Asa Dotzler
Encyclopedia
Asa Dotzler is an American
software developer best known for his work as community coordinator for several Mozilla
projects. He was founder of Mozilla's Quality Assurance
(QA) and Testing Program, which grew under his leadership from just a few contributors when Dotzler joined the project to tens of thousands of volunteers today
Dotzler is also co-founder of the Spread Firefox project, launched in October 2004, where he spearheaded Mozilla's open source
marketing
program. Spread Firefox is charged with empowering Firefox
community members to raise awareness of the popular web browser
. Today, he works with Mozilla's Technology Evangelism team, helping people understand, build, and benefit from the Open Web.
Dotzler has been an active member of the Mozilla community since 1998. After volunteering for more than a year, Dotzler joined "staff@mozilla.org", the leadership team for the Mozilla organization, and has played a key role in delivering products including the release of Mozilla 1.0 and the release of the Mozilla Firefox
web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird
e-mail
client.
Dotzler has also helped his local community and beyond as part of a model to others in use of social network for safety in such a case as when he tracked the 2009 Lockheed Fire
in the Santa Cruz Mountains
.
, producers of the Firefox Web browser. Before moving to the Corporation, Dotzler was one of the original employees at the non-profit Mozilla Foundation
. Dotzler's first paying job on the cross-platform
Mozilla
web browser was in Mountain View, California
as an employee of Netscape Communications Corporation. He was hired by Netscape in May 2000 to work with the "staff@mozilla.org" team. When AOL
shut down the Netscape browser unit in July 2003, Dotzler was a member of the team to start up the Mozilla Foundation. Before joining Netscape, Dotzler worked on Mozilla as a volunteer for over a year while living in Austin, Texas
. Dotzler moved to Austin in 1997 after meeting his spouse, Deanna Pierce.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
software developer best known for his work as community coordinator for several Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
projects. He was founder of Mozilla's Quality Assurance
Quality control
Quality control, or QC for short, is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production. This approach places an emphasis on three aspects:...
(QA) and Testing Program, which grew under his leadership from just a few contributors when Dotzler joined the project to tens of thousands of volunteers today
Dotzler is also co-founder of the Spread Firefox project, launched in October 2004, where he spearheaded Mozilla's open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
program. Spread Firefox is charged with empowering Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
community members to raise awareness of the popular web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
. Today, he works with Mozilla's Technology Evangelism team, helping people understand, build, and benefit from the Open Web.
Dotzler has been an active member of the Mozilla community since 1998. After volunteering for more than a year, Dotzler joined "staff@mozilla.org", the leadership team for the Mozilla organization, and has played a key role in delivering products including the release of Mozilla 1.0 and the release of the Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser...
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
client.
Dotzler has also helped his local community and beyond as part of a model to others in use of social network for safety in such a case as when he tracked the 2009 Lockheed Fire
Lockheed Fire
The Lockheed Fire was a wildfire in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the Swanton and Bonny Doon areas of Santa Cruz County, California. The fire was started on August 12, 2009 at 7:16 PM PDT....
in the Santa Cruz Mountains
Santa Cruz Mountains
The Santa Cruz Mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are a mountain range in central California, United States. They form a ridge along the San Francisco Peninsula, south of San Francisco, separating the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco Bay and the Santa Clara Valley, and continuing south,...
.
-
- Santa Cruz County wildfire information grows with online maps, social networks: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19334601
Mozilla work
Dotzler is currently an employee of the Mozilla CorporationMozilla Corporation
The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey Navigator web browsers and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client by a growing global community of...
, producers of the Firefox Web browser. Before moving to the Corporation, Dotzler was one of the original employees at the non-profit Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property...
. Dotzler's first paying job on the cross-platform
Cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...
Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
web browser was in Mountain View, California
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
as an employee of Netscape Communications Corporation. He was hired by Netscape in May 2000 to work with the "staff@mozilla.org" team. When AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
shut down the Netscape browser unit in July 2003, Dotzler was a member of the team to start up the Mozilla Foundation. Before joining Netscape, Dotzler worked on Mozilla as a volunteer for over a year while living in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
. Dotzler moved to Austin in 1997 after meeting his spouse, Deanna Pierce.
Blog
Dotzler maintains an active weblog with an emphasis on Mozilla development and news, although it does at times cover topics of personal or academic interest.Quotes
- "I think we're going to see some serious bottom up pressure in the enterprise space... We'll even get some of the big boys in the Fortune 500... It's going to be a great year for Firefox, and it won't be limited to the home user."
-
- In a 2005 entry on his Mozilla blog: Enterprise Adoption - weblogs.mozillazine.org.
- "Even more exciting is how much progress Firefox is making [in enterprise usage] and how quickly. At nearly 20% and growing almost half a point per month, I don't think anyone can discount Firefox's potential to succeed in the enterprise as well as it is with consumers. Go Firefox!"
- In a 2008 entry on the same blog: Stats from tall buildings - weblogs.mozillazine.org
- "Enterprise has never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours."
- Regarding the effect of Mozilla's new rapid release cycle on enterprise and Firefox's user niche market, June 2011: "Mozilla: We Care About Business, Really" PCMAG.COM
- "Yes, I’m basically saying that I don’t care about making Firefox enterprise friendly."
- Responding to a question about Mozilla's support for corporate users; from Dotzler's comments, June 2011: Mike Kaply's Blog
- "Webmasters, listen up. Respect your users or you will lose them. With Firefox, the user is no longer just a spectator, he's a participant. Play nice or face extinction. Seriously."
- Regarding website owner practices; from Dotzler's article: No Respect for the User
- "Yeah, I'm just a critic and I had absolutely nothing to do with bringing Firefox to 250 million users. Dave, go piss up a rope."
- Responding to Dave Winer in Feb. 2009 stating, "It's so easy to be a critic, and so much harder to make a contribution. To some extent because of people like yourself.": brilliance
- In a 2005 entry on his Mozilla blog: Enterprise Adoption - weblogs.mozillazine.org.
Quotes about Dotzler
- "Finally, Mozilla had a product that could compete with Microsoft. The question now was how to publicize it. Open-source management seemed to work well when it came to developing software. But open-source marketing was an unexplored concept. Would people be willing to volunteer to get the word out on Firefox? Baker thought they might, and one reason was Asa Dotzler."
-
- Inc. Magazine February 2007; "Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox"
- "Asa Dotzler, director of Firefox, has made it clear he doesn't consider enterprise users worth supporting. In several comments added to a follow-up post by Kaply, Dotzler did not mince words. "Enterprise has never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours," Dotzler said. "I can't imagine why we'd focus at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about.""
- Computerworld, June 2011: "Microsoft exploits uproar over Firefox 4's retirement to beat IE drum"
- Inc. Magazine February 2007; "Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox"
Official sites
- Asa Dotzler's Blog — Asa Dotzler's personal weblog
- Deanna Pierce & Asa Dotzler — Asa and his wife Deanna's website
News and media
- LQ Radio Interview — InterviewInterviewAn interview is a conversation between two people where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee.- Interview as a Method for Qualitative Research:"Definition" -...
with Dotzler on LinuxQuestions Radio (July 27, 2005) - Behind the scenes at Mozilla HQ — A glimpse of the Mozilla Foundation office including Dotzler from ZDNetZDNetZDNet is a business technology news website published by CBS Interactive, along with TechRepublic and SmartPlanet. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991 as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication owned by CNET...
UK (July 19, 2005). - Firefox: The alternative history — Interview with Dotzler from ZDNet UK (July 19, 2005).
- Firefox: Doing it for love — Another interview with Dotzler from ZDNet UK (July 19, 2005).
- Mozilla: IE 7 to boost Firefox growth — from CNetCNETCNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
(July 18, 2005) - Why Linux isn't ready for desktops — Commentary by Dotzler from ZDNet Australia (July 18, 2005).
- Job Morph: Herding Cats — Fast Company magazine article on Dotzler (March, 2007).
- 25 Years of PC Magazine: Year Twenty 2001, Innovators: Asa Dotzler — PC Magazine article on Dotzler (September, 2007)
- Firefox Turns 500 Million — Interview with Dotzler on NPRNPRNPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
(February 25, 2008). - Mozilla's Asa Dotzler on Firefox, Fighting Bloat and the Problem with Democracy — Interview with Dotzler on WIRED Blogs (March 27, 2008).
- Mozilla at 10: A Photo Tour of the Lizard’s Lair — Dotzler in WIRED Gallery celebrating 10th anniversary of the birth of the MozillaMozillaMozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
project (March 29, 2008).