Firefox/e-book connection would advance the .epub standard—and help readers and publishers alike
Who says open source means poverty? “According to Mozilla’s 2006 financial records, which were recently released, the foundation had $74 million in assets, the bulk invested in mutual funds and the like, and last year it collected $66 million in revenue,” the New York Times reports. “Eighty-five percent of that revenue came from a single source—Google, which has a royalty contract with Firefox.”
Along the way, could e-book standards—to be exact, the IDPF’s .epub specs, which giants such as Hachette will be using—benefit from Mozilla/Firefox’s good fortune? I doubt that the IDPF’s current budget is higher than $200-300K. Not that big a dent in the $66M in rev, huh? Yep, I know Mozilla has growing expenses and that the future net might not be impressive, but a million or so for the IDPF would still be money well spent. Perhaps Google could increase contributions if need be. Maybe Mozilla/Firefox needs to join Adobe as a sponsor. I’d like to see CEO Mitchell Baker (photo) study possible use of Mozilla Foundation money for:
1. Good, easy-to-use .epub validation tools so that .epub standards will be trustworthy. The Tower of eBabel of clashing formats is no minor reason why consumers haven’t bought e-books in the numbers the prophets predicted.
2. An .epub logo covering non-DRMed .epub. An all-inclusive logo could follow if/when the IDPF agreed on DRM interoperability or, better, the big publishers finally wised up about the stupidity of DRM. At least one small house even wrote a no-DRM clause into its contract with eReader.
3. Sophisticated .epub capabilities for Firefox (native or through plug-ins). I’d like it to be a full-strength, vendor-neutral e-book reader that honors the open source and open standards traditions. Actually this money could be spent directly within Mozilla/Firefox itself.
4. Encouragement and ideally financing of open source projects such as FBReader, which could use the money to add CSS capabilities. One way or another, it’s important for One Laptop Per Child, sponsored partly by Google, to offer .epub reading capabilities so that kids can read books from mainstream publishers. .Epub will reduce publishers’ expenses, and that could help not just big Western houses but also small startups in developing countries.
5. Development of open source creation tools such as an OpenOffice plug-in.
6. The fostering of experimentation with social DRM and non-use of DRM. The IDPF could help companies work out sound methodologies for trials. Yes, there might be losses to piracy. But higher sales would balance that out.
Mozilla/Firefox/.epub mustn’t be just captive to Google. As with Adobe, we’d need to watch Google for undue influence, but I think this is doable, especially if Adobe stays involved and the Mozilla foundation can live up to the claims made in its FAQ.
How about it, Ms. Baker? Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Microsoft isn’t in the IDPF. Financing the group would be a wonderful way for Mozilla/Firefox to remind the world that it cares more about open standards than Redmond does. Ironically even Adobe could benefit. The involvement of Mozilla/Firefox would help counter those who dismissed the IDPF as an Adobe front not worth worrying about. Let the two major funders help monitor each other.
Technorati Tags: Mozilla , Firefox , IDPF , Google
November 22nd, 2007 at 11:50 am
[...] The New York Times has an article on Amazon’s latest offering, the Kindle. Beyond the notable performance of the reader, is the carrot of (AFAIK, unlimited) wireless connectivity to the internet which is a road that Google has been travelling down for quite some time now, starting with buying up as much dark fiber as possible. Wondering if there is a Google Amazon co branding? Not likely methinks, seeing that Amazon is using it’s proprietary and closed technology to offer every book available in the world instead of open standards, while Google continues to just suck up content in their own way. [...]