Modules/Firefox Technical Leadership

Scope and Operation

The Firefox Technical Leadership module (FTLM) is responsible for engineering coordination and escalation among the modules that make up Firefox, including ownership of the top-level module. The FTLM generally tries to avoid day-to-day involvement in operation of lower-level modules, but gets involved with decisions that are explicitly cross-module and with issues that cannot be resolved at lower levels, such as:

• Resolution of decisions that do not fall clearly into any specific module or set of modules
• Escalation of disputes beyond the module owner level

In addition, the Module Ownership module delegates its responsibilities for the modules that make up Firefox to the FTLM. This delegated authority includes topics such as those listed below, which would otherwise escalate to the Module Ownership module:

• Filling vacant roles where appropriate
• Ensuring module owners are fulfilling their responsibilities, and replacing those who are not
• Creating and staffing new modules where new parts of the project evolve
• Figuring out what to do if a module isn't getting enough attention
• Resolving conflicts among module owners

The FTLM decision making process attempts to form consensus among stakeholders, with the committee empowered to resolve disputes when that consensus cannot be reached, and the chair empowered when consensus cannot be reached within the committee.

Structure

The FTLM is governed by the Technical Leadership Module Committee (TLMC). The TLMC consists of the CTO and VP of Engineering from the Mozilla Firefox organization, plus additional members that reflect the technical leadership of the project. The additional members are selected as needed to reach a six member minimum and ensure broad coverage of domain knowledge. In most cases, we would expect those leaders to be more or less full-time on the project. These additional members will serve two-year terms. As of 2019, the current members are:

• Eric Rescorla (Firefox CTO) - Chair
• Joe Hildebrand (Vice President, Firefox Engineering)
• David Baron
• Dave Townsend
• Luke Wagner
• Kate Hudson

The owner of the Module Ownership module (currently Mitchell Baker) is expected to revisit these membership criteria upon any substantial changes to the management structures or the relationships to corporate entities with the project.

List of Applicable Modules

For purposes of defining the scope of the TLMC's responsibility, the modules that make up Firefox are as follows:

• Firefox
• Toolkit
• Core
• Submodules
• Browser
• Tier 1 Platforms
• Other:
  • Add-On SDK
  • Android Background Services
  • Firefox for Metro
  • BrowserID
  • Firefox Accounts
  • Devtools
  • Fennec
  • Sync
  • Mozilla Location Service
  • Mozstumbler
  • URL Classifier
  • Tree Sheriffs
• Governance
  • Security Policy
  • CA Certificate Policy
  • Code Review Policy
  • Performance Regression Policy
  • CA Certificates
  • Commit Access Policy

Contact

The Technical Leadership Module Committee can be contacted at at tlmc [at] mozilla [dot] com.