Firefox Module Ownership

[Dave Camp]

Gavin handed me ownership of the Firefox module awhile back, and now I
think it’s time to hand it over myself. I’d like to propose Dave Townsend
as new owner of the Firefox module. People working Firefox may have
noticed Dave over the last year occasionally weighing in on a module
ownership decision with some version of “I suspect dcamp would be willing
to delegate this to me” - and he’s always been right. Dave knows the
Firefox codebase as well as anyone, has the history on the project to back
that up, and he’ll make a great module owner.

Mitchell wisely asked me to include my thoughts on how Firefox is working
as a module.

Firefox pushes at the edges of the module ownership system. The set of
people whose work and decision making contributes to the module every day
is not even remotely captured by the fine set of folks listed
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Firefox. While I think the technical and
architectural decision makers are somewhat well-represented there, the set
of product, UX, communications, marketing, etc decisions that influence
this module are really nowhere to be found. While some modules can
reasonably be considered to have a true top-to-bottom owner that makes all
relevant decisions, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a single owner of
such decisions for Firefox.

So I’ve treated ownership of this module as stewardship over the technical
and architectural activities that make up the Firefox frontend. I think
the module works well in this capacity. Its nature as a large umbrella
module without strict submodule divisions allows the flexibility to support
the changes Firefox is going through. The code review policy[1] that Mike
Shaver implemented and that Gavin and I continued is strong. As we shift
effort from one piece of the product to another, I’m glad that the same
evolving set of folks are held responsible for its overall success, rather
than leaving a trail of decaying modules with long-lost owners. And I
believe that in general the module still correctly communicates a core set
of decision makers (if not decision making process) that should be
consulted when adding to the frontend of the browser.

It doesn’t reflect the people that make the broader decisions that affect
the product. There are multiple ways to interpret/resolve this: we could
decide to make it explicit that this is a code-oriented module, and
acknowledge up front that some decisions that make up what that code
accomplishes are held elsewhere (maybe in new modules we need to create).
We could decide that this is an overall Firefox module and that we need the
module owner to be the same person who explicitly delegates who is in
charge of the product and UX decisions that influence the module. You
could also just throw your hands up and say “this reality is too complex
for the module ownership system”.

I prefer the first approach, and it’s in this spirit that I am handing the
module to Dave Townsend. There’s always room to improve specifics in the
engineering leadership of the module, and I’ll continue to support Dave
with that. To the extent that there’s wider agreement that we should
formalize the additional modules, I’m happy to help the right folks form
those too.

Thanks,
-dave

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Code_Review