Who we are

Who we are

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.

Daniel (Leaf) Nunes (leaf@netscape.com)

Leaf is the newest member of mozilla.org. He recently graduated from the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz and used to work for a company named Fabrik, doing database hacking. He joins Chris Yeh on the development process team (read: "Tree Deputy").

Terry Weissman (terry@netscape.com)

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 looks around for things that need doing and tries to do them.
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.

Chris Yeh (cyeh@netscape.com)

Chris was recently abducted by a strange group of people with pointy hair. He was returned safely but isn't quite the same as he used to be. He now uses phrases such as "action item" and "paradigm" with disturbing regularity. Most recently he has been seen using a calendaring program to schedule meetings.
Despite this recent tragedy, flashes of his old self can be seen. He can be best catagorized as "mozilla.org sympathizer" and "occasional hacker of the build system".

Jamie Zawinski (jwz@mozilla.org)

Jamie is best characterized as "jwz." It's hard to characterize responsibility for content and soul of an application and overall environment, but that's what Jamie does. So he's evangelist, gestaltmeister, representative of the net, and lately he's been pitching in as webmaster; he created the mozilla.org website. Jamie likes to think of his role as "loose cannon."
Jamie wrote the Unix-specific parts of Mozilla from the first release through 1.1. Later, he wrote half of the initial version of Netscape Mail and News (in Navigator 2.0 and 3.0) and worked on S/MIME in Communicator 4.0. Before Netscape, he was responsible for Lucid Emacs (currently known as XEmacs), and many other free software projects.

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).