MozCampEU2012/Firefox Stability Programs

Overview of Session

Title of Session: Firefox Stability Programs Subtitle: How we use crash statistics, telemetry, and other measures to improve the stability of Firefox and 3rd-party software

Facilitator(s):

• Benjamin Smedberg (bsmedberg)
• Robert Kaiser (kairo)

Are you paid or volunteer staff?: Paid

Area of Contribution:

• bsmedberg: Plugin and Stability and Such
• kairo: Crashkill and crash statistics

How are you currently involved with the community?:

• bsmedberg: Module owner of XPCOM and embedding, peers of build config, bootstrap and profile management, and RDF, former l10n coordinator and engineer
• kairo: Crashkill program manager, German localizer, former SeaMonkey project manager.

Location of Work (where do you reside?):

• bsmedberg: Pennsylvania, US
• kairo: Austria, Europe

Talk Length: 60 minutes

Summary: We use metrics from crashes and telemetry, as well as support, feedback, and external sources, to measure the stability of the Firefox product. This talk will explain the various elements of the stability/crashkill program:

• how crash statistics provide an overall picture of stability;
• how engineers use specific crash information to fix bugs;
• how Mozilla provides feedback to other vendors such as plugin and extension authors about problems with their products
• how features such as Telemetry are being used to provide additional stability metrics on jank and hangs;
• how new features such as the metrics data ping may provide additional statistical information on stability.
• how volunteer contributors can help with stability efforts in both engineering and reporting/statistical roles

How your session furthers the MozCamp Goals:

• Educate community leaders in the EU community about how the stability programs work and discuss with them stability programs and other technical barriers to ongoing product adoption.
• Build the volunteer engineering and metrics community around crash and stability.

Expected Outcome or Deliverable:

• General education and community understanding
• Recruit at least one new volunteer to aid with stability engineering, and one new volunteer to aid with stability metrics.

Desired Audience Type or Skill-set: This talk will be directed toward a moderately technical audience who may or may not have coding skill or statistical knowledge.

Equipment Needs (Video projector already included): No additional equipment needed

To Be Completed by the Audience

If you would like, submit a Question for the Speaker(s) or indicate what information you hope to gain by attending this talk here:

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Place your name here if you would like to attend this talk:

• Matthias Versen
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