FirefoxMozillaLetter

It has come to our knowledge through the local Mozilla community that the project for computerization of the public schools in Macedonia "Computer for Every Child" relies on free and open source software. Among others, the web browser that we produce Mozilla Firefox has been used for accessing the internet, we must say that we are very glad about that.

Given the fact that the computers use an older version of the Ubuntu operating system, the version of the Firefox browser that was included is no longer maintained. Mozilla Firefox 2 may have security and stability issues (*mozilla could list known issues here if necessary!) that can pose risks to students when accessing the Internet and browsing the Web. Therefore we feel that it is important to upgrade the browser to the latest version that is available at the moment.

We would like to offer our help concerning this issue. Obviously this will not be an easy task. The upgrade process must be both, simple enough so it could be easily performed, and quick so it can be done on all workstations. It also needs to be throughly tested, before deployment so we offer the greatest level of service to the students and they still keep using their browser. The Mozilla community in Macedonia is very active and enthusiastic to see this happen. Mozilla is willing to provide instructions (and a special version of firefox???) that will run on an older version of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution.

We hope that the government institutions will see the importance of this project and will be willing to participate, offering institutional support and resources to the local Mozilla community to execute this task first in a pilot classroom to see that it is feasible, and then do a complete roll-out. We as Mozilla can also help with know-how, first-hand support and the necessary financial means to see that students continue to use Mozilla Firefox and get the best possible user experience of the Open Web and the highest level of security using the latest version of Mozilla Firefox.