Mozilla losing Director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner

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Mozilla’s Director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner announced this AM that he plans to leave Mozilla.

For me Beltzner has been THE POINT MAN on Firefox dev stuff for the last several years. He’s been the guy I met with at the Mozilla Toronto office and he’s usually the final word on Firefox development.

I personally have always respected and admired his articulate comments and insight into Firefox and the broader world of open web developments.

Beltzner notes in his farewell post that he’s not leaving immediately and that he’ll stick around until Firefox 4 is out the door (which isn’t that far way…hopefully).

While this is a loss for Mozilla, the great strength of Mozilla is its depth on the bench. There are many leaders at Mozilla (including the ‘other’ director of Firefox, Johnathan Nightingale) that will likely be stepping up (even more than they already have..).

I’ll be curious to see – how and if Mozilla does in fact restructure their organization as a result of Beltzner’s pending departure.