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Mozilla Dev Team On Firefox's Success

Posted by kdawson on from the include-and-reveal dept.

Titus Germanicus writes "If you're thinking about open sourcing a project in the near future, Mozilla might be the perfect blueprint to follow. At last week's Mesh 2008 conference in Canada, Mike Shaver, chief technology evangelist and founding member at Mozilla, and John Resig, a JavaScript evangelist at Mozilla — two of the key figures behind the success of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser — listed inclusivity and transparency as two of the top cornerstones of any community-built project. Shaver said in this interview that because the Web is intended for everybody, the level same openness should be shared with Firefox's open source contributors."

4 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. The prefect blueprint? by Tacvek · · Score: 5, Informative

    The original Netscape code was abandoned in favor of a complete rewrite. Eventually the main product was considered so bloated that a lightweight version was needed. Eventually the main product was dropped in favor of the lightweight system, which had to have not one but two name changes, and is now fairly widely considered bloated, despite its original goal.

    I'd say that while Mozilla has done quite well overall, it could hardly be considered a good blueprint to follow.

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    1. Re:The prefect blueprint? by Daengbo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not to mention that they seem to be taking credit for what was originally a fork. FF wasn't even a Mozilla project. the use of the name Phoenix was implying that Mozilla was dead and there was a new browser rising from the ashes. For those of you that don't remember, Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox.

      I agree that Mozilla's branding of FF and promotional deals were great for them, and that everyone is copying that, but let's not pretend it was all planned from the beginning.

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  2. Re:Of course, it's so simple! by asa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Firefox was already the most widely used open source consumer product in the world before the Google revenue existed.

  3. Re:Not our experience by wombatmobile · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not clear exactly what you did here, but it sounds like what you did is just start coding, then come to Mozilla a few months later and say, "hey! we have code for you!"

    No that isn't what we did.

    We consulted with the module owner first before contributing any code. And then we participated in half a dozen reviews after we submitted code, each time adjusting minor stylistic coding practices to match the reviewers arbitrary directives.

    And then the reviewer guy lifted 6 other bug fixes from our code body, submitted them in his name without acknlowedging our coders.

    And then the reviewer said we have to rewrite our patch to get it considered since it now contains redundant code.