Mozilla Awards Over Half a Million to Open Source Projects
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
As someone who donates a small amount to Mozilla monthly, this makes me feel good about my choice.
Huge respect to them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15237923
As to this year's MOSS recipients, Ushahidi received almost $200,000. They're a Kenya-based startup that was the darling of the Nairobi tech scene a few years ago but have increasingly come under criticism for their leadership during a recent sexual harassment scandal:
https://qz.com/1026890/kenyas-ushahidi-is-investigating-sexu...
Furthermore, one of their affiliated startups, who was making a "rugged" router powered by OpenWRT, was violating the GPL and was being quite dismissive and condescending to those of us who pointed out that they should be releasing the source code of their product. I covered this on my personal blog at the time:
Wireless mesh fully distributed world here we come! :)
A $2 Million Prize to Decentralize the Web. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/06/21/2-million-prize-dec...
[Disclaimer] Mozilla Foundation employee as of recently.
Both the above donations are individually much larger in monetary amounts than what Mozilla gave the last time around to actual "code" open-source projects (amounts: 10k, 25k, 30k, 50k) such as Tor/LLVM/etc.
Honestly, I was really excited to see what open-source projects were going to be getting some (I would assume "much needed") funding behind them, but I was disappointed with yet more politics. Except for Webpack, definitely kudos to Mozilla for funding their work on WebAssembly.
Maybe I'm cynical, but I think that non-profit organizations with dead national security warrant canaries cannot accomplish technical or social activism as effectively as they might have in the past.
> We have taken action to ensure that Riseup never again has access to a user’s stored email in plaintext. Starting today, all new Riseup email accounts will feature personally encrypted storage on our servers, only accessible by you.
I'm not thrilled with the action that was taken, complying with the sealed warrant. I suspect Riseup isn't either. But I also think it would be ridiculous to expect Riseup admins to go to jail to protect people using their service to extort others. I definitely wouldn't have been willing to either if I were in their place.
However, RiseUp has shown to be leftist several times[1]. If I was a right wing activist or something similar, I would not use RiseUp, because of the serious conflict of interest of the owners of the platform.
There's nothing wrong with RiseUp being leftist, but I expect Mozilla to be neutral politically, except when something related to free software is at stake in politics.
[1]Apart from their logo being a reference to the anarcho-communist flag, they've said "[...] We do this by providing communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression." (https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/01/responding-to-antifa...) I'm sure I'd find other similar quotes if I looked it up.
Why?
> except when something related to free software is at stake in politics.
They're the Mozilla Foundation, not the Free Software Foundation.
The free software movement has always been intertwined with more or less radical political movements to lesser or greater extents over time. It's only relatively recently that "open source" is primarily the thing you do so you have a GitHub profile that will land you a 100k paycheck.
>And requesting the latter to be politically neutral is... well.
I don't see any incompatibility between free software and any political ideology.
My point (now edited into the comment) was that political activism has been intertwined with free software for a long time. Just think about the absurdity someone complaining about leftist politics at Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation. This intertwining isn't some new thing, and it shouldn't be surprising.
> I don't see any incompatibility between free software and any political ideology.
But for many of the original strong advocates for free software, there was an enormous link between larger political issues and free software.
You can argue that those links aren't fundamentally necessary or have eroded over time, but to deny them is an anti-historical understanding of the free/open source software movement.
> then the organization would lose credibility and support from a lot of people. If the Mozilla CEO wants to do that, then fine, we'll find another organization to support and to look up to.
Open source wasn't always so mainstream. My money is that the people who have been around for decades aren't fased by these sorts of threats.
There are a lot of software developers I used to respect and followed on Twitter whom I stopped following because I got sick of their American politics tweets. I'm sure it's the same dynamics with American celebrities tweeting about Donald Trump. Most of the world don't care about Donald Trump nor want to hear about some privileged rich Americans complaining about their politics.
They havre their own shit to worry about and don't have time to be force-fed all the American political propaganda.
I can understand individuals being political, but if you're an organization like Mozilla, you have a clear goal, and that is NOT left politics. They should aspire to be as neutral as they can.
Only in the sense of privacy and civil freedoms e.g free speech, copyright. Not in the sense of capitalism/socialism, collectivism/individualism, more taxes/less taxes. In this case, Mozilla supported an organization that is openly against capitalism. I would have applauded Mozilla if they'd supported an organization in favor of free speech, privacy, freedom of information, etc. But that wasn't the case. Capitalism is a gray area for the free software community: some support it, others fight against it.
And a lot of people across the world in different countries. Compared to a lot of the rest of the developed world US liberals/Democrats are centrists.
If you are American and are looking at their 'leftist' views using only US politics as a reference point you may be skewing your results.
Err, no, growing up in an European socialist country I can say this is not true. The left in the US has caught up pretty well ..
Which organisation would this be? Mozilla is pretty unique.
Free software goes pretty strongly against market capital as a philosophy.
It goes against the idea that people will pay for things they need/want. It goes against the idea that commerce will spawn progress.
That's fine, and people don't need to be that ideological. But if you want to promote free software, then: basic income, single payer, the 30 hour week, greater research spending, stronger practice of public domain-ing government financed work will all help
And lots of more left-leaning orgs will go along that.
The tendencies in the US of tech companies coming out of their political closets is disturbing, at best. It worries me that this is being normalized and that it starts to lean toward corporatism as well in some cases.
Source?
We have a strongly-worded manifesto that lays out what we believe: https://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto/
Mitchell Baker, the chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, talking about how the current political environment in America might overlay that manifesto: https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2017/03/13/the-worldview-of-...
I'm an employee at Mozilla, though am trying to set personal politics aside to present public explanation of our institutional viewpoint.
Try and stop HTML5 video from autoplaying. Try walking the talk for once.
Some sites are buggy with this preference. Hopefully you will not lay that at Mozilla's feet.
After browsing RiseUp's site, you would certainly think otherwise.
Then you misunderstand what a 501(c)3 is and what it can do politically[0]. I expect Mozilla to get right up to the line of what is acceptable for that type of organization and probably cross it multiple times, because it appears no one is actually held to account unless the violations are flagrant.
Donating $100k to an email service that claims to attempt to keep the US Government from snooping your email[1] doesn't even come close, IMO.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)(3)_organization#Limitat...
I'm not saying that they did anything illegal. I said that I would not expect it of them.
Mozilla giving money away is totally expected. You may not like who they gave the money to, but that's totally within your rights. If you look at what RiseUp says they do[0], it's that they run an email system that they attempt to keep the US Government out of. I am being led to believe that you don't agree with their reasons why, which is fine by me.
In my opinion, the best model that I have seen for discussing politics actually focuses on the expansion or contraction of freedoms across the three dimensions: personal, economic, and political. By focusing on policies, we avoid using labels to describe one another, and evaluate actions based on outcomes (both consequences and outcomes). In this model, more freedom along an axis is not necessarily a good thing if it results in a loss of freedom along another axis e.g. slavery could be described as an economic freedom of one demographic to restrict the personal freedoms of another. Through this lens, Mozilla might be funding a cause that they believe preserves personal freedoms of all individuals against the encroaching economic freedoms of corporations with respect to computer security, privacy, and whatever other choices an individual can make in the growing digital world, which is consistent with my understanding of Mozilla's stated mission.
This model is not of my making; I came across it here: https://www.nationstates.net/page=create_nation , and I find it very surprising that model came from what is essentially an author's conception and implementation of a game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NationStates .
https://riseup.net/en/about-us
>The Riseup Collective is an autonomous body based in Seattle with collective members world wide. Our purpose is to aid in the creation of a free society, a world with freedom from want and freedom of expression, a world without oppression or hierarchy, where power is shared equally. We do this by providing communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression.
x We value, support, and engage in struggles for human liberation, the ethical treatment of animals, and ecological sustainability. We join in the fight for freedom and the self-determination of all oppressed groups. We oppose all forms of prejudice, authoritarianism, and vanguardism.
x We organize on the basis of autonomy, mutual aid, resource sharing, participatory knowledge, social advocacy, anti-oppression work, community creation, and secure communication.
x We work to create revolution and a free society in the here and now by building alternative communication infrastructure designed to oppose and replace the dominant system.
x We promote social ownership and democratic control over information, ideas, technology, and the means of communication.
x We empower organizations and individuals to use technology in struggles for liberation. We work to support each other in overcoming the systemic oppression embedded in the use and development of technology.
They seem like revolutionary socialists.
Also:
https://riseup.net/en/about-us/politics
>Economy — In a free society the means of production should be placed in the hands of the people, empowering communities to organize meaningful employment, and provide a responsible and sustainable standard of living which tries to meet the needs of all people.
Animal treatment is about drawing boundaries on what's considered humane vs. inhumane. Animal activists define that boundary so that it mandates humane treatment not just for humans but also for animals. Ethical stance, yes. Political, yes. Socialist/revolutionary, no.
Ecological sustainability is about whether you take a short-term vs. long-term view on profiting off nature and survival as a species. If you believe this is a "socialist" position to take, you have been successfully brainwashed by U.S. party propaganda that has coopted a legitimate issue and transformed it into partisan identity politics.
If not, then consider that Mozilla is taking a political stance in that situation too by deeming those oppressive regimes as something to be bypassed.
It is not unlikely that capitalism is oppressive to certain groups of people (poorer groups everywhere in the world), and RiseUp has a mission to help alleviate that oppression. Again, not different from what Tor has done.
They haven't stated "Mozilla is against capitalism because it's oppressive blah blah blah".
From the principles that they've declared one can infer that they would help people in totalitarian regimes (any decent organization would).
There's something wrong with injecting ideology into everything, that is, dividing everything in the world into what supports your ideology and what doesn't, making all judgments based on it, and shunning all who don't share your ideology. All must prove their purity and loyalty or be excommunicated.
It's a very dangerous approach, and a quick glance at history books will tell you what's at the end of this path.
There are other priorities and issues in the world. Many who don't share your ideology do important things, deserve support, and in fact it's important to all of us to have a diversity of opinions in the world. Personally, I'm not so sure in my beliefs that I would rule out all the others.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/12/giving_up_on_...
Shouldn't they be funding projects like Signal or Wire?
From a skim it wasn't clear to me why it was being attributed to RiseUp.
What does that mean?
So no high or critical issues were found. That means probably nothing exploitable.