What is Mozilla for a contributor?

Reading about the current happenings at Mozilla headquarters, I ask myself, "do this matter to me as a contributor to the Mozilla project sitting on the other side of the world?". Below are more questions that came to my mind and what I think about it:

"what is Mozilla for me"
To me, Mozilla is a community, a movement, where a group of people who are together to support the mission. To take this mission forward there are products/projects like Firefox, Webmaker and other. As a project, Mozilla has made big impact in building a better web for all. For a movement of this scale to run, there is a need of people who can work on full time on it, that is where I see the company/staff as part of the community. The staff, the company are there to support the community, the mission and not the other way around.

"why I contribute"  

As a community member living 8500 miles away from where the Mozilla headquarters is based, and the rest of the community spread across the world, the only reason for contributing to the project is because of the community and its mission. This is the most diverse global community that I got to be part of. There are probably several number of things to agree and disagree among us(the community members) outside of the Mozilla cause, but that is not why we are in the community.

'Many Voices, One Mozilla'
At Mozilla, our goal is to reach Million Mozillians. If we want to reach this goal, we should not lose focus of who we are.  If there is anyone that we should listen to, it is our community and our users/ share holders. For Mozilla to be relevant for next 100 years and do good, it should be about the community and its mission.

An encounter with Mahatma Gandhi during Mozilla Summit 2013

As a contributor for the Mozilla project, I was invited to participate at Mozilla Summit that happened in California recently. There is a LOT to get excited and share about Mozilla Summit. You can find many experiences shared on the Web, to share a few, you may read it from here, here, here, here and here. In this post I will share a short personal anecdote that happened with me during the summit.

My cousin brother, Goutham got into a flight to US at the same time I got into a flight to back home in 2010. Knowing that I will be in Bay area that weekend, Goutham came all the way from LA to meet me. We had a quick chat on Friday night, he invited me to a party that he and his friends were hosting at San Francisco on Saturday.

While most of the community members went to Great America after dinner, I took a short nap and then went to San Francisco around 11.00 PM, one of Goutham's friend came to pickup. The party was at Ferry building with Bay Bridge as the backdrop, it was quite a view. We had good fun till late AM. The car was parked on the other side of the road, while we were walking past the Ferry plaza, there I saw the statue of Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhi Statue at San Francisco Ferry Terminal

Photo courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ashish_tibrewal/2444451003/ 

Staring at the statue, thinking of the kind of impact he had made on the world, it was a short moment of introspection. 'Will I be able to make an impact?'  

Next day, it was a grand closure of the fantastic summit. At this time something amazing was announced - Mozilla is building a monument in front of the Mozilla San Francisco office and it will be filled with names of all the contributors of the project.

Proposed Monument to Mozillians outside Mozilla's San Francisco office

To me, this tells the impact a community has made and the individuals as part of a community. In this fast paced world, how often do we get to improve peoples lives through little contributions? how often do we get to make an positive impact through our work, big or small? This monument is a representation of a movement.

"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history." - Mahatma Gandhi

UPDATE:

In-front of the yet to be unveiled monument..