Open-source Ecosystem and Education

Títle: Open-source Ecosystem and Education

Author: Chris Hofmann (Mozilla Foundation)

Date: Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Where: Auditório Jacy Monteiro, bloco B at IME/USP

Abstract: This session explores how open source movements can serve undergraduate education and research teams to provide learning opportunities to enrich research and course curriculum development.

In the past, university-driven research groups had to go through significant effort to have successful research work in partnership with private companies and gain real-world experience. This model required a stronger return of investment for companies or planned research and development budgets and the closed nature of these businesses makes full engagement difficult.

Open-source projects like Mozilla offer a flexible and open model for research and education groups and expanded range of activities for research.  Most importantly Mozilla projects can have real-world impact.

The presentation focuses in the Mozilla project, from its open-source roots to end-user systems, with emphasis on the framework of many opportunities for individuals and research groups to work within, and contribute to, a large-scale and highly distributed community.

About the author: As director of engineering and Special Projects at the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation, Chris Hofmann has spearheaded the research and development work of thousands of open source contributors around the world and has contributed to every Netscape and Mozilla browser release since 1996. As the first employee at the Mozilla Foundation in August 2003, Chris led a small team of top engineers to establish the foundation as an independent and self-sustaining organization. In 2004, Chris managed and executed the first worldwide release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0. The Firefox release helped to fulfill the Mozilla Foundation’s goal of supporting open Web standards, provide innovation and choice for Internet software, and its broad acceptance in the marketplace has set Firefox on a path to remarkable marketshare growth. Chris now develops partnerships with companies that test, develop and distribute Mozilla technology in a variety of ways. He also helps to build out Mozilla communities around the world that are involved with localization of Firefox in to over 40 languages, and provide support to Firefox users. He engages with security researchers to help improve browser security, and works on a variety of mobile initiatives using the Mozilla technology.