Inc.com: Mitchell Baker and the Firefox paradox

Inc.com has a nice and extensive article on the Mozilla project, its origins and development and its leader, Mitchell Baker, Mozilla CEO, better known as Mozilla’s Chief Lizard Wrangler.

Some quotes from the article:

• “Baker, then a Netscape lawyer, was assigned the tricky job of writing a software license for Mozilla that would permit people to alter the program without allowing them to convert the results into a proprietary product.”
• “In some ways, [Sandeep Krishnamurthy, an associate professor in the business administration program at the University of Washington] adds, the bar at an open-source organization is higher for a manager, not lower. Unlike employees, volunteers generally won’t put up with inept, bullying, or unfair managers. They’ll just walk away.”
• “If Baker proved an effective leader, it would be in spite of her not having the two most common characteristics of open-source movers and shakers: being a man and being a programming whiz.”
• “[Blake Ross and David Hyatt] were like two guys in a minivan factory dragging parts off the assembly line to a dark corner of the building to assemble a dune buggy. The result was a simple, speedy browser[, Firefox].”
• “If everyone used Explorer, Microsoft would be in a position to dictate technical standards for websites and could then in theory integrate the resulting proprietary approach to Web browsing with its Windows and Office products.”

There’s plenty of other interesting facts and perspectives in the article, but I’ll stop quoting now. You can read the full article here.