Intellectual Property Law

Mozilla Europe's Tristan Nitot, interviewed by Sean Daly

By Pamela Jones et al.

Interview with Tristan Nitot, President, Mozilla Europe,
by Sean Daly [Ogg]

Q: This is Sean Daly reporting for Groklaw. I'm at FOSDEM ¹ in Brussels, and I'm seated here with Tristan Nitot who is president of Mozilla Europe. Thank you very much for being with us today.

Tristan Nitot: Oh, it's a pleasure.

Q: I would like to ask you a few questions. First of all, could you tell me how many Mozilla developers are here in Brussels this weekend?

Tristan Nitot: It depends what you call a developer. I would rather say contributor. We're, I think, pretty close to a hundred.

Q: A hundred? Now, let me ask you another question: What do 100 Mozilla contributors do together in a room?

Tristan Nitot: Well, we communicate. We socialize. You know, we collaborate on a daily basis using electronic means; we use Bugzilla, we use IRC, we use e-mail. But nothing replaces the bandwidth of, you know, human interaction and face-to-face. And nothing replaces the fact that you share a beer with someone you've been maybe fighting a bit over time on such-and-such feature that was not included or was, you know -- you don't always agree when you work together, and especially it's easy to fight on e-mail or stuff like that, but when you're facing the person and you say, "OK, let me buy you a beer", and suddenly things go smoother again. So it's very important to meet in person.

Full post as published by Groklaw on February 24, 2008 (boomark / email).