who we are

The Mozilla community includes all those who contribute to Mozilla: writing code, testing software, writing documentation, developing web pages and applications, advocating on behalf of Mozilla, or doing any of the multitude of other things that help make Mozilla useful and successful. Some participate as individual volunteers, some through their educational institution, and others work at commercial companies.

These actions ultimately determine the direction of the Mozilla project, through the contributions made and through participation in the Mozilla discussion groups and mailing lists where the day-to-day activity takes place.

As an organization, mozilla.org has responsibility for making Mozilla a successful open-source project and a successful open-source product; it exists to serve and support the entire Mozilla community.

The staff of mozilla.org is composed of members of that community who have a more formalized involvement with mozilla.org. We work for different companies and represent different interests, but we share the common task of making the organization and project infrastructure work well so that everyone (ourselves included) can focus on making the code work better. Most (but not all) of us are paid by our respective employers to work on mozilla.org activities.

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. She also translates between suit-speak and the language the rest of us understand. If it's a question that's not about code, she's probably got her fingers in it.

As one of the first people in Netscape's legal department, 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.

Chris Blizzard (blizzard@mozilla.org)

Chris hacks on various parts of Mozilla. The straight Xlib port of Mozilla is mostly his fault. He also hacks on the gtk port when it really needs help and people ask really nicely. He dreams of things like adding Web DAV support and other fun network features. He also dreams about the directions the mozilla project could take and what we can accomplish.

Chris has been using Linux and open software since the 0.99 days. Starting as a user he self taught himself programming and now hacks on various projects when he has time. He's been working with Mozilla code since the source was released. In the past he's played roles as a sysadmin, web jockey, database programmer and project manager.

Brendan Eich (brendan@mozilla.org)

Brendan is responsible for architecture and technical direction of Mozilla. He is charged with authorizing module owners, owning architectural issues of the source base and writing the "mozilla roadmap" that outlines the direction of the mozilla project.

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 toolsmith and webmaster. 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.

In previous lives Dawn has, worked as a Production Artist, exhibited digital artwork, designed commercial web sites, and worked as a system administrator.

Frank Hecker (hecker@mozilla.org)

Frank Hecker is mozilla.org's token sales droid and resident grammarian; Frank was one of the people who successfully sold Netscape management on the advantages of releasing source code, and he tries to promote the cause of Mozilla and open source in his business activities and through his writings.

For most of his career Frank has been a sales systems engineer, a position tailor-made for those unable to handle a full-time job either writing software or selling it. He has a special interest in crypto and security software, and among other things is the keeper of the Mozilla Crypto FAQ.

Risto Kotalampi (risto@mozilla.org)

Risto is a Senior Systems Administrator and member of Netscape's server support team, and leads the systems support for mozilla.org's servers. He's originally from Finland ... the country where the Open Source movement, Internet and telecommunications are going strong.

He is one of those whose path to Netscape came through AOL/Netscape merger and before joining the Netscape server support team he was supporting ImagiNation Network, WorldPlay Entertainment and AOL Games Engineering in Burlingame, and AOL Interactive Services in San Mateo.

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.

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

Leaf is mozilla.org's release engineer and build-issue spear catcher. He spends a lot of time worrying about piddly little details, like whether or not the Mozilla source can be compiled into something runnable. This means he worries about details like the build system(s) and getting the source (and test executables) to developers.

Leaf is a veteran of UC Santa Cruz and Fabrik , and his sense of humour and compassion is greatly appreciated by everyone who recieves a 3AM "so you broke the tree" wake-up call.

Mike Shaver (shaver@mozilla.org)

shaver is the token Canadian. By day he hangs out with the mozilla development community, listening to what people are using mozilla code for, what they’re working on, what works and what doesnt. By night, he hacks the code and occasionally fixes things. Mostly, he focuses on giving out guidance and T-shirts, in approximately equal quantities.

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).

Terry Weissman (terry@mozilla.org)

Terry writes and maintains the Bugzilla and Bonsai tools used in the operation of mozilla.org. Terry also keeps the rest of us from doing dumb things to Bugzilla.

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.