If you’ve been hanging around the Internet for the past few months then by no doubt you have heard of the new web browser that is taking the world by storm. Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation’s alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, has been gaining momentum in the last few weeks before it’s 1.0 release. The feverish climax came over the past few weeks as the folks at www.spreadfirefox.com set out to raise enough money for a full page ad in the New York Times. They ended up getting ten thousand people to donate and raised approximately a quarter of a million dollars. Where did these ten thousand people come from? It seems like a lot of people doesn’t it? Well not really, it’s only one tenth of a percent of the total amount of estimated Firefox users (~10 million).

So, when the Mozilla Foundation releases Firefox 1.0 with full page ads, a media blitz (more than likely the foundation will be swamped with media requests) they are going to hit the big time. Firefox is pulling the foundation into the limelight and it will never be the same. The Mozilla Foundation is about to set foot into challenging uncharted territory. They are going to need wisdom, foresight, and skill to get through and flourish in the days, months, and years to come. What follows is an outline of what I see the key issues being for the short, medium, and long term.

Short Term Challenges
No Longer An Average Open Source Project:
The Mozilla Foundation is a not for profit group that was started when Netscape released its browser code to the open source community. Since then a handful of staff and many more volunteers have been laboring away making browsers, email clients, and an Internet suite of applications. Until recently it has been an average open source project with many peers. When Firefox is accepted by the masses the Mozilla Foundation is going to be a very distinct open source project. It is going to be the only open source project to date that will have been adopted by the world at large. Some would say that linux, apache, and other famous open source projects have already done this. In some ways they have, but in other ways they definitely have not. Linux, apache, and others have been widely adopted by the geek culture. I use Linux. The web development firm I work with uses Apache and PHP. But my mom doesn’t have a clue what Linux, Apache, or PHP means, let alone what they do. Firefox is going to be the first open source project to get mass market adoption. Unlike PHP and Apache people will actually choose to use it. It takes a conscious decision to use Firefox whereas with PHP and Apache average folks use them without knowing. Millions of average people are going to use Firefox. My mom will use it.

This huge uptake by the masses will propel the Mozilla Foundation into the spotlight. A lot of people are going to equate open source with Firefox. How the Mozilla Foundations uses this attention is going to be critical. If it can use the attention to educate the market to the other 99.9% of the open source community then it will be on the right track. It if bogs down under the attention and basks in its own glory the glory will not last that long.

Seeing Firefox 1.0 as the Beginning not the End
With all of this hype about the 1.0 release it almost seems that there is very little vision past it, organizationally that is. Technically I’m sure there are plans, improvements, and ideas whirling around. If the Mozilla Foundation is going to capitalize on the attention the Firefox 1.0 release is getting and will continue to get it must start publicly talking about what it is going to be doing, not just what it has done. Of course, they’ll have to know what they are going to be doing before they talk can about it.

There will be a tendency, it’s human nature, for the foundation to put up their feet, slap each other on the back and congratulate themselves on a job well done. This is all well and good but we’re no where near the finish line. There is no finish line. The foundation is going to have to start looking at the future, not just of Firefox, but of itself in general.

Can The Mozilla Foundation Handle the Success?
Success is a funny creature. Everyone works towards it but no one ever seems to be happy when they obtain it. Success bloats egos, it gives a false sense of importance, and it blurs vision when it comes to what is really important. I doubt that the Mozilla Foundation, more specifically the people in it, are going to be able to buck the trend when it comes to success. A solution they may want to look at immediately is developing an understanding (or policy) that will curb the effects that egos, money, and success have on an organization. If the understanding is in place before the success then there is a good chance they will be able to come through without ruining everything that was good before they became this year’s prom queen of the Internet.

Money. Take it or leave it?
Through the NY Times ad campaign the foundation raised a quarter of a million dollars. That’s a lot of money no matter which way you look at it. Money comes hand in hand with success. As more and more people use Firefox more and more opportunities to capitalize on those users are going to arise. How the foundation deals with money is going to be crucial over the short, medium, and long term. The important thing about money, like success, is to realize that more is not better. In order to keep “the magic” and be true to its roots the Mozilla Foundation will have to turn down more opportunities than it takes up. If the foundation blindly goes into the next few days, months, and years without a clear understanding of what it will and will not do then it will follow every dangled carrot and be torn into many pieces.

Medium Term Challenges
“I liked them better before they sold out”
With Firefox gaining so much popularity it is naturally going to repulse some of the initial supporters. The open source community is much like the independent music industry. They like being unknown. When a little band makes it big their initial fans are at first excited for the band and their success. That quickly slips into disdain for the band and them “selling out”. How many times have we heard a hard core indy music fan claim that “their earlier albums were better”, “i liked them before they sold out”, etc. This will happen to the Mozilla Foundation and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. Accepting this and planning/working around it with regards to the direction of the foundation will be key to its long term viability.

Keeping it Small
For some reason with success comes the desire to get bigger. To make the empire larger and to involve more people in its building. Without keeping it in check growth soon becomes the mantra for an organization and quickly overshadows all other goals. The Mozilla Foundation has gotten to this point by being small, nimble, and responsive. If it looses this and gets too big too fast it will become exactly what it originally opposed and a new nimble, fast, responsive project will spring up in opposition of the foundation. The folks at Mozilla will have to carefully regulate their size, both in staff and volunteers. It may in fact be better to not get some things done than to bring on more people to do them.

Don’t Turn Into a One Ring Circus
Firefox is fantastic. I have been using it as my primary browser since its new branding. It works. It works well. It works much better than Internet Explorer. Me and ten million of my closest friends think this. This is risky business. With Firefox’s enormous popularity, publicity, and momentum the Foundation could easily forget about all of the other important things it does. Thunderbird is a good email program. It’s not great, but neither was Phoenix and Firebird when they started (firefox’s previous names). The Mozilla Foundation needs to look at its mandate and stick with it. Fame will come and go. But if you have enough good projects you can level that fame out to the benefit of all of the projects.

Long Term
If Firefox flies as well as most believe, and the Mozilla foundation can manage the success without bloating, becoming disgustingly business like, and without forgetting to promote the foundation (not just Firefox), then the world at large is going to turn to and trust Mozilla for more open source alternatives. What Mozilla decides to do with regard to this is, I think, the most critical decision it will ever make. Does it start new projects from scratch? Does it “acquire” new projects from the Open Source world? Or does it somehow become an organizational vehicle to bring Firefoxesque open source projects to the world? It could possibly provide the last layers of polish (names, logos, etc), bug fix management, promotion, and general project oversight to those projects that could be the next Firefox. This would allow the foundation to capitalize on its strengths & experiences, not over tax its staff & volunteers, and provide fresh and exciting work for many a geek. This could potentially maintain the excitement that is being felt with Firefox’s success.

The Mozilla Foundation is a young creature. It’s a young creature in a young industry (computers in general are young, but specifically the Open Source Software phenomenon). The foundation is going to need to figure out for itself where it fits into the world of Open Source and specifically how it will behave when it inevitably becomes the perceived facilitator between Open Source Internet technology projects and the general Internet population.

Regardless of what and when all of this is decided, in the future the Mozilla Foundation is going to need smart people thinking about the organization and its direction and goals just as much as it will need smart people thinking about its software.