LinuxPower: An Interview with Christopher Blizzard of Mozilla and Red Hat Labs.

[ Thanks to Jeremy
Katz for this link. ]

“Christopher Blizzard is one of the most well known coders
working on Mozilla. He was willing to take time from his busy
schedule to talk with Linuxpower on the future of Mozilla,
even if he is in the middle of a move to Toronto. Christopher
answered our questions even more detailed than we had dared to hope
for, so we think there are some interesting information here for
everybody.”

“LP: You have been working on Mozilla almost from the begining,
how has the project evolved in that time (culture, people, attitude
etc.)”

“Most of the people that have been involved with the Mozilla
project from the beginning are still around, Jamie probably being
the most obvious exception. Many of the original people who worked
on the project were Netscape employees, and many of them still are.
Those that have moved on still work with the project, though. Mike
Shaver left the Netscape a couple of months ago but still does a
lot of work with the Mozilla project on a day to day basis. There
are a few other examples of people that have left Netscape but
still participate with Mozilla.”

“The culture has improved quite a bit. Many of the people who
are working on Mozilla are Netscape employees and it’s taken a
while for them to get used to the idea of living in the fishbowl of
open source. They have adjusted pretty well, all things considered.
On the flip side, because the Mozilla project was started by
Netscape it came with a lot of procedures and a very large
nomenclature that most people were unaware of. Non-Netscape
contributors have had to learn the ropes, too. Everyone has reached
a common middle ground. In this sense everyone is learning to work
together and a real culture is starting to evolve.”

Complete
Story