One of the big changes Firefox initiated was our extension model. It’s turned out to be an important area for keeping the minimalist product goal, providing opportunities for customization and innovation, and creating an active area for developer involvement. There’s a lot to think about to make the extension world work well, and to help developers building on our products more generally.
Mike Shaver has agreed to turn his focus to these topics. Mike has been involved in many aspects of the Mozilla project starting way back in 1998, and has done a varied set of things since joining us full-time last summer. Mike is now going to turn his focus to the extension space in particular and the software ecosystem around Firefox and our technologies in general.
Mike’s initial focus will be on the extension space, where he’ll coordinate the development of a clear strategy for helping users and developers get the most out of Firefox extensions. I’ll leave it to Mike to specify in detail his current view on what this entails, and how he’ll go about learning more from interested people.
More generally, Mike will focus on development of the ecosystem around Firefox. The goal here is to work with technical leads, partners and our community to make developers happier and more productive with Firefox and the web.