Gavin handed me ownership of the Firefox module awhile back, and now I think it’s time to hand it over myself. I’d like to propose Dave Townsend as new owner of the Firefox module. People working Firefox may have noticed Dave over the last year occasionally weighing in on a module ownership decision with some version of “I suspect dcamp would be willing to delegate this to me” - and he’s always been right. Dave knows the Firefox codebase as well as anyone, has the history on the project to back that up, and he’ll make a great module owner.
Mitchell wisely asked me to include my thoughts on how Firefox is working as a module. Firefox pushes at the edges of the module ownership system. The set of people whose work and decision making contributes to the module every day is not even remotely captured by the fine set of folks listed https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Firefox. While I think the technical and architectural decision makers are somewhat well-represented there, the set of product, UX, communications, marketing, etc decisions that influence this module are really nowhere to be found. While some modules can reasonably be considered to have a true top-to-bottom owner that makes all relevant decisions, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a single owner of such decisions for Firefox. So I’ve treated ownership of this module as stewardship over the technical and architectural activities that make up the Firefox frontend. I think the module works well in this capacity. Its nature as a large umbrella module without strict submodule divisions allows the flexibility to support the changes Firefox is going through. The code review policy[1] that Mike Shaver implemented and that Gavin and I continued is strong. As we shift effort from one piece of the product to another, I’m glad that the same evolving set of folks are held responsible for its overall success, rather than leaving a trail of decaying modules with long-lost owners. And I believe that in general the module still correctly communicates a core set of decision makers (if not decision making process) that should be consulted when adding to the frontend of the browser. It doesn’t reflect the people that make the broader decisions that affect the product. There are multiple ways to interpret/resolve this: we could decide to make it explicit that this is a code-oriented module, and acknowledge up front that some decisions that make up what that code accomplishes are held elsewhere (maybe in new modules we need to create). We could decide that this is an overall Firefox module and that we need the module owner to be the same person who explicitly delegates who is in charge of the product and UX decisions that influence the module. You could also just throw your hands up and say “this reality is too complex for the module ownership system”. I prefer the first approach, and it’s in this spirit that I am handing the module to Dave Townsend. There’s always room to improve specifics in the engineering leadership of the module, and I’ll continue to support Dave with that. To the extent that there’s wider agreement that we should formalize the additional modules, I’m happy to help the right folks form those too. Thanks, -dave [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Code_Review _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
