[music] Netscape is, of course, known for
it's Netscape Navigator product, first
commerical browser on the web.
So first tool.
First generation really used to get on the
web and that was successful for a while.
And then competition became quite stiff
from Microsoft.
The different way to compete by building a
shared asset.
Instead of Netscape versus Microsoft.
That Netscape would gather contributions
of volunteers and other commercial part,
commercial partners, and then build the
product that would be shared.
And that group of people knew that to be
open source, you have to be real.
You couldn't just say, oh, we are open
source, love us.
You really had to manage it differently.
So at the time there was six or seven or
eight of us who were employed by Netscape,
as Mozilla.org staff.
And another 100 or 150 employed by
Netscape as Netscape engineers, building
the Netscape product.
And contributing their work to the Mozilla
open source project.
So we were all in the same buildings.
We all went to many of the same meetings.
But we had slightly different goals.
Because although we call it the Netscape
product, Netscape had been purchased by
AOL already.
And so the client itself was diminishing
in importance, and the importance of the
Netscape client was to push traffic to the
AOL websites.
But we, of course, at mozilla.org were an
anomaly.
Because our charter was to build a
successful open source project.
And so, that worked for quite a while.
You know, there, there were tensions.
You know?
These were the dark years for Mozilla.
We came to understand we needed to rebuild
our core technology.
That took a long time.
While we were doing that, market share
continued to slide.
And there was a set of tensions over what
does it mean to run a real open-source
project.
And as it turned out, there were two
competing views.
One view was that Open source is
phenomenal, we're very happy that the code
is out there.
Everyone is very welcome to take it and
use it.
We absolutely want to build a large and
engaged contributor community.
But all decisions and all authority will
be held by the management group and we'll
make those decisions as we think best,
which is of course...
To benefit the client we're trying to
build which was the Netscape browser.
We at Mozilla.org were convinced it
wouldn't be successful, that, building a
product to benefit AOL only wouldn't
generate the kind of interest either from
individual volunteers or from commercial
partners that we needed to be successful.
And that we found the difference in
perspective from the volunteers made the
quality of the project much higher.
They were under immense pressure to ship
this product because the company needed
it.
And not only was it difficult technically
and in an engineering sense But we at
misoula.org were saying, and there's these
other things, right?
You may think it's good enough, but we're
telling you it's not because this is the
feedback that we're getting.
And you need to change some of the
development processes and management
practices.
And so they thought well, I, I'm not sure
what they thought.
But we experienced it as No, we really
need to keep going on the way that we're
going till we get this product shipped.
But unfortunately, here the Mozilla
community was correct because when that
product shipped it was a failure.
That we Netscape 6.
Universally acknowledged as a bad product
and pretty universally acknowledged as the
end of the Netscape product line.
You know there are all those people that
had held on and hoped through the Nestcape
four days and waited and waited and waited
for.
For the update once they got it pretty
much gave up.
So that's what we experienced.
So that certainly didn't help us, that was
unfortunate.
It did reinforce our view that, you know
our view of the world wasn't crazy.
And, so we continued on and it was still
long and slow to get technology and
product that we liked.
And the tensions continued.
The management tensions continued.
You know, the failure of Netscape 6 didn't
make anything easier.
And certainly, for the, the AOL folks, it
really didn't make things easier either.
And we fought a lot about the UI.
I think UIs a constant source of tension.
But in our case, it was worse.
Because some of these fights would be.
It makes sense to AOL to put something in
the product.
In the interface of the product.
Either a button to an AOL site.
Or something that has an ad in it.
Or, some feature that a partner has paid
for.
So it generates revenue.
We think it might send people to our site.
You know, some of our users might really
like it.
So it all made sense from their point of
view, but if you're not building the AOL
client to benefit AOL, then you're trying
to build an open-source product that is
used for many people.
Then, of course, those features are a big
negative.
And so those were very fierce fights,
because, because the management of the
client group had very clear opportunities
in hand that they wanted to build into
their product.
And we were this small group saying no.
>> You were diametrically opposed.
>> We were pretty opposed in that case,
and we would say no, you can't put it into
the quarter product.
You're welcome to have a build system on
your own and add it in later.
And that's how we ended up doing this
thing.
So we, so we did develop a system for it.
But it was, of course, it's awkward.
And you're always rubbing against what
should go where.
And it turned out, even in the very early
days, that the open source Mozilla
versions of the product got a lot more
testing than the Netscape versions.
And we also tried to build in some.
Quality mechanisms that again, seem normal
today.
So you can't you get hired as an employee,
you don't automatically get the right to
check your code into the tree.
But someone has to look at your
qualifications and say, at Mozilla and the
way we work Your coding level we
understand.
You know how we work, we understand if
something goes wrong with your code, you
know where you need to be and all of these
things.
And that's a very difficult setting for a
hiring manager to say, well I've just
hired you, and you can't be as efficient
as you think you can because there's yet
another vetting process by this other
group.
So I understand, yeah, why it was
difficult, but on the other hand as an
open source project, if you can't control
the quality of the code and you don't have
any say in it.
You're not very real.
Aol client fortunes declined and the
Netscape browser declined and declined
precipitously after this, Netscape 6.
And so AOL was interested in laying off
people and in 1 of the big layoffs, I was.
And that was, see, that was in 2001.
And that was seen as a power struggle as
well.
Because by that time.
The fights back and forth about what we
were building and who was making decisions
were pretty well-known within the
engineering organizations.
It's hard for them not to be.
I mean, it's true anywhere, right, but,
but in some cases the fights and the bugs
are all very public as well.
But, and, and so, so I was laid off Fired,
depending on your, you know, how you want
to describe it.
And as it turned out, it wasn't really
possible to take my place and I continued
as a volunteer and the Netscape
Engineering Organization was very clear
whose leadership they were most interested
in following.
And so [laugh] we had to work out a way in
which the management had Netscape AOL that
remained.
And I worked out a, you know, sort of a
way to worked together enough, so that
they could ship the product they wanted to
ship.
But that I continued to lead the project.
And I think that was a surprise not, not
so much to me.
I, I, I think and, and so I worked as a
volunteer on the Mozilla project and for a
number of years including the years in
which we shipped our first product which
we called Mozilla and which we're very
proud of technically and for it's day,
many people are surprised just how good it
was but it didn't have a good user
Experience.
But eventually I ended up working on
another open source project with Mitch
Kapor for a while.
And that was mucky.
He started this open project and reached
out to talk to Brendan and I About it to
learn something.
And the day that he was scheduled to come
down and talk with us was the day that I
was laid-off.
>> And so it, it was an odd sort of
timing.Chandler Investment, by any
chance?Yeah, that was Chandler.
That was pre-Chandler, but it was So I, I
worked on that for a while.
And, and Mitch was always a supporter of
Mozilla.
Even before Firefox, when he didn't like
the product.
But he recognized that we were an
important part of the ecosystem.
And that went on until 2003 when AOL
decided to stop investing in a client
almost completely and, fortunately, they
knew that just killing it wasn't good.
They knew nothing about Mozilla and the
name and the brand to think it would be
good to do something with it.
And, so eventually I ended up working with
them, and, and they, some of the people
there knew Mitch as well.
And I was working with Mitch, and they
knew him, and so we all, you know, spent a
chunk of time trying to figure out what
was possible.
And my partner Brendan was still at
Netscape.
There either to make a move and many of
the key people we wanted were also
desperate, to keep working in almost over
and so ended up getting a 2 million dollar
seed money for my aol and image yourself
over that and few other things, trademark,
name of Zuilla and the 4 giant servers
which were so important to us at the time
and would have taken almost 18 months to
get.
Through the purchase cycle at AOL.
And so I think we still have those boxes
sitting around, because they were so
important to us at the time.
And so in 2003 the Misola foundation was
formed.
And Mitch was the first chairman because
he had done so much and had so much to
offer.
And Brian Belendorff and, and Chris
Blizzard, worked on Mozilla forever and
Brenda and I were on the board.
And AOL understood that there were three
or four people that would be leaving, when
they, they did some kind of re-org or when
they closed down the client group.
And that those people would be coming to
join us or and, of all the people that we
thought would be most helpful at Mozilla,
they all came.
That was about nine or ten.
So we were, and Mitch continued to support
me, and, one other person in Mozilla part
time.
So maybe 10 or 11 people.
And I, and Brendan and I had always felt
that we needed employees.
It was exciting, a little scary because we
knew that too many knowledge wouldn't go
that far, and that we had a lot of work to
do to make ourselves real.
We were still 18 months away from
shipping, well 15 months away from
shipping Firefox.
So that part was scary.
But it was immensely exciting.
One of the friends of Mozilla showed up,
and they had a big lease, and a little bit
of space they could sublease to us.
So we found a funky little room, way in
the back, not even a sink.
[laugh] Very odd, but, but we were really
happy with it.
And we worked away on building our
product.
At that time, we made what was a pretty
fundamental change that was critical, and
we decided unambiguously it'd be a
consumer product.
That seems obvious, but when you have a
bunch of developers it's not that easy,
and it means that you have to strip-out a
lot of the, things that are clunky, for a
general consumer.
You really have to be determined.
That you're building for a general
consumer, not yourself.
And I think many open source projects
probably don't want to do that and
shouldn't try if you don't want to,
because you have to keep at it.
So we started doing that.
Out of the blue, some visual designers
appeared from Centre Island in Canada and
so we started to get nice looking logos,
which we'd never had before and visual
elements and then we tried to figure out
what to do with the start page, because we
knew that Mozilla development tools
weren't the right answer and we just, took
us for ever and we looked at all sorts of
things and finally decided.
The one thing we knew that everybody did
was search.
You know we have people who say well it's
obvious you should have the BBC, at least
an english language version.
It's obvious.
And then you know our engineering guy
would look up and say well it's not
obvious to my 17 year old daughter that
that's what she wants.
It's not obvious to my son either.
So, but everybody used search.
So we thought we have the search box.
Maybe we should put that on a start page
to make it easier maybe it be more obvious
to people about search.
So we went to talk with the search
providers we had very fruitful discussion
with Google I think they also saw the
value of having Mozilla browser in the
world they were very explicit about that
and I believe them.
And so, they're also open to doing, a
business arrangement.
And so often people ask, how Mozilla gets
paid, and we're like most businesses on
the web, searc-, search and ads.
You do a search, you know you'll see ads,
if you follow those ads, revenue is
generated, you know it goes through the
system and we get a little piece of As do
other browser makers.
So it's very similar to the business model
on the web.
And we did something that I believe had
never been done before, which was to make
sure that Google and Yahoo were right
there next to each other.
I, you don't see them next to each other.
You have to click on the arrow, but
they're there.
And today people laugh at me when, when I
say that, because you only see one, but,
but I negotiated that, and that was an
absolute.
Either I will walk away from the deal,
term, to everyone.
But I don't think I'd ever seen it before.
And I wasn't.
You know as you get on a plane and you
want a Diet Coke, but the plane only has
diet Pepsi, because that's their deal,
you're angry, and you don't want a Diet
Pepsi and you want a Coke.
And I, I used that example.
I said, I'm not going to have Firefox
users angry at us because they wanted one
or the other.
You know, you have to agree you're both
going to be in the product.
>> But it also is your values, right?
It is.
>> Yes.
>> Your values front and center.
>> Yes, because the choice is there.
We can do it.
And, and to not do it would be to take
away a choice that somebody really wants.
And it matters to someone, so.
So we, we have a choice in the search box.
But we still didn't really know what to
expect.
So we shipped Firefox.
And our sense that we were onto something
turned out to be far more true, even than
we knew.
We had seen a, you know, rise in interest
from 0.8 and 0.9 that was pretty
noticeable but once we hit the release
version it just exploded.
And part of that was it was just the
perfect product.
This time we had products at the right
time in the market.
And then internet capabilities have grown
and now people could actually download a
browser easily, and more people had
bandwidths and ability to do so and a
comfort level to try it.
So that was good, for we had a beautiful
product, and it was an important product.
And the alternative was horrendous and
dangerous and awful.
And so, all of that combined to create
this giant excitement.
And so Firefox market share climbed by,
you know, a percentage point immediately
and started moving in these huge numbers.
So there was a completely viral storm with
nothing driving it other than, you know,
the product and the need, so, so that took
everyone by surprise.
You know, we were hoping to be able to
generate a few million dollars to support
ourselves for the next year.
You know, we had 10 or 11 employees; you
start to add that up, so we were hoping to
make enough money to do that.
And it turned out, you know, we generated
that amount of money before the end of the
year.
Six weeks or eight weeks or whatever it
was before the end of the year.
And so, things, actually things got even
more stressful and more hectic at that
point.
Because now you kind of got the proverbial
tiger by the tail.
We're still 12 people.
Right, so that immediate need to grow and
that sense of pressure and stress combined
with elation and success is probably, you
know I don't know maybe it's like having a
child.
Right, but it's that, it's that
combination doesn't immediately get
easier.
>> It's a little easier to be anonymous.
>> Yes, yes.
>> You're nervous.
>> Yes, But yes, that's for sure.
We certainly see that, and so by the end
of first half of 2004, just actually, we
just passed the 8 year anniversary.
And you know, by the end of 2004, it was
pretty clear that we were a different
organization.
We were, we were I would say still
struggling with a different set of
problems but we had changed the nature of
the problems really quite fundamentally.
And, you know we'd done so in a way that,
that our users loved.
By 2005 we were in a really different
world, where.
We began to be able to actually influence
others and that's always been the goal.
I mean, market share is nice and it's nice
when people love your product.
Market share is a validation that you
produced the right thing, so that's
awesome on it's own.
But the more important, I would say not
more important, equally important goal is
to be able to influence not only
ourselves, but others in the industry so
that we start to see more of the things
that we care about.
[music]