A number of people have asked me why I work for on Mozilla. They want to know what about Mozilla makes me want to be a part of it. Up until now I hadn’t been able to give a cogent answer that wasn’t simply a stream of consciousness exercise, full of insight but impossible to follow. However, after some lengthy discussions with folks, I may be able to explain this in thirty minutes or less.
My brother, Ph.D. does crazy-go-nuts immunology research. I have no doubt that if he hasn’t already, he will eventually save someone’s life through his work. It is clear to me that he makes people’s lives better through his research. His ex-wife, Ph.D. is the head of the mental health and counseling department for a large university. She without question has saved lives, and directly helps people with her work on a daily basis. My wife is a financial aid counselor for an Ivy-league university. She helps potential and current students get the funding they need to they can learn and become the next generation of crazy-go-nuts immunology researchers, head of mental health and counseling departments, and financial aid counselors, among other things.
Like my brother, his ex-wife, my wife, and all the rest of us, I have a set of skills and those skills are for the most part finite. Sure, I could attempt to learn absolutely anything, but for whatever reason, be it physical, genetic, or level of interest or enthusiasm, I just won’t be as successful at some things as I am at others. With good fortune, many of my skills and interests relate to computers, networks, software, problem solving, and the Internet.
Mozilla, through the software it creates, the community it has developed and maintains, and the technical influence it wields on the Internet, makes people’s lives better. Much like how an incandescent lamp converts electricity into light, helping Mozilla is how I feel I most efficiently, directly, and significantly can convert my skills and interests into real positive change for people, all over the world.
I hope this gives a folks a little more clarity into why I work for on Mozilla, and why I feel it working for MoCo has been such a privilege.
Nicely put. Those are generally similar to my reasons for working on Camino and other open-source projects—although I haven’t sat down to put them into words cogently yet; can I borrow your lamp when I do?
Lilmatt, very well written. I think this very much sums up why a lot of people work on Mozilla projects, or with other groups that have similar aims. Including me.