Mitchell Baker to join OSAF

[Mitchell Baker]

I'm pleased to report that I am joining the staff of the Open Source Application Foundation (www.osafoundation.org). OSAF is a non-profit organization whose mission is to "Create and gain wide adoption of Open Source application software of uncompromising quality." OSAF was founded by Mitch Kapor, who has been joined by Andy Hertzfeld, John Anderson, and a small development team (www. osafoundation.org/people.htm). OSAF is actively developing its initial product, a new application known as "Chandler" which will manage email, appointments, contacts, and tasks. OSAF also hopes to play a role in promoting open source application development in general.

I am delighted to see Mitch, Andy and John engaged in this mission, and excited at the chance to participate. My role at OSAF is to guide OSAF's relations with its growing community - the open source community, developers, consumers and potential customers. I'll help OSAF develop a work style that allows the entire community to participate to the maximum extent feasible. That means getting information dispersed as quickly and effectively as possible, developing good feedback channels, driving the integration of qualified contributors into the core development team, developing policies for the project when necessary, and whatever else develops. Our shorthand for this is that I'll oversee OSAF's "Community and Partner Relations."

At my request, my role at OSAF will be part-time. I will continue my role as Chief Lizard Wrangler at mozilla.org. OSAF will fund a portion of the time I spend working on the Mozilla project as part of its mission to support the development of open source applications. I can't think of two roles that better complement each other and I'm extremely gratified by OSAF's support of the Mozilla project.

I'm very proud of what the Mozilla project has achieved. Sharing what we've learned with the OSAF should benefit everyone. I'm doubly lucky to be involved in both projects and excited about the future.

Mitchell