After 10 years

Yesterday marks 10 days to the day since I posted my first patch to Bugzilla. It was a small patch to composite SVG images with their background (and not just have a white background).

Since then I’ve contributed to Firefox as a volunteer, an intern, a contractor, and, as of 3 years ago tomorrow, a Mozilla Japan employee.

It’s still a thrill and privilege to contribute to Firefox. I’m deeply humbled by the giants I work alongside who support me like I was one of their own. In the evening when I’m tired from the day I still often find myself bursting into a spontaneous prayer of thanks that I get to work on this stuff.

So here are 8 reflections from the last 10 years. It should have been 10 but I ran out of steam.

Why I joined

1. I got involved with Firefox because, as a Web developer, I wanted to make the Web platform better. Firefox was in a position of influence and anyone could join in. It was open technically and culturally. XPCOM took a little getting used to but everyone was very supportive.

What I learned

2. Don’t worry about the boundaries. When I first started hacking on SVG code I would be afraid to touch any source file outside /content/svg/content/src (now, thankfully, dom/svg!). When I started on the SVG working group I would think, “we can’t possibly change that, that’s another working group’s spec!” But when Cameron McCormack joined Mozilla I was really impressed how he fearlessly fixed things all over the tree. As I’ve become more familiar and confident with Firefox code and Web specs I’ve stopped worrying about artificial boundaries like folders and working groups and more concerned with fixing things properly.

3. Blessed are the peacemakers. It’s really easy to get into arguments on the Internet that don’t help anyone. I once heard a colleague consider how Jesus’ teaching applies to the Internet. He suggested that sometimes when someone makes a fool of us on the Internet the best thing is just to leave it and look like a fool. I find that hard to do and don’t do it often, but I’m always glad when I do. Earlier this year another colleague impressed me with her very graceful response to Brendan’s appointment to CEO. I thought it was a great example of peace-making.

4. Nothing is new. I’ve found these words very sobering:

   What has been will be again,
   what has been done will be done again;
   there is nothing new under the sun.
   Is there anything of which one can say,
   “Look! This is something new”?
   It was here already, long ago;
   it was here before our time.

   It’s so easy to get caught up in some new technology—I got pretty caught up defending SVG Animation (aka SMIL) for a while when I worked on it. Taking a step back though, that new thing has almost invariably been done before in some form, and it will certainly be superseded in my lifetime. In fact, every bit of code I’ve ever written will almost certainly be either rewritten or abandoned altogether within my lifetime.

   In light of that I try to fixate less on each new technology and more on the process: what kind of person was I when I implemented that (now obsolete) feature? What motivated me to work at it each day? That, I believe, is eternal.

How I hope Mozilla will shape up over the next 10 years

5. I hope we’ll be the most welcoming community on the Web. I don’t mean that we’ll give free hugs to new contributors, or that we’ll accept any patch that manages to enter Bugzilla, or we’ll entertain any troublemaker who happens upon #developers. Rather, I hope that anyone who wants to help out finds overwhelming encouragement and enthusiasm and without having to sign up to an ideological agenda first. Something like this interaction.

6. I hope we’ll stay humble. I’d love to see Mozilla be known as servants of the Web but when things go well there’s always the danger we’ll become arrogant, less welcoming of others’ ideas, and deaf to our critics. I hope we can celebrate our victories while taking a modest view of ourselves. Who knows, maybe our harshest critics will become some of our most valuable contributors.

7. I hope we’ll talk less, show more. By building amazing products through the input of thousands of people around the world we can prove Open works, we can prove you don’t need to choose between privacy and convenience. My initial interest in Mozilla was because of its technical excellence and welcoming community. The philosophy came later.

8. I hope we’ll make less t-shirts. Can we do, I don’t know, a shirt once in a while? Socks even? Pretty much anything else!