Mozilla is 20 today. Most of what can be said about that has been ably said by others, some of whom have been involved for even longer than the 18 years I managed. Asa and I started at roughly the same time, but at least Mitchell, Myk and dmose have been around longer and are still involved. (Apologies if I’ve forgotten someone.)
As most of you know, I probably won’t be around to see much more of it, but (this will seem trite if it’s not to seem big-headed!) Mozilla is much more than one or even a few people. There will always be a Mozilla as long as there is an Internet and people who care about people on it. In that vein, let me also say that I’m absolutely delighted with the final outcome of the worldview project. The four items in the addendum to the Manifesto are admirable goals to aim for, and ones I endorse wholeheartedly.
There are more than a dozen people working at Mozilla today who were at Netscape back in the day. I think that’s amazing.
it is – although if we are being picky, we might not count those who took a “break” in the middle to go and work for someone else. There are a few of those.
But still, they say the age of a “job for life” is over – seems like not everywhere. Of course, dying at 40 does make that somewhat easier to achieve… :-)
Continuously working on Mozilla is a much smaller group. Me, dbaron, and myk (and mitchell if you count part-time) are it I think. We were the last out at Netscape and the first in at the Foundation along with ben, leaf, brendan, mscott, jst, and chofmann who are all off to other things now.
Yep, that sounds about right. If one glosses over the Netscape/Foundation transition, have any of those people been full time paid since March 31st, 1998? Mitchell – no. You and me – no (we both started a bit later). When did myk and dbaron join Netscape?
If no-one has been full-time paid continuously, then mitchell could be it if we count part-time. How long did it take her to persuade Mitch Kapor to pay her? :-)
None of us have been full time since three thirty-one.
Mitchell was there from the launch but was then part-time for a bit. Dbaron started interning in summer ’99 I think, a year before I got there in summer 2000. Myk came on in summer of 2001 if I’m remembering correctly.
Mitchell has the longest tenure, IMHO. Even when she was part-time, she was building the life-boat, one the most critical projects in our history and she was all over it.
Brendan tells me on twitter that Mitchell joined staff in 99.
Dmose was on staff@mozilla.org from day 1 and he was at Netscape before Mitchell. So he and Mitchell are probably neck and neck for total time Netscape+Mozilla. I think Dan did a few years elsewhere and Mitchell did a couple years part-time.
“There will always be a Mozilla as long as there is an Internet and people who care about _people_ on it.”
That was inspiring! Hear, hear.
Sometimes I think that if I had to explain to someone not in our techie world what Mozilla is all about, I would say “Mozilla is the opposite of all those things you worry about with Facebook.”