In addition to being a kind of giant "switchboard" for connecting together the developer community, we feel that one of the most useful roles mozilla.org can play is that of advocate. The number of people who want to work on the Mozilla code can be huge, and so we will try to use our pulpit here to build consensus on what we see as the most important issues and thereby arrive at some kind of coherence in the direction of development, at least for major features and large changes. You could think of these as the documents that describe the "core values" of the project.

Why Mozilla Matters

Our first essay is a piece of unabashed evangelism by longtime net.personality, Paul Phillips, in which he tries to explain to you why it is in your best interest to help this project succeed.

The Mozilla Apologator

An apology for why Mozilla is what it is, and how we got here, for better or for worse.

Unity of Interface

This essay exhorts you to keep in mind what we perceive to be Mozilla's greatest strength that it uses the same interface for the same task, regardless of how the service is implemented on the other end. We believe that consistency in the user interface is a big part of what made Mozilla the success that it is today.

Internationalization

This document explains what Internationalization and Localization (I18N and L10N) are, and why they should matter to you: why it's important to write code that is localizable and works with all languages, and how the existing infrastructure in the source can help you do this.

Freeing the Source: The Story of Mozilla

An essay by Jim Hamerly and Tom Paquin with Susan Walton, written as a chapter for the book, Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution.

Mozilla At One

An essay by Frank Hecker, written at the first anniversary of mozilla.org, that looks at our experiences, our accomplishments, and at the issues that lie ahead.

Browser Innovation, Gecko and the Mozilla Project

An essay by Mitchell Baker, written in 2003, covering the big picture, Gecko, XUL, Camino and Safari, and why web browsers still matter.

Essays that will be found here in the future will include:

Cross-platform code

Why it's a good thing; an appeal to not fragment the user base with gratuitously system-specific improvements; why "it works for me" is not a long-term plan for survival. (For technical details, check out the C++ Portability Guide.)

Modularity

An appeal to add infrastructure before adding features; suggestions on how one can do both at the same time; how to write a good API. (For technical details, check out the Extending Mozilla document.)

Backward compatibility

Why keeping old web pages (and code) working is of utmost importance; how to create a new API without breaking the old one, and why you should care; why mom and pop need your help more than the developers of the world.