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| Mitchell Baker CEO, Mozilla Corporation |
Posted on 12/04/2005 10:32:34 PM PST by nickcarraway
Mitchell Baker is, in many ways, everything Bill Gates is not.
Microsoft Chairman Gates is male, and firmly believes software should be created and owned by individual companies.
Baker is female, despite the sound of her first name, and a champion of ``open source.'' That's the once-radical notion that software should be written cooperatively and freely shared.
What makes Baker worth watching is her job overseeing the Mozilla Project, an open-source effort based in Mountain View that develops the free Internet browser called Firefox.
So far, Firefox is the only open-source software widely adopted by consumers, and that makes it a threat to Microsoft.
Firefox took a big step forward last week with the release of version 1.5, the biggest upgrade since the original version 1.0 leaped onto the scene in November 2004.
Before Firefox, Microsoft seemed to have decisively won the browser wars of the 1990s by crushing rival Netscape. But Netscape, shortly before disappearing into the maw of America Online, donated its key software code to the Mozilla Project -- named for Netscape's informal mascot, a Godzilla-like lizard.
Microsoft largely ignored browser development after releasing Internet Explorer 6 in 2001, despite the browser's many security flaws and lack of modern features.
``The Web changes, the content changes, so your browser needs to keep up,'' Baker said during a 90-minute interview Wednesday, the day after Firefox 1.5 launched.
Millions of computer users apparently agree. Firefox came out of nowhere last year to grab a worldwide market share that now stands at 10 to 12 percent, depending on which market research study you check, and pushed Microsoft down by an equal amount to about 85 percent.
Baker, 48, might not have the star power of Gates, but she does get attention with her bright red hair, sheared to a near buzz cut on the left side of her face but swooping into a bob on the right. It almost looks like the Firefox logo, a bushy orange fox curled around the globe. But it's not a case of life imitating art -- Baker says she picked the hairstyle before the Firefox logo was created.
That logo's expanding market share finally jolted Microsoft out of its slumber in February.
Instead of offering the next version of Internet Explorer only with its new operating system, Windows Vista, due in the second half of 2006, Microsoft decided Internet Explorer 7 would also be released next year for computers running today's Windows XP operating system.
The humble Mozilla Project, in other words, forced Microsoft to sacrifice a powerful selling point for Windows Vista -- a new browser -- in making Internet Explorer 7 freely available to current users.
But Mozilla now faces a bigger challenge in moving beyond 10 percent market share.
The early adopters and Web enthusiasts who've flocked to Firefox are low-hanging fruit. It will be much harder to shake the other 90 percent from their Internet Explorer inertia.
Firefox 1.5 has a long list of improvements and new features, but the most important in reaching non-expert users is automatic updates.
Previous updates of Firefox -- from version 1.0.6, for example, to version 1.0.7 -- required downloading and installing the entire browser application. Although the installation file is a relatively svelte 5 megabytes, most Firefox users didn't bother. That's a big security risk, because hackers often look at security holes fixed by an update and then race to take advantage of those holes on computers that haven't been updated.
Automatic updates, where small patch files are pulled onto your computer and you need only click once to install them, falls into the category Baker calls ``unglamorous but fundamental.'' Firefox, in short, is now safe for the mass of computer users who will only upgrade when it's the path of least resistance.
Even as Firefox continues to stay out front of Internet Explorer, Baker has challenges in managing a complex structure.
The Mozilla Project and its Firefox trademark are the property of the Mozilla Foundation, of which Baker is a director. The foundation, hobbled by the rules governing non-profit organizations, formed the for-profit Mozilla Corp. in August with Baker as its chief executive officer. She also continues to hold the whimsical title of ``chief lizard wrangler'' for the Mozilla Project.
The corporation now employs 36 of the 40 employees who work full-time in the foundation's Mountain View office, in an office park clinging to the bay side of Highway 101.
Most of the foundation's revenue comes from big Web operators, including Google and Yahoo, who pay millions of dollars for preferential positioning in the Firefox search window.
Firefox has largely drawn new users so far by word-of-mouth marketing and news coverage, rather than conventional software marketing tactics.
To grow, Mozilla's corporate arm may need to get Firefox pre-installed on new PCs, a practice called ``bundling.'' But bundling is expensive, because computer makers expect to be paid handsomely for adding software to their machines.
Baker, who lives in Belmont with her 7-year-old son and husband, an open-source software developer at Stanford University, said Mozilla is considering bundling and hasn't yet reached any deals. Then she adds, somewhat cryptically, ``I think something will happen.''
Story ends with Microsoft buying Firefox and renaming it Internet Explorer 2006.
My specific reason for choosing Thunderbird over Outlook or Outlook Express is that Thunderbird creates standard ASCII mail stores which can readily be searched with a variety of programs. I always felt that MS was somewhat hijacking my mail because I could access it only through their clients. I keep a lot of old mail and use it somewhat as a personal database. I don't want it all hacked up in an MS mystery format that looks, at first glance, almost like plain text but definitely is not.
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| Mitchell Baker CEO, Mozilla Corporation |
her hairstylist forgot one side
Looks like a Pat.
I use Firefox and like did like it. Last week it dumped ALL my book marks, *poof* all gone. Dont know the cause yet, it may not be a Firefox glitch, could be a hostile program.
Depending on which version you are using, there may be a backup of your bookmarks in a file on your PC. Do a search for any file with the word "bookmarks" in it.
If you find it, restore it. Then make regular copies of it to protect yourself.
Ill give'r a try, thanks.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Firefox is already distributed with most distros.
It's an older picture, it doesn't match the verbal description in the initial post, of "her bright red hair, sheared to a near buzz cut on the left side of her face but swooping into a bob on the right," and she looks rather more ordinary.
I liked the first picture more.
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