相信我的朋友都看過 Lessig 的「We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim」。這篇演說的震撼程度不亞於地圖會說話的「走在鋼索上的民主」。Lessig 試圖將一切的治理問題歸因到政治與金錢的關係：當選舉的影響力以及話語權已經被財團控制，理應是全民所有的民主共和國，以及運作它的政府，基本上已經，被買走了。只是 Lessig 的演講是基於美國聯邦政府的選舉與政治運作；這些檯面下的事情在台北的博愛特區如何發生，台灣的選民只能從一些醜聞與八卦當中看到冰山一角。他在演講裡面說人們關心的社會改革都是重要議題，但是他的議題（選舉經費制度改革）是「第一議題」：如果這個議題沒有被解決，所有的重要改革都不太可能會發生。
由這篇演講所衍生出來的書，《Republic, Lost》最近也全文 CC 授權了。台灣今年也要選舉，或許從這個議題上，候選人能有不同的操作方式。
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曼德拉令我尊敬的，並不只是帶領南非結束種族隔離，而是之後更重要的，推動轉型正義及真相與和解（Truth and reconciliation）。
一個國家社會在超越獨裁集權與少數統治之後，若沒有和解的方向，是無法形成共識以及讓民主深化、運作完善的。南非共和國何等幸運的能在關鍵的時代得到這樣的領袖。雖說我對該國的了解還不足以知道實際的執行效果，但我知道台灣的真相與和解還有很長一段路要走。
推薦大家閱讀 BBC 新聞中文網的訃告。
I was invited to the last two Mozilla Summits but I always missed it. This year, I finally be able to attend the Summit.
So what is Mozilla Summit? The apparent approximation of the Summit would be to think of it as a three-day festival, to celebrate what we want to achieve and also to reaffirm our Mission; however, Summit is way, way more than that. I am humbled and comforted by the fact I got to engage in many high-level, philosophical conversations about Mozilla and the Mission itself, in a lot of breakout sessions. Some of the questions being bought up were fundamental questions like what is a Mozillian, challenges of communicate the vision to the boarder audiences like the general users (kudos to @potch on many of his insight comments), to practical questions like how to work with closed mobile industry partners, and our challenges with our current position in the mobile market, and internal organization.
These are all important conversations that I have little chance to talk about in the office, given the fact we are all caught up in daily work. To my embarrassment, I feel I should ask forgiveness on being cynical in conversations. Nonetheless, to me, it’s more important to know how we are doing than why. The summit shouldn’t be a three-day religious or self-reinforcing event where only the good news were told; I am really glad it didn’t being hold like this for the majority of the time spent. To my relieve, I am also happy to find out most of people are much more energetic and optimistic about how we are doing, and much more hopeful on whether or not we will getting there, and devoting their thoughts on what we could do more to get there.
During the keynote, the main message of the Summit given was “We’re here to build an Internet the world needs.”. I totally agree that Mozilla should expand it’s mission from simply Open Web to Open Internet, although my question about Open Hardware being the foundation of Open Internet and another eventual goal of the project was not being picked up during the QA session. I’ve also heard little discussions (expect DRM) on some of our seemly conflicting means to reach the end, which, arguably, is a good thing (because that means most of us in the Summit agrees the Mozilla way — making concessions in order to gain future influences).
On topics unrelated to the Summit directly: I found that Toronto is a really lucky city, being gifted to have the off-shore Toronto islands that serves as a getaways and an “central park”. The city itself is a bit chaotic though as they were constructions around the Union station. However the 12 hours time difference stuck me hard; I missed a few night events because I was so tired that I had to crush to bed.
By the way, best wishes to Margaret and Gavin 😀 They were call up to the stage by Jay during closing in Toronto on their #MozLove: they first met on Summit 2010 and got engaged last week. I am pretty sure they weren’t the first ones and they won’t be the last ones.
That’s us, we are the hopelessly idealistic, happy, and innocent, Mozillians.