QA/Community/Mozilla University

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What is Mozilla University?

• Mozilla University is a virtual institution dedicated to building and educating a strong Mozilla community through collaboration and innovation.
  • Helping people understand how Firefox, the Mozilla Corporation, and the Mozilla Foundation are related.
  • Enabling anyone to get involved in the Mozilla Project.
  • Preserving and learning from the history of the Mozilla Project.
  • It's dedicated to spreading knowledge about the open web and why the internet should be a public good.

Who should care?

• Everyone!
  • If you are a fan of Firefox and want to give back, contribute to the Mozilla community! There is something for everyone to do.
  • Keeping the Web open is something that anyone that spends time online should care about.
    • Why -- We need to answer that fundamental question. What do I get from the web being open?
    • Security
    • Interoperability. We could probably use the "vending machine" analogy from Mitchell's talk last week.
    • (here's an attempt with that logic:) Think about a vending machine. You've got about twenty choices that were all made for you. You don't get to choose what you're going to eat. That's what the web becomes without interoperability. We want to keep the web open so that anything you can imagine, you can create. And so that whatever you create, everyone can enjoy.
    • The web is becoming the hotbed of innovation that defines our era. Think about YouTube. Think about MySpace. Think about Google. Think about Kiva.org. Without an open and free web, none of these projects would have succeeded. They all started small. They all started with a dream. The open web gives you the chance to make your dreams become a reality. If you can dream it, you can create it. And if you create it in the open web, everyone else in the world can enjoy and use it.
  • Students and professors that are interested in exploring open source software can learn a lot through Mozilla.
    • Web Development/Computer/Software Engineering/Information Science students can gain valuable real-world experience by working hands on with the code and they day to day running of the Mozilla Project.
    • Professors can leverage the Mozilla platform to teach everything from Software Design Principles, to C++ programming, to Marketing and Public Relations.
    • Business Development and Marketing students can gain valuable insight into the diverse world of open source marketing that is an up and coming field which many technology companies are currently trying to understand and develop.

Where do I go from here?

• LEARN - Do you know how Firefox was created? Do you know the difference between the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation? Educate yourself about something that is way bigger than Firefox the browser, the Mozilla community of thousands around the world!
• TEST - Many current contributors to Mozilla got their start as testers. It's the easiest way to get involved and help us make Firefox better. Whether you log a new bug or run through a set of tests, every bit of feedback helps.
• HACK - You can contribute directly to the codebase and fix bugs in the core product. Have an idea to make the web better? Extensions are simple pieces of code that can completely change Firefox and give it the ability to do anything you can imagine. (Show some pretty knock your socks off extensions).
• LEAD - Become a campus representative for Mozilla. Work with our community of professionals to organize Mozilla events both on and off your campus. One of the most rewarding endeavors in the Mozilla project is to recruit and broaden the Mozilla community. There are hundreds of community projects that work on everything from alternative browsers to online television to calendars. Organize your school to make a difference in the web.

History and Links

• The Original Mozilla University - An initiative started in the early days of the Mozilla Project to educate the community about how Mozilla was born and build out our contributor base by showing them how they can get involved.
  • http://www.mozilla.org/university/ (needs to be archived under /archive)
  • http://www.mozilla.org/university/resource_map.html - "curriculum plan" of sorts
• I'm not sure how much of the Original Mozilla University stuff is really informative, and I think it will only serve to muddle the message. I'd rather link to the successful open source programs at Senecca than that.
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla
• O'Reilly Article on "Getting your work into Mozilla": http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mozilla/2000/09/29/keys.html (probably still very applicable today)
• Mozilla Digital Memory Bank: http://mozillamemory.org/
• What about a short blurb on our history: The mozilla project was founded when Mitchell and a handful of ex-netscape employees open sourced the source code of the suite browser. Since then...(someone who knows this better finish it)