HRIS In Focus The HRIS Strengthening Blog

Lessons learned from Mozilla 24 June 2008

In January 2008, The McKinsey Quarterly published an interview with Mitchell Baker, the Chairman of Mozilla: “Succeeding at open-source innovation.” (Access is free, but registration is required.) Baker describes how Mozilla’s model of participation in developing the Open Source Web browser Firefox works. These lessons can certainly be applied to any Open Source development project.

Here are the highlights from the interview:

  • Set up frameworks for participation where people can get involved in a very decentralized fashion. Those frameworks should embody the project’s values and goals.
  • At the center, have extreme discipline, such as when bringing new code into the core software. But provide lots of areas for participation that don’t require that discipline, such as:
    • building an extension or module
    • localizing the software
    • building new products based on the existing code
  • Participants must “own” their contributions. They are motivated to participate when they have a product that makes a real difference in their lives.
  • Be prepared to give up control and be completely open about everything you are doing, including bug fixes. Be open and receptive to criticism from the community.

Any Open Source development project can learn a lot from studying large, successful projects like Mozilla. Even the folks at Mozilla are still learning how to manage their community of employees, volunteer developers and users.

One focus for us in the next year of the Capacity Project is on building our knowledge base and learning lessons from the challenges we have faced. We will be sharing those lessons learned through this website.

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The information provided on this website is not official U.S. Government information and does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.S. Government. HRIS Strengthening is a program of the Capacity Project, a USAID-funded global project designed to strengthen human resources for health. The Capacity Project partnership is led by IntraHealth International, Inc.