“When Mozilla veteran Mike Shaver joined Zero Knowledge as chief
software officer in January, one of his initial pledges was to give
the Montreal-based security startup more of an open source
development style. Monday, both Shaver and Zero Knowledge finally
lived up to that pledge when the company released the source code
for the Linux version of its Freedom 2.0 client.”
“For Shaver, a Canadian programmer best known for his brief
tenure as the chief lizard wrangler for the Mozilla project
following Jamie Zawinsky’s well-publicized departure, the source
code release represents the end of a grueling six-month
process. Although one of his original goals in joining the
company was to incorporate many of the coding tools and practices
developed during his two years with the Mozilla project, Shaver
says he had to get used to Zero Knowledge’s internal development
culture first.”
“Shaver says putting the company on a track toward
community-based development was more of an “education process” than
anything else. Even at the time of his arrival, Zero Knowledge
developers were using many of the same open development tools as
the Mozilla team, such as CVS, the source code version control
system, and Bugzilla, the bug and feature tracking database.
Instead of evangelizing, Shaver says his main task during the past
six months has been consensus building.”