I personally believe such a project should come from inside Mozilla and not be given a mere 2 years before slashing it away. Persona needs love and funding, and according to Dan there's still design issues to fix. A Persona 2.0 would fit this program just fine.
I came here to comment on this as well. Replacing the world's authentication is a project that will probably take slightly longer than two years, and I would like to see Mozilla continue to support it, especially given how many people were this excited by it.
There was a great discussion about users wanting a revival of Persona in another thread yesterday I believe (maybe that is why you brought it up?) so it seems you are not alone.
Maybe you should suggest it on the mailing list, as I don't think Mitchell reads HN.
Yes, inspired by yesterday's discussion. Is the mailing list for general chiming in, or proper proposals? The proposals need proper thought and a Mozilla champion (Dan, maybe?), so I wouldn't want to noise it up with pleas. :-)
What's to stop a company or foundation from doing this? Jeff, you know to get stuff like this off the ground... why not create a new organisation and ask for seed money?
Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) is a grant program specifically focused on supporting the Open Source and Free Software movement, with an initial allocation of USD $1 million.
Mozilla is a part of the Open Source and Free Software movement. We were born out of this movement. We prosper because of the technology and activism which comes from this movement. And we know that Open Source and Free Software remains a key part of the Internet and the online life we seek to build. We have had an ad-hoc grants program for many years. MOSS is a systematic way to provide a new level of support to this community.
The Mozilla Open Source Support program is designed to recognize and celebrate communities who are leading the way with open source projects that contribute to our work and the health of the Web. It encompasses both: a) a “give back” element for Open Source and Free Software projects that Mozilla relies on; and b) a “give forward” element for supporting other projects where financial resources from Mozilla can make our entire community more successful. We will identify crisp names for these elements as we go forward.
Hm,I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand it is nice of them to give some of the money back to the projects they are building on, but on the other hand this can wreak havoc on them. People there didn't do it for money... Wut mobey in the mix, some might get greedy, some might feel left out, and some might just lose interest because now it's just another job and that's bot what they were looking for. So, careful here, Mozilla.
For some reason I always thought that Bugzilla (maybe due to the name) was a product of Mozilla.
I also expected PDF.js to be a Mozilla product, I'm fairly sure it was developed by Mozilla employees to handle PDF's in Firefox, but I could be wrong.
So I was surprised to see them listed as potential receivers of this new grant.
The list is on the wiki and everyone was encouraged to add stuff without a whole lot of guidance as to what in particular qualifies, so take that list with a grain of salt.
For the record, Bugzilla and PDF.js are both Mozilla projects.
Just start contributing. There's no better way to learn than reading and understanding code. For me the most important item is a project that you personally connect with.
In my experience most projects are very kind to new contributors and someone will usually step up and gently guide. Quality code reviews have been most the effective mentorship I've had in Open Source and out.
Start helping users in the community by helping in forums, stack overflow for your chosen favorite Open source program. Write good tutorials in your blog and also starting contributing modules/plugins/addons anything which enhances the project and more you get involved, more you will learn and will be in better position to decide to excel to become top contributor to your favorite open source program. I applied the same what I wrote for my Fav WordPress program and now I love it and also have built a business around it.
