My badly worded offhand statement, some context, its intention, and an apology
At RSA Europe I conducted an interview with The Register on the subject of Extended Validation SSL Certificates, and as a consequence a lot of people are mad at me. I would like to explain the circumstances under which this discussion took place and what I meant by the statement. And I'd like to make it clear that I regret the statement.
For starters, anyone who doesn't know what Extended Validation or High Assurance SSL Certificates are can read about them in the link provided. The Register story appears here. I've been criticized in places like Slashdot.
Let me start by stating that the story as written is very much not in keeping with the tenor of the actual conversation I had with the reporter in question. Among other things, the story makes it sound like VeriSign is critical of the Mozilla Foundation for not having announced support for the Extended Validation SSL standard at this time. Quite the opposite, in fact. Several members of the FireFox community have been key contributors to the Extended Validation effort and are active participants in the CA/Browser Forum. I never characterized Mozilla as heel-dragging in any sense of the word, and it was my effort to defend Mozilla's method of operation that led to the most regrettable moment in the article.
What I meant by techno-anarchist was someone who seeks to shift control of fundamental technology decisions in our society from a few, powerful companies over to a large, open community of citizens. The intent, practice, and effect of open-source all churned together in my mind for a split second, and that's the word that came out.
It was a very badly chosen word. I could not expect others to read it as I'd intended. I see that and didn't mean it negatively. Open source initiatives have given us Linux and FireFox and any other number of great developments to carry us forward. I was trying to say that consensus-based, open development communities have a fundamentally different approach to decision-making than traditional, heirarchical corporations do and that you have to let these communities work their processes. Why didn't I just say it that way? Because sometimes when you're in the midst of a conversation and trying to make a point, you say something dumb. I said something dumb.
I would like to formally apologize to anyone who was offended by this article. It was not my intention. I and my associates at VeriSign have the highest respect for the practice of open source development in general and the Mozilla Foundation in particular.
