Dan Warne07 May 2007, 7:37 AM
Some of Mozilla's key developers are working in a small development office in New Zealand. They're the people responsible for building key functionality in Firefox 3.0. Plus, Mozilla Japan has come up with an even cuter Fox than the Firefox... its cartoon character is called Foxkeh.
Some of Mozilla's key developers are working in a small development office in New Zealand. They're the people responsible for building key functionality in Firefox 3.0. Plus, Mozilla Japan has come up with an even cuter Fox than the Firefox... its cartoon character is called Foxkeh.
Dan Warne (APC): Since you're here in Australia - in the Asia/Pacific region -- are you doing any APAC initiatives or do you have any links with organisations here that are interesting?
Mitchell Baker: We have for many years had an active community in Japan and it is a community‑based group with a very small organisation, Mozilla Japan, which is non‑profit. Once we had revenue about a year ago we started to fund an investment in Mozilla Japan so that's probably six or seven or eight people with some developers, some outreach and doing very interesting things.
So in fact I will just show you this. This little creature here is Foxkeh which is a creature that the folks in developed to make Firefox accessible and for viewing in the market there.
 Kawaii: Oh so cute... Mozilla Japan's firefoxy cartoon character Foxkeh |
They are doing some pretty excellent work on extensions and also developing documentation in Japanese and so on.
We have also had for a couple of years now a very, very low key small effort in China which we are a small good project hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and in the last few months we've decided that we should be a little more engaged in China.
We've hired someone to help us. I was there a few months ago and there is a set of people in China, maybe the best we can tell like a million users so not a lot of users for China. But an interested and excited user base and the bloggers and so on and some of them are very interested.
So our thinking is: well let's go and find out who is there and who is already interested. Let's go and see if we did more, whether more people would be interested and if this vision of the Internet that we are working so hard on resonates there. If it does and there's a community of people then let's see if we can be helpful.
We expect that to be a pretty significant exploration in the next year.
Dan Warne (APC): Any other contributors here in Australia or nearby?
Mitchell Baker: There are a few yes. We have for many years had a wonderful contributor, Robert O'Callaghan , who is a New Zealand native and he's been living in the United States - or he was living in the United States - for a number of years and desperately wanted to go back.
So he is back in New Zealand now and he works for us and we've started a small office in New Zealand.
Dan Warne (APC): Really?
Mitchell Baker: Yeah because it turns out when you have one really great contributor who is also a good teacher and willing to mentor and can attract a few other smart people around him that's worth a lot to us, that's everything.
In fact the offline apps demo that was done this morning that showed a demo of Zimbra running offline, without an internet connection, that work was done out of the New Zealand office.
 Robert O'Callaghan: back where he belongs, developing for Mozilla from New Zealand |
Dan Warne (APC): Wow! Are you doing any work in Australia as well?
Mitchell Baker: Not currently. However, one of our longest contributors to the Mozilla project is a lecturer here in Australia at University of Queensland and he's been involved in the project since 2000 I think. He's a mathematician or at least a scholar in an area in which mathematic equations are important.
So way, way back when he decided - there's a language called MathML - and he decided that Firefox Mozilla in those days ought to have it. And he has been contributing ever since and is single‑handedly responsible for the ability to really persuade confidence in this area.
Dan Warne (APC): Right... I have always been curious about why on earth it is that Mozilla has such comprehensive support for mathematical equations?
Mitchell Baker: It's all due to Roger Sidje from UQ. It was a long hard battle for him in the early days.
Dan Warne (APC): Really?
Mitchell Baker: Well we're talking 2000 so actually getting that complex and different rendering elements into the core rendering engine is hard.
Dan Warne (APC): It's almost like writing a whole different HTML renderer, I can imagine, because mathematical equations can be formatted in very complicated ways.
Mitchell Baker: Right and he's been active so long now. Since we started getting revenue, we've been hosting a Firefox summit of key contributors and non‑employees from around the world, so Roger has come to visit us a couple of times because he has been such a great contributor for us.
Read more of the interview with Mitchell Baker: