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

amo

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

asknot

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

All Hands

All MoCo and MoFo staffers plus key volunteers - you may also hear this term in referring to the all-mofo meetings that happened before the moco work weeks

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 Now been replaced by Participation team.

CommSquared

Community Communications program

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

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/

Channel

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

Chop wood

Do practical work

D

Discourse

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

DARCI

Similar to RACI.

F

FSA

Firefox Student Ambassador

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

File a ticket/bug/issue

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

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

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

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.

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.

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/

MDN

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

Mozilla Clubs

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

MoCo

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

Mozilla Community Education

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

MoFo

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

Mozicorns

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

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

Moz 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.

Moz Fest/Mozilla Festival

Open Web Leadership conference 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.

MLN

Mozilla Learning Network

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/

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.

MVP

Mnimum 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/) it's a paid internship program for women with a bunch of different 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

ReMo

Mozilla Reps Program

Rep

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

Remos

Mozilla Reps that are like supported volunteers who apply through MoCo/tech pathways to be ambassadors for the Mozilla mission and mentors re: Mozilla products; different in some ways from 'mentors' activated by MoFo/MLN.

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.

RACI (pronounced Race-y)

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

S

SuMo

Support Mozilla is for user support.

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/

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

Yammer

An internal communication tool. yammer.com/mozillians/