12 Jul 10: Mozilla Jargon

Just as every industry and domain has specialized jargon, so too do organizations have unique terms for things, activities, and people. Here are some of the terms I'm encountering at Mozilla. This doesn't mean that they're unique to Mozilla, just that I haven't heard them before (or in the case of "awesome", nearly as much).


Chemspill

An emergency release of software, in response to a potentially negative event. This was originally coined with reference to security vulnerabilities, particularly when the hole is actively being exploited by bad guys. However, just recently, Firefox 3.6.6 was released as a chemspill to fix a poor choice for a default setting. This release came quick on the heels of Firefox 3.6.4, which introduced a feature to detect when a plug-in (such as the Flash player) is hanging. In 3.6.4, the default time to trigger this feature was set at 10 seconds, which was too short for many older computers, causing problems for a great many users who upgraded. Hence, a chemspill release of 3.6.6 was done in record time, to change the default to 45 seconds. (The value is configurable, but most users don't know (and shouldn't need to know) how to change it.)

Landing

When a code change is checked into the main trunk of the source control system, it is said to have "landed". I like the imagery of code as birds circling and descending to alight on the (code) tree.

Awesome

This word has the same basic meaning as in common, informal American English, but it's used much more frequently and enthusiastically within Mozilla culture than in the general population. It can range from indicating mild approval to expressing the highest praise, but tends to cluster on the upper end of that scale. Its use is almost always sincere and non-ironic, though it may carry a tinge of self-consciousness. In addition to its usual role as an adjective, "awesome" can also function as a mass noun as in "too much awesome" or "army of awesome". When the Firefox location bar (where you type URLs) was enhanced to support keyword searching and autocompletion based on history and bookmarking, the enhanced functionality was dubbed "the Awesome Bar" by developers, much to the consternation of localizers.

Category: Writing | Posted by: jmswisher

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