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Over 2,400 extensions have been created for Mozilla's Firefox browser, ranging from simple toolbar buttons to completely new features. This rich ecosystem stems from the openness of the platform itself which does not restrict creativity through a limited API. Shaver explains how this philosophy is rooted in the history of the Mozilla project. Since it was difficult to predict where changes will be needed, early contributers saw the value in keeping things as open and flexible as possible for a wide base of developers. Of course, this unfettered approach can have a downside as not every piece of code works perfectly, but overall the program has been a big success.
Gertner and Camp provide some concrete examples in the ways their companies have built successful products on top of the Firefox platform. AllPeers has a popular Firefox extension that lets users build communities through chat and sharing data over their peer to peer network. Stumbleupon delivers a personalized recommendation engine which harnesses input from friends and peers through social networking tools in the browser. Both companies have found a lot of benefit working within the Firefox ecosystem which has an active and passionate set of developers and users.
How much does the source matter in all this? Shaver points out that most extensions are written in javascript, so the source is available as a matter of course. This makes it easy for developers to learn how other extensions are built by example. He compares this to the 'view source' capability which played a key role in making the early web so great. Extensions are built with the same technology as Firefox itself. This opens up endless possibilities, and provides an easy way to mix open and proprietary code.
Mike Shaver is a co-founder of the Mozilla project, and leads theMozilla Corporation's work to support the developer ecosystem that hasgrown up around Firefox and Mozilla technologies. A veteran of opensource development, Mike has worked on code at virtually every level ofthe open source application stack, ranging from the Linux kernel andLustre clustered filesystem to Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and even,when he was younger and didn't know better, some CORBA infrastructure.Less well-known than Bono but with slightly more geek-cred than K-Fed,Mike is a sought-after speaker and advisor for technology/open sourceconferences and organizations. He lives in Toronto with his wife andcat, and an increasingly-dusty collection of cookbooks.
Cofounder Garrett Camp is responsible forStumbleUpon's product design and strategy. He has guided StumbleUpon'sdesign and development since 2001, from inception to over 3.5M members.Garrett completed his Masters inSoftware Engineering at the University of Calgary, where he researchedcollaborative systems, evolutionary algorithms and informationretrieval.
Matthew Gertner is the chief technology officer of AllPeers. A Brit bybirth, an American by upbringing, and a European by choice, he hasspent the last 15 years living in Paris and Hamburg before finallysettling in Prague. When not coding C++, he is an avid cook and adangerously obsessive player of backgammon and golf.
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This free podcast is from our O'Reilly Media Open Source Conference series.
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