Yesterday at OSCON I attended Mitchell Baker’s “Mozilla Firefox and the Internet as an Open Platform” presentation in which she talked about Mozilla’s mission to ensure that the Internet stays open and healthy. She outlined the two ends of the spectrum of what the Internet could turn into in the next few years. On one end you have the Nirvana vision:

• Being online is a choice, not forced.
• The net is an open public resource that everyone can access.
• The internet is cheap, if not free.
• Some part of the internet should be safe. A healthy internet will have relatively safe portions where you know what is going on.

At the opposite end of the spectrum you have the big brother vision:

• You have to be online. You have no choice. (e.g. your bills are available only online)
• It doesn’t work well.
• A lot of information can be tracked to you. What you buy, when you buy, when you buy.
• Everything on the net goes wrong.

Mitchell’s definition for a healthy vision lies somewhere between the two extremes. To strive towards this vision, Mitchell presented the Mozilla manifesto for a healthy internet, which she summed up in these key points:

• Choice: Innovation, methods of participation, enough market share to matter.
• Security: A basic sense of security.
• Interop: The compontents on the network need to fully interoperate. While open standards are not always the answer, they provide a lot of foundations to build on.
• Decentralization: Decentralized ways to participate in building this net.
• Transparency, accountability and trust: If I choose to participate, the organizations on the net need to adhere to these values.

Mitchell went on to outline that the Internet needs a voice to represent itself. Open source is part of this voice and the Internet needs to continue to provide opportunties for people to get involved. Documentation, bug reporting, support and development need to be open to anyone who wants to participate in being the voice of the Internet.

She gave a great example of how people have gotten involved with Mozilla: One day two men stood on the doorstep of the Mozilla offices when she arrived. These two fellows were “just” (their own words) contributors to the community. Once they stepped into the lobby and saw the Mozilla New York Times ad on the wall, one guy immediately stepped up to the ad and proudly pointed to his name: “There! That’s me right here!”.

These two fellows who dont live in the Bay Area made a point to stop by the Mozilla offices when they were in town. They could’ve done all sorts of things with their time, but the were so engaged in the community that they wanted to the see the offices where all the magic happened. This type of community engagement is the exact type of thing that can give the Internet a voice.

While I was listening to Mitchell’s description of a healty Internet I kept thinking about Larry Lessig’s points about the end-to-end Internet where all the action happens at the end points and the interior nodes of the net are neutral and pass every packet of traffic with the same care. But, in today’s world where Net Neutrality debates rage, Larry and Mitchell’s visions seems in grave danger.

I’m glad that Mitchell as the CEO of the Mozilla Corporation thinks and talks about these issues. The neutral network that we’ve enjoyed for the past decades has created an amazing number of opportunities and has changed the lives of millions of people around the globe. While the net today does not fully qualify for Mitchell’s healthy vision, its was born from the neutrality of the net. Steering away from neutrality would almost certainly steer the Internet to the direction of the Big Brother Internet Mitchell described.

I, for one, am not interested in the Big Brother Internet. I appreciate what Mozilla has done and what they continue to do. I would encourage you to make a donation to the Mozilla Foundation to help Mitchell and her dedicated team to realize her vision for a helathy Internet.