Heather Meeker: Hello, Tristan, and welcome to FOSSDA! I'd like to start by just asking you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Tristan Nitot: Okay so, my name is Tristan Nitot. I pronounce it the French way because I'm a French citizen. I am 55. I was born in Paris' suburbs and I live in Paris. And I have been involved with computers since I was 14. I think that was in 1980 or is it...'81? I can't remember exactly. But for some reason, a friend of my parents' bought a TRS-80, a Tandy RadioShack, that, you know, made it to France somehow back then and thought 'oh, the young Tristan may be interested in this new thing'.

Tristan Nitot: And so, he was going on vacation for two weeks and so, before going to vacation, he dropped it at the house - which was at the time in Normandy, in rural, very rural Normandy, in the middle of nowhere - and for 15 days in a row, I was stuck in front of it. You know, opening the manual page 1 and starting to read and it was very exciting. I can't remember whether it was in French or in English, but I started learning how to program computers with the BASIC language there, and it was like a tiny door open to a new world that grown ups did not understand at all.

Tristan Nitot: So, that made me very special and so, it made the world very exciting, you know, learning new things where no one around me could compete with, you know, because being a kid known in the place - my parents are wonderful - but it was nice to be the one that knows the most about something. And that's how I got into computing and programming at the time.

Tristan Nitot: And then my parents, a bit later, moved to Paris, where I got the opportunity that- there was something here, in Paris, that got started, we call it the CMI. In French, CMIE , Centre Mondial Informatique which means, like, Worldwide Center for Computing, which sounds a bit over the top, if you ask me, but still.

Tristan Nitot: And it was a very special place which welcomed computer scientists and also biology researchers from the MIT mostly. And in France, where they had, like, a gorgeous building right in the middle of Paris, the Elysee Palace, which is our French House, French White House. You could actually see the French White House from from the building itself.

Tristan Nitot: And the ground floor was open to the general public. And I was one of these kids who could use computers, you know, to show up early in the morning, make sure that you would be the first to be sitting in front of the computer. And a whole community started there, you know, people from all walks of life happened to be there and started chatting and discussing computer stuff and learning stuff and teaching each other stuff because there was that bunch of computers left in front of them.

Tristan Nitot: We were supposed to learn how to program in Logo, that's a programming language. I think the creator of it was Seymour Papert from MIT, if I recall correctly. But, you know, in some cases, we were illegally copying some games on diskettes and stuff like that. So it was not- we were not exactly doing what we were supposed to do, not all of us at least.

Tristan Nitot: When I started learning how to program computers in Assembly Language, this is where I first met my well, the Apple 2 computer, which was very exciting. And somehow there were a couple of terminals left in the room that nobody was using because they were meant for, you know, the organizers of the place, yet to log in and of course, I didn't have a password.

Tristan Nitot: But somehow, a few friends of mine managed to hack into the computers and into these terminals and got noticed, well, caught, I don't know. But they were nice enough to say oh, you seem to be, you know, doing pretty well with these things so why don't we open up an account for you. And so, a bunch of us were authorized to use the the mainframe computer that they had on top of the, you know, everything that the Apple 2s and the other personal computers around there. It was- I think it was in '82 or '83 or something. 1982-1983, like that.

Tristan Nitot: And there was one guy that I met there who had a long beard and long hair and whose name is Richard M. Stallman. So, I met this guy. He was just, you know, an ordinary guy. More hairy than most, but still. And so, we were learning different things, you know, we were able to use the various computers that are there.

Tristan Nitot: And so we were- there were like a handful of kids, like me, that were allowed to go into the corridors, into the upper floors and use not just the Apple 2s and the rest that wasn't it on the ground floor, but something else all they had. It was tons of fun, we were learning a lot. And it happens that, in retrospect, this is where a lot of the IT or startup generations started in France. A bunch of these kids, including myself, well, became involved in computing for the rest of their lives and started companies and stuff. I don't know if you should be asking me questions, or should I keep going or?

Heather Meeker: Well, I'm happy to. So, you met Mr. Stallman and at that time, were you thinking about free software or open source, or was this before that time? When did those ideas sort of start percolating into your world?

Tristan Nitot: It was- at first, I was a kid so a lot of things were not clear in my head like what's allowed and what's not allowed. You know, like if you copy software, can you legally do it or you just, can you physically do it? You know, it's just, it's kind of the same thing more or less. So, whether I was allowed to do so or not was not very clear and therefore, the free software and nature of things, well, we were sharing whether it was legal or illegal, by the way so, you see what I mean. And at the time, I didn't realize the importance of it, to be honest, I'm a bit ashamed in retrospect. But no, it didn't make any difference for me.

Tristan Nitot: Fast forward to - when was that? - 1996. I had discovered the web, I had started doing my first web page. At that time, the big craze was, you know, having your homepage. Like, if, when you go on the web, of course, you start browsing but there's not a lot to see. Then the next step is to build your own home page, so that's what I did, but I didn't want to do like everybody else. And it happened that my wife was pregnant with our first child. And so, I decided to build the home page of our baby which wasn't born at the time.

Tristan Nitot: So you had to put the, you know, given name, give your name, put a picture and have your resume but in all of these three cases it was a bit odd. So, I had to put a picture - is it a sonogram? Is that how you call it? - you know, like, so there was that picture of the kid, of the baby's sonogram instead of a mug shot. And we didn't have a name for him right away, so we call him Virtual Bob because - well, people kept asking 'what's his name?' And I said, 'we'll call him Bob for now' and so it was Virtual Bob. And the page is still online, by the way. I moved it and it's still on my website. And it's mostly in French, some of it is in English. So, it was it was fun.

Tristan Nitot: And of course, the craze at the time was all about Netscape, the web browser, and also the server-side software. And I was in a company, a small French company - sorry, my cat is misbehaving - and so, that's a French company that imported software from North America, Canadian and American, and I was very excited by the web.

Tristan Nitot: And one day, I was browsing on the French Netscape website where I saw a job posting for, like, kind of an evangelist for Netscape in France. I said, yeah, I could totally picture myself being paid for discussing the web around me and so, I applied and it took a while because the there was a hiring freeze at the time so they left me for three months, hanging out. But in nearby, I made it into Netscape , it was in '97 and it was a lot of work, but it was fun with smart people. In '98, then Netscape decides to open up the source code for Netscape Communicator.

Heather Meeker: Right.

Tristan Nitot: And they called it open source, at the time - I'm sorry, it's taking me a lot of time to answer your question - but it was open source because Eric Raymond named it open source, he was the guy who was involved with Netscape management, and it was more, kind of West Coast, very business-friendly view of the world. And so, open source, I think, at the time, was crafted as a word, as an expression, as opposed to free software which was more, I don't know how you call it left it or anarchist or well, not super business friendly or where business wouldn't come first, freedom was would come first.

Tristan Nitot: And so, at the time, it was open source and I was in France, I was employed by Netscape for southern Europe. And then there was that announcement that Netscape would give away the browser. So it was a matter of price. So everybody got it. And for that part of the message, that was easy that price equals 0. Fine. Well, not every salesman was happy with that because they had quotas, and all of this, so they were wondering 'how am I going to make money if the price tag says zero?' They got it, not really happy but got it.

Tristan Nitot: And then there was that source code opening and collaboration and then, you know, nobody got a clear understanding of what it meant. A couple of, you know, tech people in Paris kind of got it but didn't feel that publishing the code was good. Like, nobody cared, like, would the customer be interested in the code? Of course not. I mean, they don't even know what it means, so you know, so changing the code- well.

Tristan Nitot: And then there was me. And I remember, Richard Stallman and I remembered all of that, that it was actually, you know, pretty close. If you zoom out, you know, seeing from afar, it's very similar. Now, there are significant differences between open source and free software, but seen from afar, they're pretty close.

Tristan Nitot: And I was very excited because it was a grand idea. It was something bigger than myself, it was something that was bigger than just making money and selling software, it was- yeah, it was amazingly exciting for reasons that are hard to explain. I was not so interested in, you know, selling software. That was fine, I mean, making good money was fine, but it was not super exciting as opposed to open source software that once again, was like a new door was opening, it was amazing.

Tristan Nitot: And I think even for the free software community, it was a big change in the sense that before that really, it was computer scientists getting together and hacking software in the office and sending tapes from one place to the other. Yeah, I'm sorry, I never used tapes myself. Well, actually I did on it here as a, you know, not on that scale. I was not sending my piece of software on tapes to friends, like the MIT people did at some point.

Heather Meeker: Uh-huh.

Tristan Nitot: But it was their way to do things. And then came a new ingredient, that was the web, and that completely changed the cooperation between developers. Netscape made - well, created - the Mozilla project and along with it came Bugzilla.

Heather Meeker: Uh-huh.

Tristan Nitot: Which was a complete game changer, even if it was not beautiful and not super easy to use, it was amazing. Well, so basically it's a- you could kind of compare it to GitHub these days, more or less. It's an issue tracker but first it was, you know, it was running in a web browser. That means that everyone with a PC, and a web browser, and an internet connection, and some understanding of a code, could start hacking. And hacking in the sense of, you know, developing or trying to or playing with a piece of software, could contribute to that piece of software.

Tristan Nitot: So, it was a complete game changer, in the sense that you didn't have to be in the address book of a bunch of computer scientists to send tapes through mail to other people. You could show up, you know, you could open a bug. He just had to open an account in Bugzilla and you could comment on bug reports and say 'this is doing this and I expect that and I suspect this is coming from that piece of code' and you started engaging with the community. So, the community itself instead of being a small one, became potentially, a really big one, provided that the project was interesting.

Tristan Nitot: And to be honest, the Mozilla project was not super interesting at the beginning for many reasons. First, well, the piece of software was- there was a lot of friction, you know, with Bugzilla and all of that; the tools were rudimentary. And also, there was something, which is really bad, is that the source code that was open was missing very significant pieces because in a bunch of places of the communicator code, there were proprietary list licenses.

Tristan Nitot: So, Netscape couldn't ship the whole thing and you could compile it and make it work. Now, they were willing to ship the product but they had to remove big pieces of it. And so, you end up with a Swiss cheese instead of the whole thing. And so, you can compile it, you can use it.

Tristan Nitot: You know, it was very frustrating, and also it was huge, and the quality wasn't great because over the previous years, the Netscape teams had struggled to compete with Microsoft and so they rushed features half-baked into the product in order to beat the competition and all that. And so, this leaves them with a technical debt that was huge. So you ended up with a terrible open source experience. And on top of that, Netscape was being bought by AOL, America Online.

Tristan Nitot: And maybe in order to help with the Mozilla project, you had to have the knowledge to do that. The willingness to cope with the terrible experience, and you were willing to give your precious free time - and as a computer engineer, you don't have a lot of this because you're worth a lot on the market - and on top of that you were willing to give this to - what was his name? Is it Steve Case?

Heather Meeker: Uh huh, right.

Tristan Nitot: The CEO of AOL-

Heather Meeker: AOL, yeah.

Tristan Nitot: The former executive of Pizza Hut, you know. And I'm not saying bad things about him but basically, he's not the kind of guy that is really appealing to us or, you know, of two volunteers, basically. Are you willing to give your your time with worth some money and your energy to someone who's already super rich by, you know, selling pizza, And so, it wasn't a great start. It wasn't a great start for the Mozilla project and it became worse.

Tristan Nitot: I was, at the time, I managed to change jobs within Netscape and go to, at the time it was Netscape Client Predict Division or Client Product Development. It was Netscape CPD, but I can't remember. Well, you get the gist.

Tristan Nitot: And so, they asked me to do a job, which was, you know, very unpleasant, which was - it was an important job. Well, important, I don't know, but I took it seriously, except it wouldn't work. I was asking web developers to make sure that their website was compatible with the upcoming version, the open source version following Communicator.

Tristan Nitot: First Netscape Communicator, was bleeding market share. It was terrible with going lower and lower. So it was not the hype, it was not the promising browser and therefore, people cared less and less about it. And on top of that, I was not talking about the current version, I was talking about the newer version, the future version, that did not exist at the time except in beta 15 versions that nobody used. And they had nothing to do in terms of compatibility with the old version.

Tristan Nitot: So, telling people that they should change their habits, and their products and their websites to be compatible with something that wasn't there, you know, just in order to be future proof and while nobody really cared about the product and nobody really believed, and that it had a future was extremely unpleasant because people wouldn't listen to me.

Tristan Nitot: So we took the long list of important websites in the US. So I had colleagues that did that in US, and I was doing that in Germany, France and UK, like the 500, the top 500 websites, in these three countries. And we were trying all of them, the main features, in the upcoming version of the browser. And of course, we were writing down what it failed, we opened bug reports in Bugzilla to follow up on that and then we were to analyze their website syntax and if their HTML and JavaScript and CSS was broken, how it was broken, how we could fix it. And then we came up with a fix and we sent them, and they wouldn't care.

Heather Meeker: Uh huh.

Tristan Nitot: So, this is why it wasn't pleasant. Trying to fix one one website at a time, fifteen hundred websites in three different languages to people who didn't care at all on the other, and that wasn't fun. I think it was important because something that probably is not clear to people who maybe will hear or view this video, it's the new version of Communicator which was a open source had a new engine named Gecko, and Gecko was a complete rewrite of the old Netscape Communicator engine.

Tristan Nitot: And by complete rewrite means that the old bugs weren't in the new code base. So it was better, but it was less forgiving for spelling mistakes and such in-the-web pages, not in the text, but in the mark-up that made rendering. And so, it meant that if your page displayed properly in Internet Explorer, Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Netscape Communicator cap for sorry. Cathy's, a 44 in French, then you thought you would define, but with the upcoming version of the Mozilla browser, it would fail. Which was frustrating for everybody involved, both the people that made the websites, that thought they were good - 'It's rendering in IE, so I'm fine' - No! And also the Mozilla developers who had to replicate Internet Explorer bugs into their own code for the safety of compatibility, which is, I'm sure very unpleasant.

Heather Meeker: Yeah.

Tristan Nitot: And so, this was what we were doing at a time. So, this was around 2000 or something. And in the meantime, AOL didn't understand a thing about software. They had their own proprietary system, which was very different from the web than their online service, which embedded Internet Explorer - the competition, you know - and we were trying to have them include our piece of software, already ringing engine.

Tristan Nitot: From your own company?

Tristan Nitot: Yes, instead of the competition and they didn't get why they would do that because it will be less compatible with the existing web, than Internet Explorer. So it was frustrating even for them, and for us as AOL employees. It was a very difficult time and so, they started laying off Netscape employees. Several waves. I managed to get through a few of them, but it was scary like maybe you're going to get fired next week and you never know. And so, well, it wasn't pleasant for pretty much everyone involved.

Tristan Nitot: And when they, AOL, got enough of all of this, they were - I don't know the exact words, I'm sorry, it's vocabulary I don't use often - but they were fighting. It's more of your realm than mine. You know, they were suing. They were suing Microsoft basically. And they got a deal with Microsoft like 'we'll stop suing you and you write a nice fat check and we're good friends now', you know. Also it's really not good for business, right? And so, Microsoft did write a big fat check to AOL which suddenly lost - or seem to lost, that's how I see it - any kind of interests with Netscape. Like, 'Okay, got my money. Why would I care about these hippies that do open source?'

Tristan Nitot: And so, they kind of gave up on us and decided to let the Mozilla project go and pretty much everyone was laid off. A few people, you know, being Computer Engineers could be, you know, move to other AOL divisions and stuff but most of the people were laid off which, it was an unpleasant end to an unpleasant moment. And it was frustrating because, I mean, many people - and I at least, but I know people around me - thought that the web was a wonderful promise.

Tristan Nitot: We hoped that open source would be the answer to, you know, saving that promise and make it happen. And we hoped that AOL having deep pockets would help us and it didn't happen. So, we were disappointed. And especially, you know, that promise was not going to be fulfilled - the promise of the web, you know. In retrospect, I find myself very naive, maybe not that- a bit naive. Hopefully, I'm staying naive, which is good, I think.

Tristan Nitot: Naive for thinking that the web is a wonderful thing and even if you think about Facebook right after that, you'd understand what I mean by naive, you know. But there's a good part of the web, which is carrying the promise. And so, we were seeing the moment where the web was for everyone to publish, to communicate, and if you communicate, you understand each other better. And then you think about Twitter and realize this is not the case at all but still. And so, it was disappointing that this promise wouldn't happen and we had lost our job. The Mozilla Foundation was created in order to carry the project and-

Heather Meeker: And this was in the early 2000's, is that right? Or...?

Tristan Nitot: Yeah, I think it's mid 2003.

Heather Meeker: Yeah, okay.

Tristan Nitot: I should have checked my dates before but I think this is it. I think that the AOL Microsoft deal happened in June 2003. We were laid off in mid-July. And so what we're going to do, the Mozilla Foundation which was just created had the brand- you know, the right to use the Mozilla Brand, which was, you know, good at least. You know, we got it from from the Netscape folks. A few machines with the, you know, servers and stuff with this whole scored on it and hardware to make it run. A bit of cash but it was like two million dollars. And not in one payment, in two payments.

Heather Meeker: And the code.

Tristan Nitot: And of course, the code, which was open. And that was good. And with the money, they managed to hire like eight people or something, less than a dozen of the important folks in Silicon Valley, which was good. But for us in Europe, nothing.

Heather Meeker: Uh-huh.

Tristan Nitot: Well, you have to remember, there were like, several hundreds Netscape employees working on the Mozilla project. So it was like a vast majority of them got laid off and only a tiny part was rehired immediately by the Mozilla Foundation. And it was a bit gloomy and we thought we were doomed, and actually it was the opposite. Yeah. In fact, maybe I'm just terrible at understanding things! It's never like I think it is!

Tristan Nitot: I thought it was terrible and it was actually a good thing because we were able to bounce back, literally, like hitting the floor and bounce back because suddenly, we were not in the shadow of AOL and suddenly we were we were something important and we were a bit helpless. And that meant that some people were interested in helping us, suddenly. They wouldn't spend a dime or their time to help something in the shadows of AOL but suddenly, you know, if you feel like you're gonna die, they wouldn't see and your hand, which is good.

Tristan Nitot: And so, at the same time it needs to be said, the Mozilla project itself had decided - I don't know how to say that - but it was very smart, but also unpleasant. So, before this happened, we were trying to attract a community of people that could come and work on the project. And some of them were individuals and some of them were professionals, like, IBM employees, that came to work and which were contracting with clients, and in between contracts, they would come and spend some time working with us. Well, you know, at least they were paid by the employer and employer said, instead of not doing anything with the client, you should spend your time on doing this and that on, on the Mozilla project. It was good.

Tristan Nitot: But everybody came and left and wanted to leave their mark on the product. You know, like you want to do that button that's, you know, is used by probably like two percent of the users but that's really cool. Like, with this click, you could switch off all the presentation and you see the raw page. Isn't it beautiful if you can do that? Like nobody's going to do that anyway, but it's cool and it's my button! You see?

Tristan Nitot: It's not mine because I didn't do that, but I've met many people that really wanted to have their own button in the product, or their own feature, or their menu option or- yeah. There were fights about what can be put in a contextual menu when you right-click on something. Would be cool if my feature was there, you know? Because it's visible and all that. And so, we were, we were trying to attract people and at the same time, it was really hard to keep the product clean. And to be honest, it was kind of becoming a bit bloated because of that.

Tristan Nitot: And there were a couple of people who had a very strong opinion about what a good product would look like. And that meant the product would have to be simple. And also, not every feature deserves to be argued over and discussed forever. I haven't really made up my mind about all of this, you know. I want people to participate, I want to give them the UI space so that there is their button displayed.

Tristan Nitot: At the same time, I know that ordinary users are overwhelmed with too many options. When their contextual menu is two pages long or dozens of things that pop in their user interface. I understand that, but like many people, I was mad when these couple of people started to remove user interface objects from the user interface, you know. Like this button gone! This feature gone! This menu item gone!

Tristan Nitot: And wait, wait, I did it myself, you know, I had a lot of hours, put into that thing and you're basically spitting in my face, you know, by removing my work. You're killing my work just because you decide this isn't cool. This is not acceptable. So, there were fights between the willingness to include a lot of people in the open source way, and the willingness to make a clean simplified product. And then it wasn't pleasant, once again. It was hard to take off, you know, make the community, take off and then there was these couple guys, you know, killing it. So, at the time, the two projects went side-by-side and the clean and simplified project became Firefox.

Tristan Nitot: But at the time, you have to understand that Firefox wasn't cool at all in the community. Well, it wasn't called Firefox at the time, but what became Firefox was not cool because of the way it was managed. Which was the right way! To be honest, if, you know, the story, the end of the story, of course they were right to do that. But it wasn't cool to see them do that to the open source project, and to the participation who many of us wanted to see happening. And also, it was it was a matter of power. They could decide and we could just see our work removed from the product. That wasn't cool.

Tristan Nitot: And there were, like, two things they did that pretended to be nice. One is 'please don't comment in a bug reports in Bugzilla, just use the forums to do that'. Yeah, go and start a forum thread about this and so, you could yell everything you wanted to, they never read it, I'm sure. I know! But I'm pretty sure they didn't read anything at all. And if there I weren't in these shoes, I wouldn't read it, right? Like I don't read the comments in the nowadays because I know, it's just blah.

Tristan Nitot: So they didn't go in places where they were criticized. And so they, they pretended the forums were the right place to discuss removals of stuff, and then read it. And the second thing they did, which was really amazing, was the extension system. Maybe I'm rewriting history, but I don't think I am, is that when they removed the buttons and widgets and stuff from Firefox - what would became become Firefox - they said yes, but there is now an extension mechanism that enables you to write an extension. So, if you want your button back, you write an extension and you could put back, basically copy paste your code into the extension - was a bit of a lie but at least they had something to respond - so you put it in the extension and the extension, you can add it manually into your instance of the product.

Heather Meeker: Right.

Tristan Nitot: And extensions have been fantastic for Firefox precisely because you could customize your browser.

Heather Meeker: And now all the browsers have them, right?

Tristan Nitot: Yes. Exactly! And now, my current job today is to write an extension. I have a company around that which is funny, pretty much 18 years later.

Heather Meeker: Well so, you mentioned the end of the story and I want to make sure that we get to the end of the story because I think when most people think about Firefox at least, you know, during a period of about, I don't know ten years or so, they would probably call it a wild success. So to tell me about, you know, when Firefox launched, and it began to challenge Internet Explorer and so forth, you know, what are your thoughts about that?

Tristan Nitot: Well, so in July 2003, I get laid off and the people in a European offices, get laid off. And there is that promise of the web, you know, which was basically delayed by Internet Explorer. Well by Microsoft, not willing to update Internet Explorer, not being interested in the future of the web, right? They were interested in stopping the web because it was dangerous for the windows Monopoly. It was not good for the Microsoft Office way of selling licenses. In the, at the time. You have to remember that it was, you would buy shrink-wrapped CDs at Fry's or, you know, a retail store and the idea of having software delivered to you.

Tristan Nitot: In a browser that was like super dangerous to Microsoft business model and it we've seen it took them years to build Microsoft 365 and such how this struggling with Microsoft, with Google Docs and stuff competing with Google. And so, to some extent, they were right and I don't think they were on there. They weren't on the good side of the moral story, but at least business ways, they were, right.

Tristan Nitot: But now that the web was stalling, they were not interested in, you know, making a modern browser and all of that and so it was somebody else's job to do it. Except that there was no money to be made. You know with browser, because Internet Explorer was still shipping with Windows and you would get you know, what's the price tag was set to zero forever. And then so nobody who would be interested in competing with with a product with no money to be made in a process. So it was more or less mozilla's job to make it happen.

Tristan Nitot: And Mozilla was at a stop, you know, so we decided and a couple of friends and myself and a couple of people and new volunteered in the community in Italy, in Poland in the UK, in France, and Germany. We loved the Mozilla project. We knew that standalone browser, which became Firefox was in the pipes, you know, being worked on. Some of us, well, we ended up everyone everyone understanding, it would work, but we didn't realize all of us at the same time, you know, it was it happen over time, but "I think that that Firefox thing is, maybe it's going to take off. Maybe it's going to work." And so, even if I don't have a job. I'm going to help make it well to life. I will help delivering it to the world.

Tristan Nitot: We thought it would be in a few months, so it was like a over a few months and the French law saying, you can't lay off someone for at least three months. This, you get at least three months severance. And then you have an employment benefits that there is a small period of time where you don't have anything but I was doing okay, so I thought I'm going to do that in the meantime, so I'm going to help the Mozilla Foundation to serve potential users in Europe because I knew from experience that it's really hard for a U.S. organization to properly deliver an address users and clients and customers in Europe because it's so different. It's so many well two cultures being different languages being different, the need for localization, you know, translating piece of software making sure, quality assurance in the languages is properly done, and all of that. It's complicated when you're Netscape. It's a bit easier when you are AOL, because you have more money, but if your Mozilla foundation with eight employees, not going to happen for sure.

Tristan Nitot: And I thought who could do that in Europe and, and like everybody, I would talk to the old said, well Tristan, You're the guy. Come on, I don't want to do that. I don't feel like I'm properly equipped to, to do that. You know, and so anyway, I would gather people from different countries. People that I knew that were involved in helping the Mozilla project in and we decided we would make an organization to support that too. Make it real.

Tristan Nitot: And I ask who, well we need if it's a French non-profit. We need a president. That's the name of the job position who who wants to be president and I didn't want to be present at all like and that's just that something happier than they ask for a volunteer and everybody steps back once except one. That was me. You know, that's why I got, I got involved. In this, but they were right. It kind of makes sense, you know, maybe it was because I was at the least technical of all of them. So what was put in a place where I would do the less damage and and so we we did that, hoping that Firefox would launch soon.

Tristan Nitot: Unfortunately. It took us. I think 10 or 15 months to launch because it's software and that never happens on time and it which was a lot longer that I expected. And that was not easy at all to do that because you know, that like the the French an employment agency was asking me whether I would sending resumes and, you know, and stuff like that or whether I was creating a company, and I was not creating a company, you know. These are the two options, basically and then they were threatened to stop the benefits from coming.

Tristan Nitot: And I managed to be lucky enough to be discussing with a guy who was nice and an understanding and said, so you're building a non-profit? "Yes, and we're going to crush Microsoft!" and yeah, yeah, sure.

Tristan Nitot: But and so, I would, I would show him. Emails from Mitchell Baker and from the Mozilla foundation and stuff like that. He wouldn't speak a word of English as a translate me. So I could have, you know,

Heather Meeker: You could have said anything?

Tristan Nitot: Anything, but I did not. I was I was so yes, we were discussing, you know, so that we could use the Mozilla brand and and stuff like that. And he said, "yeah, sure it's fine." And in the end we ended up creating. hundreds of jobs in Europe, so it's so he was right, but at the time it was a bit far-fetched to to believe me and believe that I would we succeed.

Tristan Nitot: And so, Firefox was making progress at the same same time. And even before it reached 1.0 as a version, even by 0.8., It was, it was, it was crazy. People would adopt it. People would promote it. It would, it was the next cool thing. I was spending, probably a third of my time blogging about it and talking. I remember in a cafe in Paris, there were two guys in the next table who were discussing the web. I remember, chatting, "Have you heard that Firefox?" You know, like they were this guy? No, never heard. Well, you should try to know it's fun and it works. It really worked!

Tristan Nitot: And then the people in the UK and the Lance Poland, Italy, Germany, and France, they will be doing all the same. And and to be honest it was it was almost too easy because the web developer were so Upset by Internet Explorer. What was a really terrible browser? Like very, very buggy with full of security holes and let me get past and even if you broke proper HTML, it wouldn't displayed properly and stuff like that.

Tristan Nitot: And sothey were waiting for An alternative, a better solution and and Firefox was well, could be, and it showed that it started to be the response to that. It was, it was delivering, really. It wasn't perfect at all. But in many cases, in many things, we were better than Internet Explorer, and we were showing constant improvement, newer versions, and it was cool. It was op.

Tristan Nitot: We were discussing web standards. So, you knowor what we call sometimes the quality web like the web done properly as we could make it, maybe an industry, you know, something serious. Not just working around Internet Explorer bugs, but really make it proper decent job. Yeah, make the web nice make it, make it good and also open source. You know, David versus Goliath. It was crazy. You know that the Mozilla foundation in Mozilla Europe. Both on profits were kicking Microsoft ass. It didn't seem possible, but it was happening and so people got excited. It. Was that "Spread Firefox" campaign going on, where people were putting buttons to spread Firefox and they were counters and so they would compete to bring the most downloads and stuff like that and there was a need., obviously there was a need for a better web browser with with tabs with extensions with support for the newest CSS features and also fast because it was completely rewritten and you know. It was, it was really cool. Basically, it became viral. I would say.

Tristan Nitot: And so I stayed there, making sure that we would launch Firefox in Europe, probably even though I was kind of starving financially, but I made the commitment that I would help shape Firefox 10, and the unemployment agency was kind enough to let me do it, even though the unemployment benefits are as good as a, as a real paycheck. It's still, it's still Money.

Tristan Nitot: So we made it work. It was, it was really, it was really cool. And it was, it was amazing. I think that the open source movement was also behind us, you know. It was really two things, the web standards and web development. So web standards were hope for the forward-thinking web developers for some web developers. That was, you know, one of these, you know things, one more thing to think about but some people were forward-thinking enough to understand that maybe this is going to be your job, easier, down the road and be better considerated, and you know, instead of dealing with bugs, but rather than dealing with features and you know, interesting stuff. And also the open-source movement where they were was a lot of hope that the Microsofts of the world would be replaced when they were in either with something that was caring more about individuals. And so these two forces were helping us pushing us, and we were and then and the product was was in perfect position. It was really good. It was, it was really good. It wouldn't have happened if it was crap, and it was not no, I mean it. Easy to make promises, but if you don't deliver people notice and we'll come back, and frankly we were competitive. While iut depends when. But at the beginning, we were barely competitive. We were competitive on some things and some not at all. So you have to carefully pick what you would demo.

Tristan Nitot: This brings me back to a moment. I was still with Netscape. I Invited as a Netscape employee to deliver a talk about open source at a conference in Paris. And I was demoing. So it was a bit bizarre was in the early days of the Netscape, well, the Mozilla project hosted by Netscape. It was the Gecko rendering engine. It was pretty much the only thing we had at the moment that would that worked. And it was shipping in the proprietary, Netscape Communicator user interface. So when you looked at it you thought it was Netscape Communicator, except inside the engine was Gecko and I did my slides with PowerPoint and exported to HTML and showed these in that Frankenstein version of a browser. And so I explained how we do this and that at Mozilla and Netscape and blah, blah, blah. And at the end, I said, by the way, you've seen Gecko running all along all that you've seen in that square part of the screen of the browser window was actually open source. People were suddenly excited like you see, they thought they were just, you know, viewing slides by some marketing guy / moron, or you know. But still they were seeing open source in action and then I did demos where I picked at it. Side-by-side demos of Netscape communicator and that Netscape Gecko version. And I, of course, I picked examples where Gecko was better, and I showed them that. And I asked them to count how many seconds it took.

Heather Meeker: Communicator to render some very complex page. If I think it was 17 seconds, my machine and it was less than one second in the other piece of software. And this is the power of Open Source, you know, like everybody was crazy. It was like a concert of The Rolling Stones. I think some of them started breaking chairs and stuff. I don't and I see this is what I want to do when I grow old.

Tristan Nitot: And it was it was really where I decided I would go and, and, and follow the Mozilla project for for a long time and which I did. And yeah, I got laid off in the middle and all of that. But, yeah, it was something I hang onto because it was, it was so cool. And I felt the impression of what, you know, people wanted to believe in open source. Basically. I was and it was cool.

Heather Meeker: That's a great story. Well, so we should probably that's it. I think that's a good note to end on, but before we complete, this, anything else you want to say about open source and what it's meant to you, or what you want to do in the future, anything you'd like to say.

Tristan Nitot: Well, something I did not understand as a kid between proprietary software, I could steal or copy illegal copy and an open source. Is that there's a huge difference. I didn't get it at the time and now maybe because I have gray hair, I get it. And I think we're in 2021 and there is software and pretty much everything we touch, and which is very different from [19]96 when I started making web pages. It's very different from [19]90 or 91. When I started writing my first program in basic. Now, there is software everywhere. And if I want to be free as a citizen, then I need free software. Because the guy who controls the software, kind of more or less controls my life decides. Whether my, you know, garage door is going to open or not. Whether my thermostat is going to work or not, whether my personal data of whether I'm in or out of the house is, shared or not and many, many different things in my life. Some of them being very intimate. Can be shared or not. And if I want to have control over that or have someone, I trust control, have control over there. I need free software.

Heather Meeker: That's a, that's a wonderful comment. Well, so let's let's end. I just wanted to thank you this great talking to you. I loved hearing the stories about the early days of Netscape and Mozilla project. That's that's terrific. Thank you so much. So very much.

Tristan Nitot: It's it was a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Tristan Nitot

Summary