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Mozilla Awards $385k to Open Source Projects
- arthursilva 10y ago30K for mio, that's a bold move!
- alexnewman 10y ago:)
- carllerche 10y agoThere is a lot in the pipeline! I'll be talking more about it soon.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y agoNice to see Caddy getting some dough.
- mxuribe 10y agoAgreed! Although I have not had the opportunity to implement caddy in a production env. myself, I'm in favor of this platform succeeding/continuing.
- moosingin3space 10y agoExactly. Caddy's the first HTTP server I've felt was truly easy to configure with all the "hosting best practices", and HTTP/2 future-proofing is the cherry on top.
- christophilus 10y agoI'd never heard of PeARS. I was just discussing this very idea with a friend of mine. I'd love to see a decentralized web, but search seems like a really tricky problem in that space. This is a clever solution.
- icebraining 10y agoNever heard of PeARS either, but YaCy has been around for quite a few years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoHeard about it because of this blog. Very excited to see more.
- piotrkubisa 10y agoThat's awesome news, NVDA and Caddy awarded for contributors work. I hope, in future there will be more companies donating money to attractive open-software projects.
- shitloadofbooks 10y agoI'm so happy NVDA is getting some funding! I work with a blind music producer who uses Windows and we make great use of NVDA (and Window Eyes).
- squiguy7 10y agoI'm impressed that MIO is getting funding. It will be great to have a safe library to create event-driven apps in Rust.
- bluejekyll 10y agoYeah. It's a great library. I use it now, there are some things to clean up cross OS from my experience, but in general it's an excellent multi-os async library.
- ndiscussion 10y agoTOR and MOSS are both extremely deserving recipients, but I'd say Mozilla is borderline unethical with their spending. Of the millions (yes millions) of dollars they've received, little seems to have gone toward Firefox development. Mozilla received over $121 million in 2010 from corporate sponsors. This is the same Mozilla that placed ADS in their new tab views. Really, they placed Paid Ads on the new tab screen. What were those for again? I do understand that Mozilla's mission is to improve the web. Donating to these causes certainly helps with that. But I'm still troubled that they put ads (with aggregate user tracking) into their core product.
- profeta 10y agocan't agree more. Feature with hundreds of requests gets shunned away. And things that people heavily opposes gets in just to be like chrome. All the last features on firefox were corporate driven. Bookmark system by pocket. Video chat by Telefonica. Sync goals was probably to make their ad share revenue grow as now you are a logged in user. etc etc etc Their most well paid dev is a javascript advocate! Chrome gives you much less control of the web, but everyone uses not because it is fast, but because firefox is getting behind on everything. While the owners arguee about UI changes instead of doing what was successful in the past: put the patch someone already provided as an option and release! the only interesting thing coming out mozilla nowadays that can change the world is fennec. the mobile version. But last builds on android cannot be completed without google proprietary apis anymore. and usability is crap now that they are trying to "fix" image viewing, which mind you, wasn't broken, it was just different than chrome.
- sanderjd 10y ago> the only interesting thing coming out mozilla nowadays that can change the world is fennec. A couple other interesting things they're working on: Servo[0] is a browser engine written from the ground up to take better advantage of multi-core computers. Rust[1] is a programming language that was originally created to help Servo achieve its goal of building a fast, concurrent, but secure browser, and has grown into a very interesting project in its own right. [0]: https://github.com/servo/servo https://github.com/servo/servo [1]: https://www.rust-lang.org/ https://www.rust-lang.org/
- dave2000 10y agoThat's great. Now if I could just read www.theonion.com on Firefox for Android without it crashing every time, that would be sweet.
- cpeterso 10y agoCan you share any crash report URLs from your about:crashes page?
- dave2000 10y agoYou mean this: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-fa160cdc-8a25-4935-a105-c0a0b2160623 https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-fa160cdc-8a2... ?
- cpeterso 10y agoThanks though I don't know why none of the threads in the crash report have any stack traces. Unfortunately this doesn't look actionable. I'll have to ask someone to take another look.
- Perceptes 10y agoWhat do security folks think of the DNSSEC/DANE award? This isn't substantiated, but my understanding was that those technologies were considering kind of a joke by the security community.
- e12e 10y agoIsn't it more the case of them being a different joke than the CA system and cert pinning?
- viraptor 10y agoIt's "apply more of the same" compared to the CA system. Cert pinning is different, that part is controlled by the actual cert owner, but only starting on second connection.
- e12e 10y agoWell, "trust on first use without revocation" is an entirely special kind of broken key distribution. But then again, they are all broken.
- SEJeff 10y agoHere you go, now it is substantiated, by Thomas Ptacek, HN's very own "tptacek": http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/ http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/ His argument is pretty convincing if you read into it.
- tptacek 10y agoDNSSEC is considered a joke by a pretty broad chunk of the software security field. It's supported by people involved with the standard and by people who operate DNS infrastructure. Very few other people really understand it. It gets ambient support from a lot of netsec people who assume anything+SEC must be better than anything-SEC.
- luso_brazilian 10y agoThe full list: > Tor: 152k > Tails (secure-by-default live operating system): 77k > Caddy (HTTP/2 web server that uses HTTPS automatically and by default via Let’s Encrypt): 50k > Mio (asynchronous I/O library written in Rust): 30k > DNSSEC/DANE Chain Stapling (standardizing and implementing a new TLS extension): 25k > Godot Engine: (high-performance multi-platform game engine which can deploy to HTML5): 20k > PeARS (lightweight, distributed web search engine): 15,5k > NVDA (open source screen reader): 15k I agree with the highlight given the open source screen reader. Accessibility is very important and unfortunately very neglected, mostly because (IMO) the tools to properly test can be very expensive or incompatible.
- asimuvPR 10y agoCould you expand more about accessibility? Thank you.
- kartD 10y agoIt's about software for people with accessibility problems. In NVDA's case (and for computer related accessibility in general), it means vision impaired/blind. From NVDA: " It reads the text on the screen in a computerised voice. You can control what is read to you by moving the cursor to the relevant area of text with a mouse or the arrows on your keyboard. NVDA can also convert the text into braille if the computer user owns a device called a “braille display”."
- asimuvPR 10y agoThank you. I was not aware of the braille display.
- majewsky 10y agoThis is really important, although only to a very small set of users. I know someone who has to work with a braille display, and he's stuck on Windows XP since that's the only platform which has a screen reader that fulfils all of his requirements.
- piotrjurkiewicz 10y agoIt is nice to see that all projects goals seems to be reasonable in this round. Unlike than in the previous one: > Buildbot: $15,000. Their award will be used to remove the term “slave” from all documentation, APIs and tests, and also to make improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open-source-support-first-awards-made/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open-source...
- frozenport 10y agoAlso miserably failed, see: http://buildbot.net/img/overview.png http://buildbot.net/img/overview.png But as Hegel taught us, it is really the master that is indentured to the slave!
- piotrjurkiewicz 10y agoCan I ask why my previous comment was flagged, and therefore became invisible? It wasn't off topic -- it concerned a project from the previous round of Mozilla Awards.
- frozenport 10y agoOr why the fudge I got -5 votes for pointing out that they failed to remove the word "slave"? As pointed out by OP, Mozilla gave thousands and thousands of dollars to a release engineering project `remove the term “slave” from all documentation` [1] [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open-source-support-first-awards-made/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open-source...
- EdSharkey 10y agoMozilla, please help fund Privacy Badger for Firefox on Android. Thanks!
- callahad 10y agoInstructions for applying for MOSS grants can be found under each of the three tracks listed on https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS
- andyjdavis 10y agoI am curious about the mechanics of how the projects will spend this money. I have had quite a bit of professional experience working as a developer within an open source project and I honestly don't know what we would have done had someone showed up with a one time payment of this size. The dollar amounts are too low to hire a full-time dev. They presumably have insufficient volunteers or they wouldn't need this money. So I am guessing that they will be offering existing volunteers some money to devote more time to the project. Another alternative would be hiring in some contractor who has no prior relationship with the project but having someone who doesn't know the project come in and implement something before vanishing and leaving everyone else to maintain their stuff is unappealing.
- mperham 10y agoYep, that's a huge problem with "sustainable" OSS: it's wonderful to get a one-time $50k grant but if you expect to spend the next 10 years maintaining a reasonably complex/sized project, that $5k/yr is still minimum wage.
- mholt 10y agoI don't think there's any expectation that $50k will fund 10 years of development.
- fijal 10y agoNo, but "I donated $10 3 years ago and you guys are SLOW at responding to my queries!" is an incredibly common attitude. Open Source has shown that it's a far superior development methodology, but there is definitely some negativity associated with "expect stuff for free"
- slgeorge 10y agoFor a lot of OSS projects users who have donated feeling entitled would be a good problem to have. There are plenty of users who feel entitled and they don't donate time or money!
- EGreg 10y agoHow do we apply? Our open source platform aims to re-decentralize the web. http://qbix.com/platform http://qbix.com/platform
- mintplant 10y ago> Instructions for applying for MOSS grants can be found under each of the three tracks listed on https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958584
- mxuribe 10y agoQbix sounds interesting. (I've starred your github repo.) Perhaps I'm missing something, but how could the Qbix platform help to re-decentralize the web (genuinely asking 'cause I'm curious, not trying to be smart-ass)? Is this a platform that could be used - for one example - to build other platforms such as Gnu Social, etc.?
- tcdent 10y agoI hope this type of funding continues to grow. A significant number of people getting paid to contribute to public software sounds like some utopia to me. More people could strive to create projects that actually make the world a better place, instead of another SaaS product to pay the bills. Some (many, all?) open source projects provide exponentially more to the world than was ever invested both monetarily and in donated time. There is not often an obvious gain for investors, though, so the practice of selfless funding remains a privilege to few.
- _pmf_ 10y agoShouldn't they use part of it for making an awesome browser instead of playing the role of benevolent patron for other projects? But obviously, I don't know whether they have already given up going against Chrome.
- Jommi 10y agoWould have been cool of them to support Django. https://www.djangoproject.com/fundraising/ https://www.djangoproject.com/fundraising/
- whyever 10y agoWhy?
- yedpodtrzitko 10y agoaddons.mozilla.org is powered by Django
- scrollaway 10y agoTo hazard a guess, because they use it quite a bit for their websites. But there's a million projects they could have donated to... Django is just one of many.
- Jommi 10y agoSorry for not explainig futher: -It seems to fit their criteria of Open Source Projects -They ultilize it a lot in their projects, here is just one big example: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/ https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/ -They've received donations from Mozilla before: https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/dec/11/django-awarded-moss-grant/ https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/dec/11/django-awar... -The fundraising needs all the help it gets, its only at 20% and over half of the year has gone :/ https://www.djangoproject.com/fundraising/ https://www.djangoproject.com/fundraising/
- jsmeaton 10y agoThey did, but in a different batch or track. https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/dec/11/django-awarded-moss-grant/ https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/dec/11/django-awar...
- timwaagh 10y agocool that they are awarding funds, but giving tor this kind of money, it being a spy/insurgent/criminal tool and after all the scandals it is involved in, is not great. tails is, of course, another such spy tool. it gives the impression mozilla is mostly concerned with undermining state/rule of law/formenting political instability. i think they might contribute more to projects that benefit everyday digital citizens rather than activists. I like Caddy, Pears, godot and NVDA though.
- r3bl 10y agoI would love to hear about those scandals. Especially in the Tails case. Could you explain your reasoning?
- timwaagh 10y agoi was referring to tor. you probably know about the drug markets and more importantly the abuse case. If you read it again i'm merely saying Tails is another spy tool. i am not saying it is involved in any scandals.
- ashitlerferad 10y agoTor and Tails are tools for everyone who cares about their privacy, not just for spies.
- thrkw123456789 10y ago? Tor is freely available to any one. Tor browser is so simple my mother uses it. At this point I don't understand why people would do a websearch for something they would not discuss in public without using Tor.
- kirkdouglas 10y agoI hope Mozilla will add seamless Tor interoperability in future versions of Firefox.
- kriro 10y agoPeARS looks very interesting I had never heard of it before not had I considered P2P web-search to be honest. That is a pretty exciting idea and I'll follow them closely :)
- chachram 10y agoThis is great news. More companies should donate money to useful open-software projects