At Mozilla we foster a healthy ecosystem of communities that promote the ability to freely access, modify and distribute software and creative works. These ecosystems create a digital commons; a shared space, shared resources or network of ideas, applications and products that are free to use.
Much like a park is a vital ecosystem for collaboration, recreation, conservation and commerce, the values of park ring very true within the open source software moment. Take a look back at Firefox release history and you’ll see that previous versions of have been named after parks like Gran Paradiso (Italy), Bon Echo (Canada) and Shiretoko (Japan). Mozilla community members in Japan were so honoured to have Firefox 3.5 code-named after their UNSECO world heritage site park, Shiretoko, that they created Discover Shiretoko to celebrate the park as an important part of their national heritage and to celebrate Firefox and its role in creating a better Internet.
There is a story here to be told about the history of Mozilla and of Firefox and at the same time, we have an opportunity to use the shared values we have with these parks to do some good.
The newest pre-release code name for Firefox is Namoroka, named for a park in the northwest section of Madagascar. Famous for its Karst topography (or Tsingy as it is described in Malagasy), Namoroka is full of caves, canyons and natural swimming pools. Namoroka is also home to eight species of lemur.
Since we’re very fond of things tailed and furry at Mozilla, we’ve decided to celebrate the release of Firefox 3.6 by raising money to protect lemurs in Namoroka park and throughout Madagascar.
As a nation Madagascar is struggling to improve the quality of life for its rapidly growing human population and at the same time is struggling to find a way to preserve the forests and wildlife that remains.
To help, Mozilla is teaming up with the Madagascar Fauna Group (MFG) to help Madagascar through this challenging time. The MFG has been working on conservation in Madagascar for more than 20 years, addressing the environmental and social issues that are leading to deforestation and the trapping of lemurs.
The money we raise for this project will be used to help the MFG improve its website and online fundraising activities, connecting them with like-minded contributors and donors around the world. This donation will also support conservation and education programs on the island. By enhancing their presence within the web ecosystem, we can help them protect the natural ecosystem of Madagascar.
Later this week we will be launching the donation page for this first of our parks projects. If you’re interested in getting involved in the parks project over all, David has started discussing some ideas on his blog. Please let us know what you think about it, and when the page launches next week, please pass the word on.
[...] names*. We’re thinking through this and we’d love to get feedback. Chelsea has posted some initial ideas and there’s a Parks page on the wiki, so take a look if you’re [...]
Chelsea, not sure if you saw my blog post from June 2009 when the Japan team unveiled the Discover Shiretoko and InterFORest project but it goes into greater detail as to how we implemented the map that showed supporters who helped us promote the entire effort. I think that having some kind of viral promotion mechanism would be critical to the success of future efforts of this kind.
http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2009/06/24/background-on-discover-shiretoko-and-interforest/
Gen that’s pretty awesome. It would be great if we could do something like that for Namoroka.
As a Madagascar’s lover, i really enjoy this initiative! I was in Madagascar
last month, and i met with a small malagasy NGO, Vakanala. They
work on a reforestation project in southwestern, to preserve small
endanger forests. A small but young dynamics team that need help too!
If you want to help them, they have launch a operation for Christmas :
http://earthschristmas.org . You can offer a tree to our planet for one
buck, and they will plant it in the field. I gave 50
[...] releases have cool codenames while in gestation. As Chelsea explains, Firefox picks national parks as codenames, as metaphors for the values that go into making a [...]
[...] releases have cool codenames while in gestation. As Chelsea explains, Firefox picks national parks as codenames, as metaphors for the values that go into making a [...]
[...] Why are we doing this? Parks are a part of an important ecosystem for collaboration, recreation and commerce, much like the digital ecosystems we build through the Mozilla project. While we work to make the web better through products like Firefox, we can make the world a bit better by supporting parks like Namoroka. [...]
[...] Why are we doing this? Parks are a part of an important ecosystem for collaboration, recreation and commerce, much like the digital ecosystems we build through the Mozilla project. While we work to make the web better through products like Firefox, we can make the world a bit better by supporting parks like Namoroka. [...]
[...] Why are we doing this? Parks are a part of an important ecosystem for collaboration, recreation and commerce, much like the digital ecosystems we build through the Mozilla project. While we work to make the web better through products like Firefox, we can make the world a bit better by supporting parks like Namoroka. [...]
[...] Why are we doing this? Parks are a part of an important ecosystem for collaboration, recreation and commerce, much like the digital ecosystems we build through the Mozilla project. While we work to make the web better through products like Firefox, we can make the world a bit better by supporting parks like Namoroka. [...]
[...] Chelsea Novak: Save the web, save a lemur? [...]
[...] Chelsea Novak: Save the web, save a lemur? [...]
[...] 9 02 2010 We’re almost at the end of the Support Namoroka campaign and are tantalizingly close to our goal of $10,000 for the Madagascar Fauna Group, who [...]
[...] Chelsea Novak’s Blog Post about Mozilla’s Former Donation Campaign [...]