Mozilla's head of engineering leaves for Facebook

Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of Engineering, has left Mozilla to join Facebook as its director of Engineering. I only met Mike once but was hugely impressed by him. His loss, while it shouldn't significantly hurt Mozilla's continued momentum, is a loss to Mozilla.

That's the problem with being a non-profit. It will always be hard to retain people long-term since there's no possible pay-out at the end. Mozilla has done an exceptional job of hiring great people, but I worry that it (along with Eclipse, Linux Foundation, etc.) will be able to keep those great people for the long haul.

I personally believe that the non-profit foundations may hold the future to building the next generation of exceptional open-source software. It would be awesome to see those that have made significant money in open source take a turn within these non-profits, lending their perspective and expertise.

As for Facebook, it scored big in recruiting Mike. This speaks well of Facebook's commitment to open source and the open web. Mike wouldn't have joined without feeling that Facebook would be contributing to the work he's been doing at Mozilla. He has a history of calling out pseudo-open source when he sees it.

[seo2seo]

"Mozilla's head of engineering leaves for Facebook"

1. Then he ain't that bright.

2. We all need a change.

3. Mozilla needs new blood.

[jessestay]

Hey Matt - I see big things for the future of Facebook and Open Source. I think there may be some internal struggles on that front as to priorities, but I think Facebook is very sincere when they say they want to support Open Source and be as open a platform as possible. The problem with them, Google, or any other Web 2.0 platform out there is, no matter how open they get, they still want your view of the web to be them. That unfortunately affects the perception people have on companies like Facebook to their open viewpoint. That, and the fact that they scheduled F8 right in the middle of OSCON (I was so mad about that!).

So - when are you guys going to support Disqus so I can start owning my comments and bring them to other services for further promotion of your articles? :-)

[Matt Asay]

Hey, I dislike CNET's comment system as much as the next guy (or gal). I can't be held responsible! :-)