faring Isolation
Not Not Fun

Monopoly Child Star Searchers / Dolphins Into The Future
The Golden Flowers of Channel Island
Catacean Nation Cassettes

Belg Lieven Martens wydał już kilka płyt nakładem Release The Bats, Not Not Fun, Taped Sounds oraz Pacific City i jak widać jego miłość do delfinów zatacza co raz szersze kręgi. Przyznaję, że sam złapałem się w sieć. Jego ostatnia jak dotąd płyta firmowana Dolphins Into The Future ukazała się wiosną tego roku, idę jednak o zakład, że ta nazwa mało komu coś mówi. Martens z jednej strony czerpie garściami z wypłowiałej new age’owej estetyki, bądź – jak kto woli – tzw. progresywnej elektroniki, co sytuuje go nieopodal dźwiękowych retro-podróżników w rodzaju Bernajda Szajnera, lub współczesnych artystów takich jak Oneohtrix Point Never. Z drugiej posiłkuje się nagraniami terenowymi. Robi to jednak w swoim unikalnym stylu, nie grzęznąc w meandrach dźwiękowej dokumentalistyki a’la Chris Watson. Jego muzyka jest raczej przekornym flirtem z „relaksującymi dźwiękami natury” rodem z supermarketów. Również relaksuje, ale jednocześnie budzi niepokój i wyzwala całą masę wspomnień z delfinem Umem na czele.

Album „On Sea Faring Isolation” zawiera dedykację dla m.in. Johna Lilly – szalonego badacza świadomości, który spędził życie zajmując się deprywacją sensoryczną i szukaniem wspólnego języka z najinteligentniejszymi ssakami jakie pływają w oceanach. Jak się łatwo domyślać, ów muzyczny hołd osadzony jest w ciepłym oceanicznym dryfie. Paleta morskich dźwięków jest zaiste szeroka: obok nagrywania plażowych field recordingów Martens sampluje delfiny (a jakże), skrzypiące drewniane maszty, dźwięki obijających się boi i tak dalej. Instrumenty stanowią tutaj subtelny dodatek i idealnie zgrywają się z tłem, żadna warstwa nie wychodzi na pierwszy plan. Siła tego niezwykłego albumu leży z niezobowiązującej i pozbawionej jakichkolwiek muzycznych rygorów strukturze, dzięki której potęguje się wrażenie, jakoby wszystko czego słuchamy było udziałem ssaków z płetwami. Wizyta w oceanarium celem oglądania baraszkujących delfinów jest rozrywką o ludycznym wymiarze, ale gdy doda się do niej pożytki płynące ze zgłębiania sekretów echolokacji i niezapomniane widoki na bezkresną podmorską rafę, całość nie tylko bawi ale i pozwala zapomnieć o świecie wokół.

Drugi album to split wydany w mikroskopijnym nakładzie 35 sztuk wraz ze Spencerem Clarkiem, połową duetu The Skaters i niestrudzonym riserczerem muzycznych nieoczywistości. Dolphins Into The Future odgrywa tu kolejny, 30-minutowy rozdział spotkania z delfinami, ułożony z niedbale sklejonych fragmentów, które mimo to mają hipnotyczną moc. Spomiędzy skrzeku mew dochodzą do nas chlupoty, delfinie kwilenia i abstrakcyjne rytmy wygrywane na kalimbie. Wszystko brzmi dziwnie znajomo – i o to chodzi. Taśmowe loopy i mruczące syntezatory w zestawieniu z podmorskim zwierzyńcem sytuują się pomiędzy surrealizmem podwodnego królestwa Steve’a Zissou a fotostory z wyblakłego numeramu “National Geographic”, gdzie uzbrojeni w gigantyczne stalowe kombinezony badacze morskich głębin stawiają pierwsze kroki w krainie, w której życie króluje dużo dłużej niż na lądzie.

Muzyka Spencera Clarka AKA Monopoly Child Star Searchers idealnie pasuje do świata eksplorowanego przez delfiny. Clark zamiast pod wodę udaje się jednak w okolice Bali, gdzie wśród palm rozstawia losowo gamelany, elektryczne fujary i dzikusów za bębnami, a następnie bierze się za dyrygenturę. Nie wiem, czy tak było, w każdym razie ja przynajmniej w ten sposób przystąpiłbym do nagrywania wiernego coveru tego 27-minutowego utworu.Zaszumione, transowe bębnienie rozświetla ją niekończące się solówki na syntezatorach udających flety. Nie bardzo daje się wyczuć początek i koniec tego misterium – to raczej wyimek z pędzącego strumienia świadomości, którą James Ferraro i Spencer Clark od czasu do czasu rejestrują i prezentują światu. W tej dziwnej archeologii miejsc niedotkniętych przez cywilizację wyczuwa się ekscytację nieznanym, energię minimal music i postindustrialnego folku Zoviet France, a wszystko skonfrontowane zostaje z futurystycznym dronem i analogowym brikolażem. Całkiem tego sporo, lecz Monopoly Child Star Searchers jak zwykle wywiązuje się z zadania i dostarcza muzykę słusznie okrzykniętą przez wielu największym odkryciem XXI wieku.

Dolphins Into The Future “The Golden Flowers of Channel Island” (2009) (excerpt)

Monopoly Child Star Searchers “The Golden Flowers of Channel Island” (2009) (excerpt)

I. Zwycięzca przetrwania biologicznego:
“Będę żył wiecznie bądź umierał długo.”

II. Zwycięzca emocjonalno-terytorialny:
“Ja jestem wolny, ty jesteś wolny. Możemy bawić się razem lub oddzielnie.”

III. Zwycięzca semantyczny:
“Uczę się coraz więcej o wszystkim, włączając w to naukę o tym, jak się uczyć.”

IV. Zwycięzca społeczno-seksualny:
“Kochaj i czyń, co chcesz.” (Św. Augustyn)

V. Zwycięzca neurosomatyczny:
“To jak się czuję, zależy od mojej neurologicznej wiedzy o sobie.”

VI. Zwycięzca metaprogamistyczny:
“Władam swoimi koincydencjami, synchronicznościami, szczęściem i Przeznaczeniem.”

VII. Zwycięzca neurogenetyczny:
“Przyszła ewolucja zależy od moich dzisiejszych decyzji.”

VIII. Zwycięzca neuroatomowy:
“To co w moim umyśle jest prawdziwe, jest prawdziwe lub staje się prawdziwe wewnątrz ustalonych granic.” (Dr. John Lilly)

(Fragment z Illuminati Papers, Robert Anton Wilson, s.71, “The Eight Basic Winner Scripts”)

This feat has somehow stayed under the radar for me as I’ve just caught wind of this today. Apparently a few days ago (the night of July 30th), Firefox hit one billion downloads. While obviously this doesn’t constitute as one billion users actively using the program, the Digital Daily explains it best:

As Mozilla CEO John Lilly told me this morning, “It’s a billion votes–a billion intentional decisions–for people to take control of how they interact with the Web. We–the whole Mozilla community, really–are really proud to have been part of building a product that’s been downloaded so many times, but more importantly, we’re all proud to have helped people take more control over their online lives by making intentional decisions.”

SOURCE

Also check out Firefox’s nifty One Billion + You website.

Does Mozilla disregard U.S. federal equal employment law?

A meeting of software engineers at Mozilla. Mozilla makes the Firefox Web browser, and has been expanding their work force.  Surprisingly (given this picture) a woman, Mitchell Baker, chairs the company.  Photo from nytimes.com.

The Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Law seemingly being flouted at Mozilla (as evidenced by the above picture) is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on sex.

John Lilly, Mozilla’s chief executive is quoted in the Times as saying, “As Americans we’ve lost the sort of civic engagement, the participation in making the world what we want and what we think it should be.”  From his evident hiring practices, Lilly doesn’t appear to think equal opportunity is something he would want in the world. 

C’mon John, the law has been in place for 45 years – hire some women already.  And not just one or two, not just for the secretarial pool, and not just to give demos.

LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act

Via Paul Hughs’ Astranaut.

For much of this decade, Mozilla and its Firefox browser were the upstarts, out to beat the big, bad Microsoft and its Internet Explorer browser. Firefox, the descendant of Netscape, the browser that helped jump-start the web revolution, was nimble and it was secure — something Microsoft’s (s msft) IE wasn’t. And it triggered a movement. According to Net Applications, which tracks browser market share, as of the end of May, Mozilla accounted for some 22 percent of the browser market. Microsoft’s IE, by comparison, still holds a roughly 66 percent share.

Despite it success, the open-source browser maker finds itself in an all familiar situation: fighting the odds on multiple fronts. Unlike the past when it had to contend just with Microsoft, Mozilla’s competition has grown many fold. Furthermore, the browser battleground has grown much bigger and now also includes mobile devices. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, Apple’s (s aapl) Safari 4.0, Google’s (s goog) Chrome, Opera and Firefox are the five major competitors on the desktop, while WebKit-based browsers are the champions of the mobile world. Last week, when Mozilla announced its new Firefox 3.5 browser software, I decided to reach out to CEO John Lilly for a quick conversation about the state of the browser market. After all, Firefox’s latest browser comes at a time when Google, Apple and Microsoft have all upped the ante in the browser marketplace.

“The world is a lot different from a year ago, and we have three brand new browsers and there is a lot more competition and as a result the users are getting a lot more technology,” said Lilly. But he was not coy about the fact that Firefox has taken over a substantial share of the market, snatching it away from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. “Having said that, I think it is uncomfortable, because our rivals have 2-3 times the magnitude of people and resources, and they are relentless.” (Techcrunch has a post about recent market share changes, based on statistics from Statscounter.)

It’s quite understandable why everyone is so obsessed with the browser. As guest columnist Rohit Sharma had previously noted, “Today, browsers have lent their structure, chassis and struts to network-connected applications that devour user time and attention away from the browser itself.” But going forward, things are going to be vastly different. To understand the potential, look no further than the iPhone and its many applications. “Many iPhone users may have already forgotten that the rendering engine used underneath them all is a Webkit,” wrote Sharma, “the same underlying layout/display engine used in Safari and Google Chrome as well as Android and Palm Pre webOS.” What that means is that now browser-based network-aware applications can exist on any platform — be it the desktop or the mobile. This makes controlling a browser wildly important for companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple.

“Super-interactive browser that sits atop a super-fast connection…now interesting things will happen over the next 5-10 years,” remarked Marc Andressen, whose first startup, Netscape Communications, introduced the consumer web to millions by way of its Netscape browser, at a gathering last year.

Lilly is betting on a few things that will keep Firefox ahead of its rivals. First of all, it’s built by a vibrant community of Firefox developers. Secondly, it has garnered the support of folks who develop browser add-ons such as extensions and themes, which allows the browser to adapt to the needs of a diverse user base. Most importantly, Lilly said that Firefox supports the open web, whereas his competitors have their own agendas. “It is premature to put the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner on the open web,” he said. “Microsoft is still a big player.” Apple, meanwhile, won’t be supporting open video codecs such as Ogg Theora, according to Lilly. Even Google is ambivalent about certain things, though the search giant is “better than” the others, he added.

When I asked Lilly if the emergence of Google Chrome had shifted the focus toward a browser’s speed and performance, he acknowledged that there is competitive pressure and said that as a result, the Mozilla team is looking to “keep the browser fast and slim and still be highly customizable.” So while the version 3.5 of Firefox might be out, Mozilla is working hard on the release of the next version of the browser (3.6), due out either late this year or in 2010. “You should look at what is in Mozilla Labs and see those features making it to the browser,” Lilly said.

Mozilla Weave (which blends web services with the desktop) and Personas, a lightweight theming system are two recent efforts that will likely end up in the next generation of Firefox browsers. Mozilla is excited about Ubiquity, an in-browser command line utility and another new recent effort. JetPack is an API that allows developers to write extensions for Firefox using standard technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. A common theme that unites these four major areas of push: they allow Mozilla to keep the browser slim and fast, but at the same time make it super customizable. “It is about making the browser faster and increasing its performance,” Lilly said.

When I asked Lilly about Mozilla’s mobile efforts, he said that they were working hard to extend Firefox to the mobile. “It is something the whole company is paying attention to,” he said. He pointed out that a beta version of Firefox for Mobiles (code named Fennec) is available for Nokia-backed (s nok) mobile-focused Linux distribution, Mameo, and that another version is available as second alpha for Windows Mobile.

I don’t think that’s going to be enough, however. Mobile is Mozilla’s Achilles heel — it’s losing mobile platforms to WebKit. As we pointed out earlier, “Today’s browser competition is less about who renders HTML properly, and more about what the incumbent browser is and how well it accommodates whatever new applications the Internet throws its way.” These days, many of these applications are popping up on mobile phones, thanks to the emergence of platforms such as Google’s Android, Palm’s Pre and Apple’s iPhone. These platforms are attracting developers, who will work with WebKit and not Firefox. In other words, Mozilla runs the risk of losing developer interest.

But Mozilla has been here before, with its back to the wall. The good news is that Lilly and his crew realize that and are working on it. Well let’s hope they succeed — for if they do, it will mean consumers get better technology.

Related Posts:

• Mozilla not worried about Google browser
• GigaOM Interview: John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corp.
• The GigaOM Show: A Conversation with John Lilly
• Browser wars again.

Photo of John Lilly by Joi via Flickr.

CEO of Mozilla, Mitchell Baker and chairman of Mozilla  John Lilly steward the development of Firefox, the open-source browser that challenged and then broke Microsoft’s choke hold on the browser market.

Firefox (as of April 2009) has 23% percent of Web browser market, according to Net Applications. That makes it the second most popular browser world-wide, after Internet Explorer, which holds 66.1 percent. An impressive feat. And an important one. Because by dislodging Internet Explorer from its dominant market position,

Firefox has proven not only that open-source projects often provide better software–something to which any Linux geek will attest–but that it’s possible for a particularly well done one to become an everyday consumer application.

• 300 million people use Firefox (23% of the web users)
• Other interfaces to the web beyond the browser may change this…

Is Firefox doing better or worse? – Firefox is growing linearly since its inception (23% is the high point so far).

Why does 75% of the web use other browsers?

The browser is actually an important “mediation layer” to the web and not just a pane of glass

Some of the things that Firefox did that have offered an advantage have been matched…

Safari bested Firefox in speed for example – tabbed browsing, quick bookmarking, Firefox is a LOT smaller (less than 100 million) is fighting with multi-billion dollar competitors – Google (Chrome), Apple (Safari),  Microsoft (IE), Opera, etc.

People are now designing for modern browsers

IE always loses on speed

If you were going to pick a business space to operate, you would not intentionally pick a location where Apple, Google, and Microsoft were competing. – People a few years ago were really looking for a high quality product that offered performance and features with simplicity – Non-profit arm that has commercial “roll-ups” –

Steve yelled “Bing” at you this morning…

As a CEO, I can get up and make a lot of noise about the technology and demand a response.

The “open source” component of Firefox gives big leverage to open source development

Volunteer coders – this is a “risk” for the non-English versions of Firefox

Do you want to check the “code” or check the “translation”

Other foreign speakers will scream about it when something is NOT RIGHT

Would I rather buy a product that is sorted out at the beginning or buy into a product that is using the volunteer army to produce the product.

How much software do you think is great?  Not much of any category is great. – And those companies that have hired experts are also producing a good percentage of that.

Internet Explorer is the “leading browser” – Mozilla folks are “describing it” as “out of date”.

Can’t run complex web apps in IE8 – things run slow there

Two paths (fast browser apps and slow browser apps) – new graphics standards support and the performance of the browser within that support.

Distribution is hard for Mozilla – but easy for Microsoft and Apple.

Google Chrome is going against Mozilla, IE, and Safari.

IT FEELS COMPLEX (the relationship with Google).

Geo location is an area where there is good cooperation

Converting Firefox to a top-quality open source product has taken some significant effort – this is the effort to establish that really “finished” look.

Apple is not a “hospitable environment” for us – they want to manage their own browser. – That makes it impossible for Firefox to be that “mediation layer” like it is on the other environments.

“Siento que soy simplemente un agente dándote algunas llaves que se me han dado a mí para transmitirtelas. Estas llaves son para desbloquear las puertas de tu actual prisión. Puertas abriéndose a nuevas perspectivas, puertas más allá de donde estás ahora.
En general, el tema del taller es que cada uno de nosotros es mucho más grande, mucho más avanzado, mucho más conciente, mucho más inteligente, que lo que cada uno de nosotros puede ver que es.

Nuestro principal problema ahora con estas transmisiones básicas del ser más allá de nuestro ser presente, el super-ser estando presente, es principalmente un conjunto de obstáculos, un conjunto de evasiones, un conjunto de negaciones para ver que uno realmente es grande, que uno realmente tiene múltiples niveles de conciencia, que uno tiene una súper-inteligencia, que uno tiene extrema sensibilidad con respecto a otros, que uno tiene una profunda empatía, simpatía en el amor, que uno se comunica de alguna manera en ambas direcciones con otros seres, otras entidades en el universo y en realidades de las cuales no hablamos o percibimos directamente en nuestro estado presente.

Un problema en la existencia humana es la tendencia a repetir. Repetir el sentimiento, el pensamiento, la acción, una y otra y otra vez en la misma clase de bucle cíclico. Queda uno como controlado por un conjunto de grabaciones de cinta. En éstas grabaciones está registrado lo que uno dice en un canal, lo que uno siente en otro canal y lo que uno hace en un tercer canal. Estos son bucles interminables y uno tiende a repetirlos una y otra y otra vez.

Ilustraremos, utilizando repeticiones de palabras, repitiendo oraciones y repetiendo ideas, cómo uno puede involucrarse en tales procesos repeticionales y qué tipo de trampas, evasiones, obstáculos y negaciones se pronuncian en la cara de dicha repetición externamente forzada. El punto de estos ejercicios es hacerte más conciente del proceso de repetición ocurriendo en tu cuerpo, en tu mente, en tu sentir y en tus relaciones con otros, cómo evitas lograr tus objetivos por mensajes repetitivos, cómo tus relaciones con otros se repiten, cómo los utilizas al servicio de estos patrones que se repiten ciegamente, cómo tu orientación no está enterada de estos patrones repetitivos y cómo grandes miembros de esto deben ser eliminados de tu función. Cómo debes asimilar bucles de largo plazo con finales abiertos, de manera que no sean circulares sino que llegan a ser elípticos e incluso hiperbólicos.

Los propios impulsos tienden a empujar a uno alrededor de tales círculos, especialmente si hay dos caballos, dos impulsos, uno tirando hacia el lado opuesto al otro en un círculo y son circulares indefinidamente bajo dos fuerzas opuestas contrarrestándose.

Las propias necesidades de repetición son tales que se debe repetir para sentirse seguro, la seguridad de lo familiar, la seguridad de lo viejo. Uno bajo estas circunstancias tiende a ignorar la posibilidad de escapar, tiende a ignorar las posibilidades de modificar éstas necesidades [...]”

“La forma de tales repeticiones es obvia: atiende a lo circular o elíptico y es muy superficial. Y uno con mucha luz puede cambiar la forma de esto hacia una especie de espiral, espiral del sin fin. Ésta es una de las posibles conversiones de la forma. Ésto es bastante corriente para el super-ser porque éste tiende a ser hiperbólico [...]”

Dr. John Lilly – Extracto (transcripto y traducido) de E.C.C.O. – 1994

As the financial markets collapse, my devoted readers will be happy to know Mozilla is doing just fine.

In an email to his staff on October 10, 2008, Mozilla Overlord John Lilly detailed not only Mozilla’s current financial state but also the Corporation’s intention to continue expanding in 2009. The Lizard has reprinted the email in its entirety below the fold (the “Jim” mentioned is Jim Cook, the CFO of the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation).

To summarize, for those Mozillians too lazy to read (practically all of the Mozilla Corporation):

1. Mozilla intends to grow by 75 in 2009
2. Mozilla is break even
3. Mozilla believes Google Chrome could reach 7% market share next year

Consider this a holiday gift to my American friends.

Hi Everyone –

I did this a little bit during Monday’s all hands meeting, but wanted to do it a little more formally to give everyone a sense of where we are financially and what our prospects look like for next year and beyond.

I’ll apologize for the length & complexity of the note — parts of it get very technical — I figured it would be better to share as much as I could in as coherent a way as I could.

Here’s the short version: I think we’re in as good a position to be able to do the work we want to do in 2009 & 2010 as anyone in the industry, really. I’ve been testing & retesting our assumptions, talking with a lot of outside mentors & execs & friends, and working with Jim & Mitchell to get a really good assessment of where we are. And I keep coming to the conclusion that we’re going to be fine, and can continue to grow and keep making the web better.

More specifically, in a very bad case scenario that I’ll describe below, we can still grow as planned (to 275 people, give or take) and be break even in 2009, while maintaining our bank balance of $75M.

A lot of this is because we’ve been conservative historically — I know it feels like we’ve grown incredibly quickly to be around 200 employees (or, rather, full-time-equivalents (FTEs) that include employees and contractors) the last few years, but we’ve been careful not to grow to quickly, to self-limit based on finding exceptional people, and relatively conservative in terms of scaling up new teams (and building them in a very leveraged way when we do, like Labs). Jim’s money management, along with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), has also been very conservative, which is serving us very well.

Before I get into the detail, I’ll say, also, that I share this in the spirit of everyone knowing what our position is, what our risks are, what our opportunities are. My observation is that many more long-impact institutions are created in bear markets than in bull markets, and I think we’re in a very very unusual position now in our ability to really do great things with our mission.

I’ll put this into a forum thread, but also please feel free to ask me questions, send e-mails, or whatever.

John

—

In more detail, some basics, as of August 31:

Total cash equivalents (including receivables): $70.9M

2008 Year-to-date revenues: $53.6M (we’ve been projecting that we’ll get to about $80M by the end of the year)

2008 Year-to-date expenses: $31M (projecting we’ll get to a little less than $50M by the end of the year)

August expenses: $3.7M (that means we’re spending ~$45M annualized, give or take)

August FTE (full time equivalents): 192

Beyond that, we’d been forecasting growing to around 275 FTEs in 2009 (roughly), and seeing revenue grow to be around $90M.

—

On those basics, we’re in really good shape. More than 18 months of current rate expenses even if we never collected another dime of revenue.

But clearly some things are changing, and so I’ve been trying to figure out anywhere we have risk. There are 3 basic areas of risk for us:

- We start spending way too much money too quickly
- Google’s ability to generate revenue from advertisements disappears
- Our cash equivalent holdings disappear because they’re invested in assets/companies that go bankrupt

—

Let’s take these in order. The first, spending, is wholly under our control, and the really good news is that we’ve been careful in our growth rates. Roughly speaking, if we grow at around the same rate we’ve been growing and do get to 275 people by the end of 2009, and assuming we don’t all start flying first class and buying incredibly expensive hardware, we’re looking at expenses (once you include tax payments to US & EU, etc) of about $70M for 2009. [side point: the expense numbers above don't include tax payments, but I'm accounting for it in my overall numbers.]

We can dial spending up or down, but easier & happier to grow slowly and deliberately, especially with head count, where we’re talent-limited anyway. We’ll start doing things like looking at contracts with hotels, consultants, etc to reduce expenses, and will want to pay attention to travel costs, but on the whole, life is pretty good and within our power on this front.

—

2nd: Let’s consider a theoretical scenario where Google’s ability to generate revenue drops precipitously. It is a certainty that advertising spend will decline significantly, and that will affect Google’s ability to keep rates per click high (CPC). How much it will decline is a tough question — the conventional wisdom is that CPC-style advertising will hold up the best (compared to brand advertising or banner ads) because it’s measurable on results — so to be conservative, I’ll make an assumption that rates will be cut in half from today, lasting through all of 2009. [I believe this is significantly more drastic than the declines will be.]

Making some assumptions about Chrome’s market share getting up over 7% in 2009 [more aggressive than I believe], and our own staying completely flat at 20% [more conservative than I believe], but with searches linearly growing, but somewhat cannibalized by Chrome, our revenue model shows we should expect right around $68M from Google next year. Call it another $2M or so from other sources like Amazon & Yahoo, etc (it was $5M this year), and you get to just about $70M in revenue. 2 things to note here:

1) This is a dramatically bad case, where we see no growth, Google’s ad card rates cut in half, and we get significantly cannibalized by Chrome searches. Each of those pieces is ahistorical — not happened during the time since we launched Firefox, certainly. [And if Google's revenue generation gets cut in half, there will be major carnage.]

2) Even with this dramatically bad forecast, we’re still break even in 2009, while growing to 275 people.

That’s worth pausing to think about. In a disaster scenario, with the $75M we’ll have in the bank in December, and growing people by 35% in a bear market, with Google getting killed,

—

And so the last factor to consider is whether our bank assets are safe. Jim’s been doing a ton of really good work here, and we believe that we’re in the best shape possible. Of the $70.9M in total cash equivalents, about $7.5M is receivables, about $11M is pretty much in cash, and we hold about $52M in corporate and government bonds. The cash is very very safe — Silicon Valley Bank is well-capitalized and doesn’t appear to be in any risk at all.

Of the $52M, we’ve got nearly $28M in US Treasury obligations that function as cash, about $10M in US Govt & Municipal bonds, a million in an asset-backed class (credit card) that we believe is very safe, and about $13M in bonds from Financial Institutions. It’s that last category, the $13M, that’s in any risk at all, and most of the institutions appear to be safe. The one exception is Morgan Stanley, who we have a bond from in the amount of $1.1M. There’s some chance that MS will go under like Lehman Brothers did, which would mean the value of that bond would fall to $0. So we’re tracking it, and considering if/when to sell it for some value if the situation looks dire. (Today we could have sold it for about 85 cents on the dollar, we think, but decided not to do that.)

I’ll forward along a note from our bank that might be interesting to everyone — but the quick summary is that our position for cash equivalents would appear to be as strong as we can possibly make it, with very little exposure.

—

To pull back together the threads: (1) on expenses we’re fine, but should be more deliberate when looking at 2009 planning, (2) on revenues, we can deal with a very bad scenario from Google and our own market share, and (3) our money is as safe as we can hope for.

Questions, comments, concerns? Just give a holler.

John

Congratulations! You’ve now proven you can read more than the average Mozilla employee.

Over this past weekend (Oct 25-26), I joined 150 Mozilla contributors, and staff, and around 40 members of the general public at the Mozilla Camp at Citilabs in Barcelona.

We decided to hold this first European Mozilla only event earlier this year, for a couple of reasons.

1) We had talked for several years about tacking an extra day onto the FOSDEM weekend held in Brussels each year, to hold a Mozilla only event. This has always proved hard, as most folks who attend are volunteers and its tough to take more time off from work. We also thought one day, just simply wouldn’t be enough.

2) Adding diversity was also important. That means not only from bringing more people together from across Europe, be that from Latvia or Poland, or the other 23 countries in Europe who work to contribute to Mozilla — but also to include different types of Mozillian participation groups, and our rich mosaic of projects.

So the event ended up being a 2 day mash up of keynotes, discussion groups, brainstorming, hacking, bonding, heated discussions and all this — across multiple Mozilla projects – Thunderbird & Messaging, Mobile, Firefox and Labs, — and across the Localization, Quality Assurance, Development and Marketing teams.

It was a colourful explosion of Mozillian DNA, and speaking for myself I have been through a gazillion emotions these past two days. I felt my stomach talking to me when I got excited about Mozilla Labs, Messaging and Mobile — the progress we are making to drive the future of the Web is incredible. I was proud by our successes of Firefox, and have been humbled several times over by talking to so many contributors who give so much of their lives to supporting the open web. I was inspired by our unity to believe in the future of the Web, in each others skills and beliefs — and our over-riding passion to keep going and make a difference.

Please do go and check out the Mozilla Camp’s official mashup page set up by our friends at Mozilla Hispano you’ll find photo feeds and tweets of the 2 day conference.
http://mozcamp08.mozilla-hispano.com/

We also hope to be able to share more photos and videos of the sessions shortly.

Some thoughts from my side of what was good and bad:

More of the same for next time:

- Great organization – I heard many times over the event was one of the best open source events, which has been held from an organizational stance. Everything from meeting people at the airport, to providing a free public transport travel pass for the weekend, and having wifi throughout the venue, plus a lab centre where groups could get together and hack on the venue’s machines — all made for a great hassle free time.

- The event set up also proved to be a good mix. We held keynotes in the mornings, which everyone could participate in and learn more about what was going on in all the Mozilla projects. This allowed folks to learn about what else is going on at Mozilla, and stuff we are thinking about for the next 1-2 years. Labs was a heavy focus here, plus Messaging and Mobile.  In the afternoon, we had people break up more into tracks based on tasks e.g. Localization, Development and QA. Here groups were able to get a lot done as a team in the flesh — in fact this was the first time the QA team had ever been able to get together in one place as everyone is so distributed across the world. So there was a good mix between meeting new people and learning about new projects, whilst having special time with the people you work with in your area of focus.

- Wonderful visitors from Mozilla. We were lucky to have some very knowledgeable and key folks from Mozilla attend the camp, giving many people (including myself for some people) the first time to meet with John Lilly, Mozilla’s CEO, Mark Surman, the new Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, David Ascher, CEO of Mozilla Messaging, Chris Beard our Chief Innovation Officier, Tristan Nitot, President of Mozilla Europe and many, many more people.

What could we do better next time?

- I’d like to have more people from the general public attend. We did have around 20-40 people attend sessions over the weekend, but I would like us to have more opportunities to get people new to meet Mozilla and big Mozilla fans to attend. I’m certain people would like to help, but are not alaways sure how to get involved. Visiting us at events, is a great way to make some connections and discuss how you could get involved.

- Obviously I am biased as I work in marketing, but I would like to see us have more sessions on marketing and brainstorming on how to tackle spreading the open Web message.  I also think we could attract more non-technical people to get involved in the project and our mission. In the same vein, I’d like to encourage more women to attend, less than 5% of people at the Mozilla Camp were women. Perhaps the marketing activity side may help us reach out to more ladies who would like to get involved.

- More vegetarian Food (especially on behalf of Clint, Marcia, Patrick and myself!)

- Lastly, I would like to find a way to get more people involved with the event who are remote and were not able to attend. Last week, I also attended Web 2.0 in Berlin, and have to say that I think conferences haven’t really evolved in terms of how they involve the Web and a wider community. I’d like us to explore how we could get others involved in more ways than reading our tweets, and seeing live streams. I’ll get my thinking hat on, and ask O’Reilly to do the same with the coming Web 2.0 conferences.

By the way, if you attended the camp and have some comments or suggestions, good or bad – please do comment on my blog or get in touch with us directly. Or, if you have comments in general – I would be glad to hear. We hope to create an event like this again next year and would love to learn of your impressions.

Finally, there are a few people I need to say a huge thanks to and pull out for the great job they did to create such a successful event:

* At the helm was William Quiviger who joined Mozilla only in the summer time and organized an amazing event in only a few months. William, you should be very proud indeed of your achievement, we are all impressed on so many levels. You have certainly raised the bar!
* Delphine, Sonny, Anne-Julie, Patrick, Tristan and Pascal Chevrel also helped a great deal. Thank you.
* All our US Mozilla visitors, thank you for taking time to visit Europe and spend time with our teams of contributors – we all learned a lot and appreciated it very much
* I’d also like to offer huge thanks to Citilab who hosted the camp for us in Barcelona. The people here are doing a wonderful job, they have an incredible venue, and have been so warm and giving – I dont know how we would have done it without them. If you are looking for a place to hold an event in Barcelona – please visit Citilabs – you cannot go wrong. To Maria and her team – thank you.
* I would like to make a special thanks to Mozilla Europe who supported the event, and made it possible to bring us all together for this first time in this way.
* Finally, thank you to everyone who came from across all of Europe and gave up your weekend to meet with your fellow Mozillians – we hope you enjoyed your time and felt it was worthwhile, I know we did.

Please join us for Today’s call.

10 a.m. PDT / 7pm CET / 6pm GMT: Dial-in is +1 650-903-0800, ext 91, id 248 or + 1 800-707-2533, password 369, ext 91, id 248 and #events on irc.mozilla.org.

Here is the agenda:

* Europe Update

** John Lilly at Web 2.0 in Berlin, Germany, Oct 23rd

** Tristan Nitot at OSWC in Malaga, Spain, Oct 20-22

** MozCamp EU Barcelona, Oct. 26-28

* World Wide

** FSOSS, Oct. 24 – 24, Seneca College, Toronto
** MexicoWeb 2.0, Nov. 3 – 4, Cancun, Mexico
** Green Festival, Nov. 14 – 16, San Francisco, CA
** Nonprofit Software Development Summit, Nov. 17 – 19, Oakland, CA
** FOSS.in, Nov. 25 – 27, Bangalore, India
** Mozilla Contributor/User meetup, Nov. 29, Victoria, Canada
** FOSSCamp Dec. 5 – 6
** Add-on Con, Dec. 11, Mountain View

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/3134

In an interview that started with Mozilla CEO John Lilly explaining how he runs the company to San Jose Mercury News reporter Pete Carey, it was revealed that the first Firefox Mobile alphas could be released in “a few weeks.”

We know that it’s definitely coming, despite debunked rumors of it being released in 2010, but with the imminent release of the first alpha we’ll all finally be able to see it “for real.”

Below is an excerpt of the San Jose Mercury News interview with John Lilly, in which the Mozilla CEO answers the question, “What are you doing in mobile?”

We want to make sure that the Web on mobile is more like the Web than what the mobile industry offers today, which is closed, separate networks and not a very good information-getting experience for the user. The first thing is to bring Firefox to mobile devices. We’re working on that, and we’ll see some alphas in a few weeks.

Which is pretty much in line with what Tristan Nitot of Mozilla Europe told us in our previous article about Firefox Mobile :I have discussed Firefox Mobile (codenamed Fennec) in the past saying that we should see an Alpha pre-version hopefully before the end of the year if it’s ready.

I think that those of you who like to try early versions of new apps, might have something very interesting to play with soon.

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me. (Carol Burnett)

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. (Jim Rohn)

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. (Henri Bergson)

Never underestimate the power of other people’s love and prayer. When you put someone else at the center of your frame, the entire world changes for you. (Tony Snow)

Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. (William James)

Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine. (Kathleen Norris)

Our only security is our ability to change. (John Lilly)

Every human has four endowments – self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change. (Stephen Covey)

If you take a single step toward positive change, that divine energy will take a hundred steps toward you. New worlds and unbelievable possibilities will open up for you. The synchronicities that will begin appearing in your life will become a source of delight and amazement. (Joan Borysenko)

There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change. (Euripides)

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. (Wayne Dyer)

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (Mahatma Gandhi)

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it. (Maya Angelou)

There is nothing permanent except change. (Heraclitus)

A great attitude does much more than turn on the light in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before we changed. (Earl Nightingale)

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right. (Jane Goodall)

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. (Henri Bergson)

I have accepted fear as part of life -specifically the fear of change. I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says turn back. (Erica Jong)

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change. (Erick Golnik)

Do not become the candle that gives light to others but itself remains in darkness. Do not follow the desires of your lower self. Should the Lord wish, He himself will pick you out and prompt you to be a source of guidance. He Himself shall endow you with the inner strength to endure the changes of fortune and will instill within you infinite wisdom. (Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jillani)

Next Saturday, UC Berkeley’s International House will host the “Free Culture Conference 2008,” a gathering to discuss many controversial issues regarding copyright infringement and technology ownership.

Free Culture should be a pretty interesting talk; speakers include professors from UC Berkeley and Stanford in the departments of law, information, and medicine; representatives from the Stanford Fair Use Project and Google; and John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla.  Throughout the day, there will be local DJs and games, and the night will end, I believe, with a party at Blake’s on Telegraph.

“[Free Culture 2008 is] a conference for, and about, free culture, technology, copyright, remixing, and free software.”

Free Culture 2008

Here are the details of the conference content, as posted on Free Culture Conference 2008’s website:

WHAT: A conference with keynotes, talks, workshops, activism, and parties.

WHEN: Oct. 11th 2008, with a smaller and more focused student workshop day on Oct. 12th

WHERE: International House at Berkeley, University of California

WHY: It’s time for our community to spend time and learn from each other.

WHO: You, other free culture activists, professors, students, artists, musicians, coders, organizations like EFF and Creative Commons, and anyone interested in our community.

Students from all over the country as well as free culture enthusiasts will be flying in from all over the country, so if you’re in the Berkeley area, you should check it out.  Details:

October 11th, 2008
10 AM—7 PM
Chevron Auditorium, International House
2299 Piedmont Ave
Berkeley, CA 94720

The conference is co-organized by Students for Free Culture and Free Culture Berkeley.  One of my organizations, Students for Responsible Business, will be volunteering at the event.  See you there.

According to GigaOM, Marc Andreessen gushed about Google’s new Chrome browser at an onstage conversation with Portfolio magazine:

Blown away by the speed of the browser, and its radical and innovative JavaScript engine, Andreessen called the launch of Chrome an “extraordinary event.” He said that it is going to make Firefox and Internet Explorer compete actively with Chrome and that it would ultimately boost browsers as a whole. Mozilla CEO John Lilly had shared similar sentiments in an interview earlier this week.

“Microsoft can build good products when they want to,” he said. The barons of Redmond released a version of Internet Explorer that was superior to a bloated version of Netscape and gave it away for free, driving a stake through Netscape’s heart. That’s ancient history, anyway. Andreessen thinks that IE and Firefox will have to accelerate their plans and introduce new technologies. He thinks that all this is going to boost the performance of JavaScript. Giving into nostalgia for a minute, he pointed out that it was 10 feet away from his desk at Netscape that JavaScript first got going. He said.

(continued at What Netscape’s Founder Thinks About the New Google Browser)

But should they be?

From ZDNet:

Mozilla CEO John Lilly said he has no worries about Google jumping into the open source browser market.

In a blog posted on September 1 before the beta release of Google’s Chrome yesterday, Lilly noted that Mozilla’s Firefox has plenty of competition and reminded the public that the foundation’s primary motive is to keep the web open.

“As much as anything else, it’ll mean there’s another interesting browser that users can choose. With IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc — there’s been competition for a while now, and this increases that. So it means that more than ever, we need to build software that people care about and love. Firefox is good now, and will keep on getting better,” Lilly wrote. “Competition often results in innovation of one sort or another — in the browser you can see that this is true in spades this year, with huge Javascript performance increases, security process advances, and user interface breakthroughs. I’d expect that to continue now that Google has thrown their hat in the ring.”

Lilly also said the two organizations will continue to cooperate and hinted that Mozilla will remain independent.

“It should come as no real surprise that Google has done something here — their business is the web, and they’ve got clear opinions on how things should be, and smart people thinking about how to make things better. Chrome will be a browser optimized for the things that they see as important, and it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves,” he wrote.

Google announced the beta release of Chrome as Mozilla prepares to freeze the beta 1 code for Firefox 3.1 on September 30 and as Microsoft IE8 beta slips into the marketplace.

From InformationWeek:

The Wall Street Journal’s Walter Mossberg has been testing Google’s Chrome browser for a week next to Firefox and the latest version of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s Internet Explorer. His verdict? “Chrome is a smart, innovative browser that, in many common scenarios, will make using the Web faster, easier, and less frustrating.”

Google has a big month planned for September with Chrome and Android on the horizon. It will be interesting to see the publics reaction to each of these products. Will they be positive or negative? Thoughts?