Reps/SOPs/Digital resources

Warning: With effect from 1st September 2023, the Mozilla Reps program was closed and activities ended.

This document describes the policies the Mozilla Reps Council agreed to apply when reviewing and approving Community IT requests.

General requirements

This are the general requirements evaluated in any request:

• The following questions should be answered: Why this request is it needed? How does it benefit Mozilla mission?
• The request coming from a known Mozilla community member.
• The requester represents the project he’s requesting resources for. Communities will be asked to provide a document explaining who owns these kind of requests.
• There is an established project/community (+6 months) supporting the request, already running in production stage.
• There is at least 2 people on the project responsible for the request and as main contact point.

Domain Name

• Full fit general requirements.

Hosting

• Hosting requests should include a twelve (12) month road map. Include link to wiki.mozilla.org or other documentation. This helps to evaluate the life cycle & life span of the request. Some microsites, for example, only have a six month life, while others such as discourse.mozilla-community.org will have an indefinite life span.
• In most cases, we try not to duplicate services that already exist. For example, Community IT team would prefer to migrate a Wordpress site into the Wordpress-as-a-Service instead of building a new Wordpress instance.
• The domain for the website has already been transferred to Mozilla’s Domain Registrar or will be transferred.

Email

• The domain name for the emails is already transferred to Mozilla.

SSL

• The domain name for the website is already transferred to Mozilla.

FAQ

Why does the domain name need to be transferred to Mozilla?

We want all Mozilla Community domains to be safe, not just now, but always. This means that they are properly renewed and monitored by Mozilla IT.

Mozilla will work with the existing Domain Name Owner to transfer to Mozilla’s Domain Registrar. This will help ensure that these domain names and properly renewed and monitored. It also avoids possible future domain renewal / maintenance issues.

It’s a good practice to avoid individuals to own community domains, avoiding bottlenecks, possible future personal conflicts and the well known bus factor. Historically this approach has been proven more effective than individuals owning mozilla-related domains.

Mozilla will only own the administrative part, but the community is responsible and owns any changes and decisions to it and its subdomains. At the moment of the request the requester should provide a document describing how the community is organized to be sure he’s the right person to own this request.

Will Mozilla modify the domain or its content without community approval?

No. While your domain will be at Mozilla’s Domain Registrar and Mozilla Domain Name Servers, Mozilla will not modify the domain without approval or direction from the domain’s Technical Contact.

The Mozilla Reps Council will work to ensure that this policy is followed.

Can I still use my own DNS instead of mozilla’s one?

Yes, you can request to use your custom NS to handle the domain zone instead of Mozilla’s one.

For various services, you may be required to delegate a sub-domain NS RR to Mozilla. This allows Community Ops greater flexibility in managing the service. For instance, you may be asked to delete your blog site to Amazon’s Route 53:

blog.communitysysadmins.org. IN NS ns-277.awsdns-34.com.

Can I request any type of hosting?

Yes! The Community IT Operations team will be happy to work with you to find the best solutions for your needs.