The members of mozilla.org are employees of Netscape Communications Corporation. We are some of the people who wrote Netscape Communicator. We are the people who know the code best, since (until March 31st) we were among the very small set of people who have ever seen it.

As time goes by, it will no longer be the case that the people who know the code best are necessarily people who are also employed by Netscape Communications Corporation; we intend to delegate authority over the various modules to the people most qualified to make decisions about them. We intend to operate as a meritocracy: the more good code you contribute, the more responsibility you will be given. We believe that to be the only way to continue to remain relevant, and to do the greatest good for the greatest number.

The Getting Involved page goes into more detail about how we expect this to work.

Netscape's Role

Netscape is paying our salaries, and providing hardware and bandwidth in the hope of making mozilla.org a success.

Other than that, Netscape's role is the same as yours: Netscape writes code, and makes use of code written by others. Netscape will contribute new code back to the public just as others will.

Netscape will also continue to provide an executable-only release of Mozilla that bears the "Netscape" brand (e.g., the name "Netscape Communicator." These executable releases will differ from random executables built from the public source in two ways:

First, they will bear the Netscape brand name, which brings with it a certain expectation of quality. This is the version that Netscape tests, endorses, and certifies as being "good."

Second, the Netscape releases may contain code and functionality that has not been released to the public; for example, code that Netscape has licensed from other companies, or that Netscape does not have permission to distribute in source form (such as Sun's Java implementation, or cryptographic code.)

These executable releases will come from Netscape, not from mozilla.org; mozilla.org's product is source code, and its customers/partners are developers. Those developers (of whom Netscape is but one) are the ones who create executables, and whose customers are end users.

Dramatis Personae

Currently, the full time staff of mozilla.org isn't very numerous. This doesn't tell the whole story, however, since there are scores of people helping out in ways large and small. The mozilla.org project has also (so far) proved capable of sneaking lots of cycles from other people.

Brendan Eich (brendan@netscape.com)

Brendan is responsible for architecture and technical direction of Mozilla. He is charged with maintaining the list of module owners and with owning architectural issues of the source base. He's writing the "browser roadmap" that encompasses future HTML layout work, source modularity, and hooks up to stuff like the OJI and new plugins docs.

Brendan created JavaScript, did the work through Navigator 4.0, and helped carry it through international standardization. Before Netscape, he wrote operating system and network code for SGI; and at MicroUnity, wrote micro-kernel and DSP code, and did the first MIPS R4K port of gcc, the GNU C compiler.

Dawn Endico (endico@mozilla.org)

Dawn is a developer's best friend. In addition to getting LXR working on the mozilla source code, Dawn works to keep the documentation on this site organized and up to date. She also helps with the odd system administration work (what, you think sshd installs itself?) that mozilla.org needs to remain useful to developers.

In previous lives Dawn has earned multiple bachelor's degrees, worked as a Production Artist, had digital artwork exhibited, designed commercial web sites, and administered heterogenous networks (SAMBA, anyone?).

Daniel (Leaf) Nunes (leaf@mozilla.org)

Leaf is the mozilla.org release engineer. This means he worries about details like the build system(s) and getting the source (and test executables) to developers. He's also the one that contacts you at 3 am when you've broken the build. Don't think he isn't watching.

Leaf recently graduated from the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz and used to work for a company named Fabrik, doing database hacking.

Terry Weissman (terry@mozilla.org)

Terry writes and maintains various tools used in the operation of mozilla.org. Most noticably, he's been involved in Bugzilla, Bonsai, and Tinderbox.

Terry wrote the one-third of the initial version of Netscape Mail and News (in Navigator 2.0 and 3.0) that Jamie didn't do. He also worked on Mail and News in Communicator 4.0, and has worked on Netscape's internal bug-tracking and CVS tools. He's had previous experience in free software: he wrote xmh, a free mail reader, and worked on the original Xt toolkit and Athena widgets.

Terry also no longer works at Netscape. But, in the true spirit of Open Source, he does still consider himself a part of mozilla.org.

Mike Shaver (shaver@netscape.com)

shaver is the token Canadian. By day, he hacks JavaScript and related things, and by night he grumbles and whines and generally makes a fuss around the mozilla.org campsite. When things break, Mike will sometimes fix them, but usually he just pouts until someone else makes it all better.

Mike is a veteran of the free software (especially Linux) scene, and is a loud and persistent champion of free software within Netscape. Before Netscape, Mike played CTO for a little Canadian consulting company called Ingenia (now a part of Software Kinetics).

Mitchell Baker (mitchell@mozilla.org)

Mitchell is the manager, problem arbitrator, and speaker to suits, which involves doing mysterious political things of which technical people are blissfully unaware.

As one of the first people in Netscape's legal departmant, Mitchell helped the company get big and became a manager. More recently, she helped unleash Mozilla's source code on the world with her work on the Netscape and Mozilla Public Licenses.

Dan Mosedale (dmose@mozilla.org)

Dan is a mozilla.org toolsmith. His current project is to build tools to make the management and shepherding of the Mozilla newsgroups and mailing lists easier. Probable upcoming projects include adding LDAP support to the various mozilla.org tools as well as merging LXR and Bonsai functionality.

Before joining mozilla.org full-time, Dan was the sysadmin at Mosaic Communications Corp. From there, he moved on to IS Architecture work at Netscape, co-wrote the DNS server used by Netcenter to distribute its website worldwide, and enhanced and maintained Netscape's mail-to-news gateway code.