Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Joining Mozilla

As of last week, I am now an employee of Mozilla! Thanks to everyone who helped me out during my job search.

I’ll be working both with the Mozilla Web Development (webdev) team, and Mozilla Labs.

The first thing I’ll be working on is deployment. In part because I’ve been thinking about deployment lately, in part because streamlining deployment is just generally enabling of other work (and a personal itch to be scratched), and because I think there is the possibility to fit this work into Mozilla’s general mission, specifically Empowering people to do new and unanticipated things on the web. I think the way I’m approaching deployment has real potential to combine the discipline and benefits of good development practices with an accessible process that is more democratic and less professionalized. This is some of what PHP has provided over the years (and I think it’s been a genuinely positive influence on the web as a result); I’d like to see the same kind of easy entry using other platforms. I’m hoping Silver Lining will fit both Mozilla’s application deployment needs, as well as serving a general purpose.

Once I finish deployment and can move on (oh fuck what am I getting myself into) I’ll also be working with the web development group who has adopted Python for many of their new projects (e.g., Zamboni, a rewrite of the addons.mozilla.org site), and with Mozilla Labs on Weave or some of their other projects.

In addition my own Python open source work is in line with Mozilla’s mission and I will be able to continue spending time on those projects, as well as entirely new projects.

I’m pretty excited about this — it feels like there’s a really good match with Mozilla and what I’m good at, and what I care about, and how I care about it.

This is the personal site of Ian Bicking. The opinions expressed here are my own.