Learning to speak like a native Mozillian

>> Sunday, June 24, 2012

Aside from gaining experience with the technical requirements of a new job, there's also the challenge of learning the terms within the community as well as cultural norms.  There's time spent finding the right code repositories, documentation and test servers.  Who's the right person to cc on a bug or ping in IRC?  When learning a foreign language, they say that if you're still translating in your head before you speak,  you're still learning.  Here are some terms and conventions I learned during my first weeks at Mozilla. 

Release some code to a production branch or stream on the canonical repo
Mozilla:  to land
Eclipse:  to release or commit

People
Mozilla: Lots of people named John, Chris and Mike, many Canadians
Eclipse:  Lots of people named John, Chris and Mike, Canadians represent too

Image ©meddygarnet, http://www.flickr.com/photos/blakespot/5240888169/sizes/z/in/photostream/ licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0 

Where bugs rain down from
Mozilla: https://bugs.mozilla.org
Eclipse: https://bugs.eclipse.org

The source of all truth, which may contradict itself
Mozilla: http://wiki.mozilla.org
Eclipse:  http://wiki.eclipse.org

The version control system(s) to alternately love and shake your fist at
Mozilla: Hg with some Git, Subversion, CVS and Bazaar
Eclipse:  Git with a side order of CVS and Subversion.  (Side orders will be deprecated soon)


Image ©clsung, http://www.flickr.com/photos/clsung/310886130/sizes/z/in/photostream/ licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0

Colloquial expression for the associated open source foundation
Mozilla: MoFo
Eclipse: the foundation

Time for liquid refreshment
Mozilla: MFBT
Eclipse: Beer o'clock

Image ©Cambridge Brewing Company , http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambridgebrewingcompany/5619040409/sizes/z/in/photostream/ licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0

Communication channels in order of importance
Mozilla: IRC,  mailing lists, Bugzilla
Eclipse: Bugzilla, mailing lists, Twitter, IRC


Image ©blakespot, http://www.flickr.com/photos/blakespot/5240888169/sizes/z/in/photostream/ licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0

Code review
Mozilla: review flag in Bugzilla for all patches
Eclipse:  review flag in Bugzilla at the end of the release cycle, others use Gerrit all the time

Incredibly smart and friendly people with a passion for delivering fantastic open source software
 +1 Mozilla and Eclipse

What have I missed?

Disclaimer: This is just based on my own personal experience.  YMMV.

4 comments:

Ian Bull 8:26 PM  

How you do agree to something at Mozilla? Do they +1 things?

Caspy7 10:47 PM  

I think many outsiders may be confused when they hear 'chrome' as it refers to the browser UI as Google Chrome has become much more widely known.

Unknown 4:48 AM  

some of my favorites:

porkjockeys,
carpool,
friend of the Tree,
horked

see: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Glossary

Kim Moir 5:19 AM  

Ian: Yes, they +1 things to agree with things but on at least on my team they use the review flag in Bugzilla instead of just adding +1 to the bug.

Caspy7: Agreed, confusing.

Marc: Thanks for the glossary, hadn't seen it before :-)

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