Glossary

This page gives you a brief (one sentence) description of various terms that Mozillians use and might be confusing for newcomers.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

All Hands

All MoCo and MoFo staffers plus key volunteers - also sometimes the all-mofo meetings that happen before the moco work weeks

amo

addons.mozilla.org - the central repository of mozilla addons.

asknot

A web tool to find out contribution areas. whatcanidoformozilla.org

B

b2g

Boot to Gecko, a component of FirefoxOS

bmo

bugzilla.mozilla.org - our main bugzilla instance to keep track of various products (firefox, firefoxos, etc)

Bug

In software a bug is an error in the program. Anything filed on bugzilla is also called a bug, even though we use it for purposes other than pointing out errors (like budget requests). (compare Github Issue)

Bug report

The detailed description accompanying a bug or the act of reporting the bug itself. (Sometimes just called bug)

Bugzilla

A tool to keep track of bugs. (compare bmo)

C

cbt

Community Building Team. Now been replaced by Participation team.

Channel

The way people see your work. (e.g. The snippet, social media, the Mozilla homepage)

Chop wood

Do practical work

CommSquared

Community Communications program

Community Call

Community Call - episodic teleconferences for working groups of staffers and volunteers organized around particular projects. these calls are a chance for community members to share projects, learn about activities in their community, and ask questions. https://opennews.org/what/community/calls/

Community Education

See Mozilla Community Education

Coral Project

The Coral Project: A MoFo collaboration with The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Knight Foundation to create open source tools and practices for publishers of all sizes, to build better communities around their journalism. http://coralproject.net

D

DARCI

Similar to RACI.

Discourse

A modern web based communication forum. Checkout discourse.mozilla-community.org

E

e10s

Short for Electrolysis

Electrolysis

An effort to increase security by splitting off the content rendering from the main Firefox process.

ESR

Extended Support Release of Firefox. For more information checkout ESR Overview.

F

File a ticket/bug/issue

Use Github (or Bugzilla) as an issue tracker to denote a single task.

Firehose

The entirety of the Mozilla 'signal' flooding your inbox, IRC client, Skype, texts, phone, Vidyo, GitHub repos, social media, and every waking thought; the large body of information you have to parse (with help) into learning and action items for yourself.

FSA

Firefox Student Ambassador

G

git

A version controlling system for writing code collaboratively.

Github

A popular web-based git hosting system used in various Mozilla projects. github.com

Github Issue

An on-topic discussion, usually surrounding a single bug, hosted on a Github project.

Github Pull Request

(abbreviated as PR) A way for programmers to submit their contributions to projects on Github. (compare Patch)

H

Heartbeat

scheduling paradigm we use to coordinate ; 2-week cycle of planning, prototyping, testing, iteration, sharing, clean-up, and prep Also known as a 'sprint'.

Heroku

A platform for temporarily hosting a given piece of code before it is shipped to staging or production, usually for testing or demonstrating.

Hive

Hive is A city-based network of educators, technologists, and other stakeholders championing web literacy through connected learning in communities around the world. Networks are the innovation incubators for the global MLN network. For example, much of the Clubs curriculum originated in Hive networks: http://hivelearningnetworks.org

HRBP

"HR Business Partners"; a subgroup of the People team. HRBPs have a strategic role and advise the business leaders, including executives, directors and managers. At Mozilla, HRBPs also serve as the first point-of-contact for all HR-related issues. Mozilla Corporation business units are "assigned" to an HRBP; you can find yours here.

I

IRC

Internet Relay Chat is a communication tool used by Mozillians to communicate

K

Knight-Mozilla Fellows

Knight-Mozilla Fellows spend 10 months working with newsroom technology teams to write open-source code, analyze and visualize data, and explore tough problems facing journalism. We have 26 current and alumni fellows and we're currently selecting our 5th class of fellows.

KPI

Key Performance indicator, KPIs are things we measure that let us know if what we're doing is "working." As an example, we might have a KPI about the "number of monthly active users." We keep an eye on that metric, and if it drops below a certain point, we know we've got a problem we need to fix! (Note: I've noticed we often use KPIs to mean "targets," as in a specific numerical goal we're trying to reach. For example, "500 Mozilla Clubs.")

L

l10n

Localization is the translation of Mozilla products to various languages.

M

Maker Party

Month-long summer campaign to activate, engage, and/or level-up users new and old by supporting them in planning small- and large-scale maker events that tie into MLN tools, curricula, and/or philosophies; often themed and sets up calls-to-action for the following year. teach.mozilla.org/events/

Mana

The name for land that you need to control to cast spells or summon creatures in Magic the Gathering. They are Swamps/black, Forests/green, Plains/White, Water/blue and Mountains/red and colorless. Also where a bunch of HR documents are stored - a wiki that is not available to the public.

MCWS

Mozilla Community Web Support - working group providing support for community webs services.

MDN

Mozilla Developer Network - online resource for Web developers; lives at. developer.mozilla.org

MLN

Mozilla Learning Network

MoCo

Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of products.

Module

A piece of code functionality or area of responsibility within Mozilla. A "module owner" is the person who has ultimate decision making authority - a "peer" often makes day to day decisions that can be escalated to an owner - https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/module-ownership/

MoFo

Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the Mozilla project.

MozFest/Mozilla Festival

Open Web Leadership unconference shipped by Mozilla each fall (late October/early November), often at Ravensbourne, a design college in London, England. Characterized by mental sparks, science fairs, maker spaces, youth participation, free espresso, and work sprints - planned or unplanned - on organizational goals, outputs, and outcomes.

Mozicorns

Crew aboard the first New Hire Onboarding Program of November, 2015. mozillians.org/group/mozicorns

Mozilla Clubs

Local groups that meet regularly to learn the Web, a part of the Mozilla Learning Network. teach.mozilla.org/clubs/

Mozilla Community Education

aims to empower Mozillians in their contributions, and personal goals through education and training. education.mozilla-community.org

Mozilla Learning Network

offers programs and a global community dedicated to helping people learn to read, write and participate in the digital world teach.mozilla.org

Mozillians

A web-directory of Mozillians around the world. mozillians.org

Mozilla Reps

Mozilla Volunteer with the status of "representative" they are part of a program and have special "power" such as asking for budget to run an event etc.

MVP

Minimum viable product. The smallest increment of work needed to test a hypothesis about your product. Used to validate assumptions / prove the product is meeting user needs. Related: Minimum Loveable Product (see: https://fastmonkeys.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/how-to-build-a-minimum-viable-product.jpg?w=500&h=421 )

Related: Minimum Viable Partnership http://intangible.ca/2012/03/27/minimum-viable-partnership/

O

OpenNews

A joint project of Mozilla and the Knight Foundation that supports the community of news developers, designers, and data reporters helping journalism thrive on the open web. Runs the Knight-Mozilla Fellowships, Source, SRCCON, and associated programs. https://opennews.org/

Outreachy

formerly the outreach program for women, (https://www.gnome.org/outreachy/) now a paid internship program for under-represented groups in tech sponsored by several open source organizations, including Mozilla.

P

Participation

The Participation Team works to make people participate in Mozilla programs.

Patch

A specific code contribution by programmers submitted as a text file.

PR

See Github Pull Request

Project Call

A community call where all aspects of Mozilla are discussed (usually 1x a week on Mondays in the US)

PTO

Paid Time Off = Holidays (as referred by UK-based)/vacation (for Canada and US folks)/sick leave

In addition to PTO allowance, employees get 10 days parental leave & a birthday off

Push to production

most development (design and engineering) is first pushed to a "staging" server where it's tested. "Push to production" means it is merged to the production server where the world can see it!

Q

QA

Quality assurance. quality.mozilla.org

R

RACI (pronounced Race-y)

A way to indicate the responsibilities of the various roles in a project.

RC

Regional Coordinator; volunteer or (sometimes) staffer who supports Club Captains in beginning Web literacy Mozilla Clubs that teach the Web using MLN curriculum, at least in-part.

ReMo

Mozilla Reps Program. Also see Mozilla Reps

Rep

Mozilla Representative, as part of Mozilla Reps program. reps.mozilla.org

S

Snippet

The call-to-action under the search box when you open the default Firefox window on your desktop or mobile See: https://fundraising.mozilla.org/what-is-the-snippet/

Slack

A communications tool used by staff and NDA-ed contributors, https://mozilla.slack.com/

Source

The OpenNews publication dedicated to amplifying the impact of open journalism code and the community of developers, designers, journalists, and editors who make it. We publish DVD commentary–style write ups from developers and designers, how-tos, and interviews with newsroom code leaders around the world. https://source.opennews.org/

SRCCON

The OpenNews annual conference-unconference event built around highly participatory sessions and focused on technical and process challenges news technology and data teams encounter every day. Heading into its third year in 2016. http://srccon.org/

STR

'Steps To Reproduce' is often cited on bugs as a way to reproduce the particular problem in question.

SuMo

Support Mozilla is for user support.

T

TLDR

usually TL;DR, meaning 'too long; didn't read;' used as a tag for a summary above lengthy text.

Triage

the process of deciding what the next step for a new bug is. In Firefox, there are triage owners responsible for making these decisions, and they follow our triage process.

W

Webmaker

Webmaker is now an app that can be used to create and share on the Web. webmaker.org. In the past it used to stand for what is now Mozilla Learning Network.

Workweek

A week where teams meet face to face and work together and sing and dance. They can be for the whole Moco Mofo ( example, you might hear about the Portland workweek or Whistler or Orlando) or they can be in smaller teams, like the fundraising team workweek.

Y

Yak Shaving

When you find yourself doing a series of tasks you hadn't anticipated doing to accomplish your original goal

Yammer

Previously used as a communications tool by Mozilla staff. Replaced by https://mozilla.slack.com/.