In cooperation with the Mozilla Foundation, An-Najah University organized the Palestinian Mozilla Day which aimed to introduce Mozilla to the public and familiarize them with its projects and how to contribute to it. The event was presented by Engineer Rami Khader, Coordinator of the Mozilla Delegates to the Arab World Council, and Hatem Zayoud, Representative of Mozilla Community in Palestine.

Attendees included: Dr. Ra’ed Al-Qadi, Dean of the Faculty of the Information Technology at An-Najah, in addition to the members of the faculty staff and students at the Faculty. At the beginning of the meeting, Dr. Al-Qadi welcomed the Mozilla delegation and hoped that the meeting would be fruitful and rich. He also stressed the importance of this event as it gives the students the chance to get answers to many questions they had in their minds regarding this field of science.

Zayoud delivered a welcoming speech in which he welcomed the guests to the meeting to celebrate the Mozilla Day which he described as a cornerstone in one of the Arab world’s most ambitious projects which would lead the Arabs to a more prosperous and successful future.

Moreover, he explained that the concept of free software is not clearly understood in the Arab context, but the rapid development of Mozilla and its products, including the famous web browser “Firefox”, have become very common among Arabs especially after the Arabization of most of these products.

The Arabization of Mozilla products has made it easier for Arabs to access the internet and use technology. The event comes as part of the continuous efforts invested in developing scientific research in Palestine and the Middle East. He also said that information technology in Palestine has become a major source of success and excellence that made its way to the international markets.

Engineer Khader gave a presentation about the Mozilla Foundation explaining that this foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla Project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property. He also explained that the Mozilla Foundation believes in the internet as a major means for social and technological interaction and communication between people which should be developed and maintained.

Mozilla Foundation has taken the responsibility to manage the Mozilla Project and the Phoenix as well as raising the public awareness regarding the importance of keeping the internet open and available to everybody. He added that the Firefox Browser in its first version has witnessed a substantial success upon its first release back in 2004 and was downloaded more than 100 million times. In 2008, Firefox had a market share of 20% in the Web Browsers market on the global scale.

Moreover, Khader described the main Mozilla software that were Arabized including the Firefox, Firefox for Mobile (Fennec), Thunderbird, the web pages of Mozilla.com, the web pages of the addons.mozilla.com, the web pages of the support.mozilla.com, and many more.

During the meeting, the students discussed several issues and asked a number of questions related to the meeting’s main subject. They also exchanged ideas and opinions with the Mozilla delegation.