We went through a lengthy thread on hardware-decoding and H.264 on dev-platform today. It was heated but mostly civil. We are all pretty passionate about open standards, so an intense debate was to be expected. One issue I keep running into whenever I take some idea to a public forum like dev-platform is my standing with the Mozilla Project and the Mozilla Corporation. I am the Director of Research for the Mozilla Corporation. I can speak with some authority about research stuff. I am also a contributor to the Mozilla Project. I own a couple modules, and I am a peer to another few. When I posted to dev-platform today about codecs, I was wearing my Mozilla Project contributor hat. Me being a director at the Mozilla Corporation buys me exactly zero standing and authority with the Mozilla Project. The Mozilla Project has a governance structure. Peers and module owners make decisions. Since we are talking about codecs here, and I am neither a peer nor a module owner, I have as much authority as any random contributor on whether we take the course I plotted in my email or not. I am absolutely convinced I am right, but I still don’t get to make the call. The decision is with the module owners. So next time you read something I write, keep in mind: I am allowed to have a lot of opinions, but I have actually very little authority over the Mozilla Project. The authority rests with a large experienced group of module owners, not any one individual, even less so someone hired for a job (like a director). Instead, module ownership is based on merit and contribution to the project. And that’s why Mozilla rocks.