So, for my political science class we’re tasked with learning about social entrepreneurialism by doing it ourselves. We pick a thematic stream at the beginning of the year that will be the focus for all of our various assignments in the course - including a group project done collaboratively with the people who chose the same theme.
I, being the geek that I am, chose “Access to technology.” Now, my essay deals with the organizational challenges within open source communities and companies that attempt to fulfill this challenge on a global level - making software anyone from anywhere can (and would want to) use. The group project mandates that we explore the theme on a local level - to learn the practical implications of making things like this happen with real people, rather than academic analysis of these groups in the abstract.
It’s a pretty cool idea. So cool, in fact, that such a engaging mandate needs to be met with an engaging project. The first step in the process is to pick an organization that has local representation in Toronto - pretty easy really considering the prominence within the country. After about two minutes of browsing lists of local orgs I recalled that Mozilla had offices here in Toronto and immediately set upon Mozilla corp as my group of interest.
So my group is studying the history and evolution of Mozilla, the political structures within the organization and the context in which Mozilla exists as an open source company and how these relate to the themes of access to technology, global networks and social entrepreneurialism. The deliverable that we’re being marked on is a presentation describing our findings and efforts with a project on which the team has worked.
Obviously developing software for Mozilla is out of the question given the skillset of my group - so some sort of FireFox extension ain’t happening. Moreover, I think by focusing on the software itself we miss the main point and value statement of Mozilla and organizations like it.
The initial idea was to investigate opportunities for growth in adoption of Mozilla products - primarily FireFox. The team would research organizations or institutions that haven’t yet abandoned the Big Blue E and aid them in transitioning from the old software to the new by training them and their staff on the new product and its value. We’d also value-add by brokering a line of communication from them to Mozilla by examining unfulfilled or partially fulfilled requirements in the software and suggesting ways that Mozilla coudl improve their product. Essentially championing the interests of this organization within the Mozilla community so that said organization didn’t have to do so itself (I also took note that this could be a viable business model).
However, Mozilla isn’t FireFox. It’s an informal community, a formal organization, a legal structure (the license), and a methodology for software development. THESE are the important aspects of Mozilla and this is what I hope to discuss in my report AND address in the project - primarily because Mozilla is staightforward to relate to political science whereas FireFox requires conceptually going through Mozilla to discuss any PoliSci aspects. So cut out the middle man.
So what kind of project would work? Firstly, I thought the above method was too one-directional, it didn’t capture the essence of open source which is the interplay between evangelism and involvement. Proprietary is offered, more or less on a take-it-or-leave it basis wherein customers can request changes at best. FLOSS allows users to inject those desired changes into the software (subject to community approval of course). However, there’s a significant disconnect between users, community developers and organizational leaders. What can fill that gap? A user group!
The concept here is an organization the facilitates a three way discourse between the community of people who make the software, the world of people, organizations etc who USE the software and finally the organization that controls the software; Mozilla.
Imagine I’m a graduate student in information studies @ UofT and I want to do a project on the esthetics of information and I want to build a software application that does visualization of info. I’m not a software developer but I don’t have the money to pay for development - how do I get this made? One way is to go to the CompSci people and request an academic brokerage to connect me with an undergrad who’s looking for development work and the two of us can work together to build the software.
What if we had a organization dedicated to doing just that with Mozilla software? What if you had a cool idea for an extension and were trying to find ways to get it done? Or you BUILT an extension and you’re trying to find people to use it?
These are questions that Mozilla User Group @ Toronto Universities (MUG@TU, like the villain in Zoolander) can answer. MUG@TU will also actively look for problems around campus to solve using the toolchest of process, community, software, management that Mozilla provides. It’ll act as an evangelistic body for Mozilla within the communities of Toronto area Universities (UofT, Ryerson, York & OCAD). With a combined enrollment of over 70,000 students there are a LOT of opportunities for involvement.
Spread Firefox is great for those who don’t have connection to large (huge, in this case) communities or organizations upon which to foist Mozilla. By encouraging potential users to seek out MUG@TU to solve their communications problems and by advertising the availability of Mozilla products for all sorts of things besides web browsing I think we extend the upper-growth limit exponentially.
Now, if only I could get the Mozilla people on board we could have something.