Staff Changes at Mozilla

[Jeff Beatty]

Hey everyone,

You may have seen some announcements on the Mozilla blog and other sources
about what's happening at Mozilla today. I'm sad to say that, like
January's layoffs (when we lost Adrian), the l10n team will lose Axel to
this round of layoffs.

Unfortunately, I, like you, have more questions than I have answers. In the
meantime, here's Mitchell's letter to the community about these changes
[1]. We'll have a clearer idea of how this affects the l10n program as a
whole in the next few weeks and share that out when we can. If you have
questions, feel free to reach out.

Thanks,
Jeff

[1] https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/dear-mozilla-community/65546

[Gabriela Montagu]

Hello Jeff, thanks for letting us know!

I think this is very sad indeed! :(

Best regards,
Gabriela

http://www.mozilla-hispano.org






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El mar., 11 de ago. de 2020 a la(s) 16:32, Jeff Beatty (jbe...@mozilla.com)
escribió:

> _______________________________________________
> dev-l10n mailing list
> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-l10n
>

[Kerim Kalamujic]

Being a Mozillian with all my heart, body and soul for so many years,
this email came as a punch in the stomach.  I've said so many goodbyes
to dear people over the years, people I share great memories with.  One
of them, definitely, is Axel (if Axel you mentioned in your email is Pike).

I want to use the opportunity to thank Pike for all his patience, help,
support and memories from past events.  I wish all the best to Pike and
all others who will be leaving, and express my hope they will remain
members of the Mozilla community...

[Tin Aung Lin]

Sad to hear this news. Pike was the only guy I connected at Mozilla Summit 2013 since we have an earlier conversation on IRC and me being speaking bad English and nerdy. He did even hangout with me at the way back home at the SF Airport since our flight time are kind of close to each other.

Pike, I wish you well. Hopefully you still will hang around with us around community as you always did in IRC.

Thanks
TALNET

[Gabriela Montagu]

I completely understand you both! I felt the same to see JuanB and Marcia
go. Juan left by himself but Marcia was let go. I had the joy of meeting
them in person during the LATAM Mozcamp 2012 in Buenos Aires where I live
and then to some of the other big mozillians meeting I was invited to.
Knowing I wasn't going to meet them again was very sad indeed.
Now Pike, and others I know.... As you said, a punch in the stomach.

Best of luck to Pike!

Regards, Gabriela

http://www.mozilla-hispano.org






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El mar., 11 de ago. de 2020 a la(s) 18:57, Tin Aung Lin (
tinaungl...@gmail.com) escribió:

[Luna Jernberg]

Sad to see Pike having to go, he always was nice too me when i talked to him about things both online and IRL

Saw this on ZDnet https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees-while-it-refocuses-on-commercial-products/

[Vee Satayamas]

This is very sad. Axel solved a lot of problems for us. 😢

Vee

[அருண் குமார் (Arun Kumar)]

Hi Axel,

Its sad to hear that you are leaving us.


On behalf of Tamil L10n team, wish you all the best for your next step.

Thanks for your support and help.

Thanks
Arun, Tamil L10n Team

ஆண்டிராய்டு இயங்குதளத்திலிருந்து

புத., 12 ஆக., 2020, AM 4:32க்கு, Jeff Beatty <jbe...@mozilla.com> எழுதியது:

[MB]

Hello,

I read the announcement about some changes at Mozilla and I'm feeling so
sad and I'm sorry.

As a contributor on L10N and CV ans SC on the kab locale, I always felt
like a member of the house Mozilla. So, even if someone leaves, we would
like to keep him/her as a member of our world community, the best one.

Thinking about you,

M. Belkacem - Kabylia - Algeria.

[Gabriela Montagu]

Yes, more about commercial things ... and less about community things!
Unfortunately it does not surprise me very much

http://www.mozilla-hispano.org






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El mié., 12 de ago. de 2020 a la(s) 02:10, Luna Jernberg (
droid...@gmail.com) escribió:

[Jordi Serratosa]

Hi all, so sad to see this. I have very good memories of Axel in Paris
and Barcelona. He introduced me to "Genesis - Acabab" album (in vinyl of
course) :-)

Best wishes and good luck!

salut,
jordi s

[Ricardo Palomares Martí­nez]

El 11/8/20 a las 21:32, Jeff Beatty escribió:

> Hey everyone,
>
> You may have seen some announcements on the Mozilla blog and other sources
> about what's happening at Mozilla today. I'm sad to say that, like
> January's layoffs (when we lost Adrian), the l10n team will lose Axel to
> this round of layoffs.

That's very sad news, indeed. Without taking anything from the other
Localization Team members, Axel has been here since the beginning and
my perception is that most of the L10n tools infrastructure has come
out from his brain and hands.

Pike, I wholeheartedly wish you the best. I bet you will have a lot of
offers from great companies willing to have a big professional in I18n
and L10n.

Kind regards.

--
Proyecto NAVE (Mozilla es-ES Localization Team)
Mozilla Hispano Community

[Axel Hecht]

Hi,

as Jeff mentioned, my time as l10n at mozilla dot com is coming to an end.

Thank your for the warm comments in this thread, and the emails and other outreach, that's giving me goose bumps.

I've had the privilege to work with you, for you, and on behalf of you. That has been my hobby in the very early days, and it never felt like a job in the somewhat 15 years since. Yet I hope that I did a good job most of the time.

Bear with me for a bit of a technical detour. I really enjoyed learning with you on how to ship localized software, and to re-imagine that a few times over the years. Some of you will remember the pre-Firefox days, when Martin did the Mac builds for you. How we changed things for Firefox 1 with CVS, with folks like Benjamin and Zibi. How we changed things for the rapid release cycle and Firefox 5. How we changed again for cross-channel and Project Dawn. And then how those learnings spread into Fenix and lately into mozilla.org. How L20n came up and evolved. Turned into Fluent, and then made it to Firefox and then many other projects at Mozilla.

Back to the important bits. The highlights have been the moments when I got the opportunity to interact with you in a real-life setting. Not an email, not a blog post, but sitting on a chair, holding a cup of coffee (or so), and talking. Having breakfast, lunch, dinners. Among the l10n-drivers team, we crack up reading "Axel actually has a sense of humor" or, as in this thread, "If Axel is Pike".

Being out there with you, physically and culturally close to you and the people you're willing to serve by localizing, was always a blast.

While this group isn't the primary target audience in this post, I have to acknowledge the engineers across the Mozilla projects for their ... . What's the right word? Y'know, they *want* to get it right. They're all taking feedback gladly. Something along those lines. Localization is hard, which is pretending that I'd have a German word. Engineers get it wrong occasionally, and will continue to do so, but we have great connections between L10n and Engineering that don't exist in many other ecosystems. This relationship is important.

To my team mates over the course of time, I really enjoyed working with you and for you. I'll cut this short and think about the puff piece for another post somewhere. Over here, you know they're great. You don't even have to take my word for it.

Last but not least I want to thank the contributors to the L10n ecosystem over the course of the years. You have made a significant difference to our technical work around L10n at Mozilla. You've been an inspiration, a rebel alliance, a sanity check. I've been fortunate to have you around, and to work for an organization that empowered you.

Thank you

Axel. Well, Pike.

[Kerim Kalamujic]

All in all, I hope this is not our last goodbye, dear friend. My first
Mozilla event ever - MozCamp Prague 2009 - it was your presentation that
was the first one I attended and I remember it so vividly as if it
happened yesterday. You were talking about so many things that I could
barely follow and I was thinking: what the heck is this guy talking
about. And that was only the first of our encounters...

Time passes, life goes on, so many dear friends I met since that first
event have left Mozilla (MoFo, MoCo and/or community) and I truly miss
them and those times. So many memories...sometimes I wish I could travel
back in time and revisit some of those places. One of those being our
coffee and chat at FOSDEM 2010.

I will shoot you a personal email as I want to stay in touch with you,
just like I did with other dear people I met.

And, most importantly, THANK YOU! Thank you from the bottom of my heart
for all dear memories and for everything you taught me over the year.

Once a Mozillian, always a Mozillian!

[Gabriela Montagu]

Hello Pike,

I was very sorry indeed to know about this! It's the same sad feeling when
it happens with mozillians I was lucky enough to know in person, as I did
you during the London 2016 Mozfest in the Localization space where we met.

Best luck for the future!

Best regards,
Gabriela






El jue., 20 de ago. de 2020 a la(s) 17:34, Kerim Kalamujic (ke...@mozilla.ba)
escribió:

> All in all, I hope this is not our last goodbye, dear friend. My first
> Mozilla event ever - MozCamp Prague 2009 - it was your presentation that
> was the first one I attended and I remember it so vividly as if it
> happened yesterday. You were talking about so many things that I could
> barely follow and I was thinking: what the heck is this guy talking
> about. And that was only the first of our encounters...
>
> Time passes, life goes on, so many dear friends I met since that first
> event have left Mozilla (MoFo, MoCo and/or community) and I truly miss
> them and those times. So many memories...sometimes I wish I could travel
> back in time and revisit some of those places. One of those being our
> coffee and chat at FOSDEM 2010.
>
> I will shoot you a personal email as I want to stay in touch with you,
> just like I did with other dear people I met.
>
> And, most importantly, THANK YOU! Thank you from the bottom of my heart
> for all dear memories and for everything you taught me over the year.
>
> Once a Mozillian, always a Mozillian!
>
>
> On 20/08/2020 22:05, Axel Hecht wrote:

[Channy Yun]

Hi Axel

It is very sad news for me and our community. Big thanks for your great
efforts to build the Mozilla l10n community, process, and system for a long
time. I still missed to talk with you in MozCamp and Summit during our
growth era of 2008-10.

I think this time is more important to community's action such as parts of
l10n, SUMO, and MDN to support our traditional power users of Firefox.
Recently I restarted l10n contributions in pontoon and SUMO after long
resting. I hope you can do it together now.

Also, I hope Axel will not be far away and am always sure that he is one of
l10n drivers for us.

Channy
---------------------
Technical Evangelist : AWS Cloud, Open APIs, Web 2.0, Web Standards, Open
Source and Firefox
http://about.me/channy

[Danishka Navin]

Dear Axel,

It is very sad news for all the communities.

We highly appreciated your support since we (si-LK) initiated Firefox l10n
work mid of 2007.

It was a great privilege to work with you and your guidance and
recommendations were really useful for us.

We wish you all the best for your future endeavours! <3

Regards,
Danishka

On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 8:35 AM Channy Yun <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Axel
>
> It is very sad news for me and our community. Big thanks for your great
> efforts to build the Mozilla l10n community, process, and system for a long
> time. I still missed to talk with you in MozCamp and Summit during our
> growth era of 2008-10.
>
> I think this time is more important to community's action such as parts of
> l10n, SUMO, and MDN to support our traditional power users of Firefox.
> Recently I restarted l10n contributions in pontoon and SUMO after long
> resting. I hope you can do it together now.
>
> Also, I hope Axel will not be far away and am always sure that he is one of
> l10n drivers for us.
>
> Channy
> ---------------------
> Technical Evangelist : AWS Cloud, Open APIs, Web 2.0, Web Standards, Open
> Source and Firefox
> http://about.me/channy
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 5:10 AM Axel Hecht <ax...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>

> > _______________________________________________
> > dev-l10n mailing list
> > dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
> > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-l10n
> >
> _______________________________________________
> dev-l10n mailing list
> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-l10n
>

--
Danishka Navin

[Mohomodou Houssouba]

Dear Jeff,

Thank you for keeping us updated, even when it is not particularly joyful news. Indeed this is unexpected for those of us who have come to associate localization in the Mozilla-enabled “ecosystem” with Axel and a a few others. I started interacting with – dare I say – his predecessor, Seth, who supported the initial efforts of the African localization network, as I joined in August 2009. With Seth’s departure soon after, Axel became our first and long-time interlocutor.

With time I’ve come to realize that it takes a great deal of patience, dedication, even self-sacrifice, for highly trained tech persons to accompany with near (tech) illiterates like myself. It must take some mental stamina to go beyond the bewilderment that some of our repetitive, rudimentary questions might cause. They betray our lack of understanding of the most basic logic involved in computing language, or at least what shows up in the interface to be translated and adapted into our language and cultural system of signs and symbols. Then, again, I guess that’s the difference – between those who know the “stuff” of its own sake and those who care for people who might not know the stuff but need it, for themselves and their communities. This painstaking effort enabled us to have a few African languages in a world-known browser like Firefox. And even though this drive has relented a great deal since the peak of 2012, with 12 African languages shipped, the experience has created a precedent, a reference point – a trail has been blazed. To be sure, this already heroic venture would have been simply epic if Firefox OS had been able to find its niche on the mobile market. Today more than then, the African user browses mainly on a smartphone, if not, another mobile device. And a full OS like Android but in Mozilla hands would have been revolutionary!

Yet again, it remains the rich experience we gained through the collaboration between Axel, Dwayne and Friedel through Pootle, and now Matjaz over Pontoon. As localizer, I profited from their benevolent engagement that went beyond the call of their contract duties. Heartfelt thanks for everything you gave me and us.

@ Axel: Viel Glück und alles Gute für die Zukunft.

All the best to you for your next engagement(s) and warmest regards,

Mohomodou
—

[mak]

Thank you, Axel and good luck.

from *Bengali (Bangladesh)* team of l10n contributors,

On Sat, Aug 22, 2020 at 4:00 PM Mohomodou Houssouba <m...@bollag-areal.ch>
wrote: