Module Owners Activities Modules

Activities Modules

Overview

Activities modules are a part of Mozilla's Module Ownership system, a basic organizing and governance principle of the Mozilla project. (The name "activities" may change. It's a bit too generic and could apply to anything, including code modules. If you've got a good idea, please let Mitchell Baker know.)

Governance Module

• owner: Mitchell Baker
• peer(s): Brendan Eich
• newsgroup: mozilla.governance
• scope: project-wide
• governing policy document:
• responsibilities: Policies and process for how we distribute authority and govern ourselves; including:
  • Development and Implementation of new policies as appropriate for delegation of authority and responsibility
  • Management of the source tree
  • Balancing different constituencies of the Mozilla project
  • Maintaining the Mozilla identity as we take on new activities
• other: in the past there has been a group of people deeply involved in these topics regularly. We may create a group for this again as we go forward; perhaps as peers, perhaps as "members", perhaps as advisors.
• final decision-makers: the final decision maker -- when needed -- for the Mozilla project in technical matters is Brendan Eich and for other matters is Mitchell Baker; this has been the case since 1998 for Brendan and 1999 for Mitchell. I haven't figured out how to capture that clearly here. That authority is broader than "policy and process." I don't know if that is a property that attaches to the owner / peer of the governance module or if it is more personal. It should be stated somewhere clearly though.

There is a list of open governance issues.

Due to the large and diverse nature of topics included in the Governance module, we will divide responsibilities by sub-module, in order to delegate authority for specific pieces and identify particular areas of expertise.

Governance Submodule: Module Ownership System

• owner: Brendan Eich
• peers: Stuart Parmenter, Dan Mosedale, Robert Kaiser, Mike Connor, David Baron, Frank Hecker, Mitchell Baker E-mail this group
• observers: Guillermo Movia (this is a new role we're trying out as of Jan 2012. The observers are watching and learning how the module operates, since there's no code in this module to serve as a learning /participation tool)
• newsgroup: mozilla.governance
• scope: project-wide
• responsibilities: Healthy operation of the module ownership system, including topics such as:
  • 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

Governance Submodule: Incubator Repositories

• owner: Stuart Parmenter
• peer(s): Jonas Sicking, Mike Connor, Mike Shaver, Christian Sejersen
• newsgroup: mozilla.governance
• governing policy document: http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/incubator-repository.html
• scope: project-wide
• responsibilities: Implementing the Incubator Repository Policy including topics such as:
  • Evaluating requests for new incubator repositories
  • Determining if an incubatory repository may live longer than six months
  • Other issues that come up in the operation of incubator repositories

Governance Submodule: Commit Access Policy

• owner: Mitchell Baker
• peers:
• newsgroup: mozilla.governance
• governing policy document: Commit Access Policy
• scope: project-wide

Governance Submodule: Security Policy

• owner: Frank Hecker
• peers:
• newsgroup: mozilla.governance
• governing policy document: Handling Mozilla Security Bugs
• scope: project-wide (applies to all Mozilla projects)

Governance Submodule: Mozilla CA Certificate Policy

• owner: Frank Hecker
• peers: Kathleen Wilson
• newsgroup: mozilla.governance
• governing policy document: Mozilla CA Certificate Policy
• scope: project-wide (applies to all Mozilla projects that includes root certificates)

Governance Submodule: Code Review Policy

• owner: Mitchell Baker
• peers: Brendan Eich
• newsgroup: mozilla.governance
• governing policy document: Mozilla "super-review"
• scope: project-wide

Governance Submodule: Performance Regression Policy

• owner: Mitchell Baker
• peers:
• newsgroup: mozilla.governance
• governing policy document: Mozilla "super-review"
• scope: project-wide

Planet Mozilla Module

• owner: Robert Accettura
• peers: Asa Dotzler, Reed Loden, J. Paul Reed
• newsgroup:
• scope: project-wide
• responsibilities: content and policy for planet.mozilla.org, including topics such as:
  • which blogs are syndicated to planet.mozilla.org
  • which content from syndicated blogs in included
  • other planet.mozilla.org policy issues

Mozilla Public License Module

• owner: Mitchell Baker
• peers: Heather Meeker, Luis Villa, Harvey Anderson, Gervase Markham
• newsgroup: mozilla.governance; and mozilla.governance-mpl-update (at least during the process of updating the MPL 1.1, beginning March 10, 2010)
• scope: project-wide, and affects other projects using the MPL
• responsibilities: maintenance and development of the MPL
  • changes in the legal landscape which could /should be reflected
  • changes in FLOSS development practices which could / should be reflected

www.mozilla.org Module

• owners: Reed Loden (technical issues), David Boswell (content issues)
• peers: Elika Etemad, Robert Kaiser, Eric Shepherd
• sub-modules: Owners List
• newsgroup: mozilla.dev.mozilla-org
• scope: project-wide
• responsibilities: content and policy for www.mozilla.org

CA Certificates Module

• owner: Kathleen Wilson
• peers: Frank Hecker
• newsgroup: mozilla.dev.security.policy
• governing policy document:
• http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/certs/policy/
• scope: project-wide (applies to all Mozilla software that includes root certificates)
• responsibilities: Determine which root certificates should be included in Mozilla software products and which trust bits should be set on them, and evaluate requests from Certification Authorities (CAs) for inclusion of new root certificates.

Participation Metrics Module

• owner: Asa Dotzler
• peers: Daniel Einspanjer, Ken Kovash
• newsgroup:
• governing policy document: N/A
• https://wiki.mozilla.org/ParticipationMetrics/roadmap
• scope: project-wide
• responsibilities: develop, monitor and analyze metrics relating to participation in the Mozilla project, including such things as:
  • determining which questions are most important to ask (how many people do X?)
  • determining what data is relevant to answer these questions
  • designing and operating a system to generate the requested data
  • analyzing the resulting metrics
  • notifying appropriate people when participation starts to change significantly
  • assisting various groups to understand and use the metrics to strengthen participation
  • produce periodic report/analysis of participation metrics
• other: This module is explicitly NOT a "maintain community health" module. This responsibility lives across the Mozilla project. Every group working on Mozilla is responsible for developing participation in their area. The role of this module is to add metrics as a tool for various groups to use to help understand the state of participation.

Productive Communications Module (aka the "Conductors")

• owner: Stormy Peters
• peers: David Ascher , Dietrich Ayala, Mike Beltzner, Matt Claypotch, David Eaves, Gen Kanai, Michelle Luna, Kev Needham, Johnathan Nightingale, Melissa Shapiro, Gavin Sharp, Benjamin Smedberg, Mike Taylor (Bear), David Tenser, Daniel Veditz

• newsgroup: mozilla.governance
• email: conductors [at] mozilla [dot] org
• governing policy document: N/A
• http://wiki.mozilla.org/Conductors
• scope: project-wide
• responsibilities: promotion of productive communications styles within Mozilla, where "productive" means simultaneously honest and civil. This includes topics such as:
  • coaching people on who to respond to nasty settings;
  • coaching people to think a little before they hit post/send/submit.
  • coaching people on how to be direct and yet civil, notifying people they are at or past the boundary;
  • coaching people to recognize legitimate comments/ complaints / differences of opinion despite poor communication style
  • redirecting conversations into a better place,
  • building a culture of respect in how we communicate with difficult and contentious issues
  • when necessary, letting people know they've gone beyond the boundaries.