On Firefox module ownership

It has been over eleven years since I first wrote a patch for Firefox. It was reviewed by the then-Firefox module owner, Mike Connor. If you had told me then that at some point in the future I was going to be the module owner I probably would have laughed at you. I didn’t know at the time how much Mozilla would shape my life. Yet yesterday Dave Camp handed over the reigns to me and here we are.

When Dave proposed me as the new module owner he talked about how he saw Firefox as a code module, responsible for the code that ships with the app, rather than the decisions about what the app needs to do. Those are delegated to other teams with better grasps of the situation like Product and UX. I agree with this wholeheartedly. It isn’t my role as an engineer to make those kinds of decisions. The Firefox module owner is focused on the implementation of the code in the browser and pretty much nothing else.

But in the Firefox module even the implementation decisions have always been heavily delegated to the peers of the module. I don’t intend to change that. I’m here to help guide those working on the code when they need a broader view, not to put my foot down and insist on how things should happen. I’m here to direct you to the peer most able to help you when you need a reviewer or run into problems. On some occasions I will also be here to listen and advise when you think the peers are wrong. In fact I see this role as less about being a module owner and more being a module steward, staying out of the way mostly but applying a gentle hand to the tiller when needed.

Those of you keeping an eye on things will note that I’m also the Toolkit module owner. That hasn’t changed and while I have always approached that module in much the same way as I plan to approach Firefox there are a few differences. I’ll talk about those another day.