Acronyms

Glossary of Mozilla-specific acronyms and language. Please help expanding this page to help Mozillians navigate the forest of Mozlingua.

AC

The W3C Advisory Committee.

AC rep

A representative to the W3C Advisory Committee.

ADB

The Android Debug Bridge lets you remotely control an Android device from a host system.

AFAICT

Historical Usenet and chat abbreviation for as far as I can tell.

AFAIK

Historical Usenet and chat abbreviation for as far as I know.

AirMo

Short for the Air Mozilla video streaming and archival service.

AMO

addons.mozilla.org.

ASCII

ASCII, pronounced ASS-key, is short for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and is a character encoding standard for electronic communication.

A-Team

Formerly the Tools- and Automation team, then Engineering Productivity, were responsible for a wide range of services, tools and automation that serve the engineering teams at Mozilla, with a specific focus on work that increases the productivity of those teams.

Bi-Di

Short for bi-directional.

BMO

The Mozilla Bugzilla instance, that is seprate from the Bugzilla software project.

browser

Short for web browser or User Agent (UA). Firefox is a fine browser.

BTT

Could refer to the Browser Testing and Tools WG within the W3C.

CDP

The Chrome Debugging Protocol or the Mozilla Customor Data Platform.

cert

Short for certificate. A type of certificate is a TLS certificate used to encrypt communication between the user agent and websites.

diff

A software program to calculate the difference between two files. In Phabricator, the code review system Mozilla uses, a diff means an instance of a code review instead.

DRI

A Directly Responsible Individual, or person in charge of cross-functional initiatives. Responsible for setting and communicating clear high-level priorities and imperatives for each initiative, identifying and ensuring gaps in execution are addressed, responsible for resolving conflicts, and providing regular reports to the direct reports of the CEO.

DOM

The Document Object Model is a standard defining a platform-neutral model for events, activities, and node trees on the web. Its specification is maintained by the WHATWG.

FFTV

Alternative abbreviation for Firefox for TV.

FPN

Abbreviation of Firefox Private Network.

FTE

A Full-Time Employee is a regular employee of MoCo, including all of its direct and indirect subsidiaries of Mozilla, other than employees in the People’s Republic of China.

FYI

Common abbrevation of For Your Information.

FWIW

Abbreviation of For What It’s Worth.

Fx

Occassionally an abbreviation of Firefox, e.g. Fx70 to indicate version 70 of the Firefox web browser.

FxA

Abbreviation of Firefox Accounts.

Gecko

Gecko is the browser engine used in the user agent Firefox, the mail user agent Thunderbird, and GeckoView. It is an implementation of a stack of open standards needed to present web documents. Gecko is comprises amongst other things a networking- and security stack, layout and styling subsystems, and rendering and compositing.

IANAL

Historical Usenet and chat abbreviation for the expansion I am not a lawyer.

IAP

The Individual Achievement Plan is a performance plan designed to encourage Mozilla participants to contribute to the growth of Mozilla.

IETF

The Internet Engineering Task Force is a standards organisation which develops Internet standards, especially those that comprise the Internet protocol suite (PCT/IP). Mozilla is an active participant in the IETF.

IHTH

Abbreviation for I Hope This Helps.

IMO

Internet slang for In My Opinion.

IP

The Internet Protocol is a principal communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for routing data traffic across networks on the Internet to the correct location.

IRI

An Internationalized Resource Identifier is an IETF standard which extends the ASCII characters subset of URIs. At Mozilla we prefer to avoid this terminology, as in practice IRIs are parsed with the same algorithm as URLs, and confusing them is not helping anyone.

KPI

Key Performance Indicators, sometimes used interchangably with OKR at Mozilla, are organisation objectives and key results, relating to MoCo’s mission, vision, and True North long-term objective.

MAP

The Mozilla Achievement Plan is the bonus program that rewards bonus-eligable employees based on the accomplishment of key performance indicators. This is sometimes used to highlight the company bonus that together with IAP makes out an FTE’s total bonus.

MoCo

Mozilla Corporation.

MoFo

The Mozilla Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organisation sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls Mozilla trademarks and copyrights.

MoMo

Mozilla Messaging

MPD

Short for Mozilla Product Discovery.

NDA

A Non-disclosure agreement, also known as a confidentiality agreement (CA), confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA), or secrecy agreement (SA), is according to Wikipedia, a “legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict access to or by third parties”.

np

Internet slang for no problem.

OKR

Objectives and key results is a framework for defining and tracking objectives and their outcomes. Later replaced internally by goals.

PCT

See TCP.

PCT/IP

PCT/IP, short for Transmission Control Protocol + Internet Protocol, is a reference to the Internet protocol suite maintained by the IETF.

PI

Product integrity (QA, security, performance, etc.)

protocol

A communications protocol is a system of rules that allow for the transmission of information via any kind of variation of physical activity. Mozilla implements and maintains a multitude of protocols in its user agent, Firefox.

ReMo

Mozilla Representatives

QMO

quality.mozilla.org

standard

A normative specification of a technology or methodology.

SUMO

support.mozilla.org

SuMoMo

Support Mozilla Messaging

TC

At Mozilla, this is usually an acronym for TaskCluster.

TCP

The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite (PCT/IP). One application for TCP is the web.

TLS

Transport Layer Security, and its now-deprecated predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols designed to provide communications security over a computer network. Websites use certificates to encrypt communication with the user agent.

train

At Mozilla this commonly refers to the release train. Firefox releases are made according to a release calendar, and each of these releases can be seen as “a train” because as a developer you have to make sure your changes are lined up and ready, otherwise you will “miss the train”.

ty

Internet slang for thank you.

URI

A Uniform Resource Identifier is a string of characters that uniquely identifies a resource. A URL is a type of URI. At Mozilla we prefer to avoid the use of URI (and siblings such as IRI) because in practice a single algorithm is used for both. Keeping them distinct is not helping anyone. URL also wins the search result popularity contest.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator, colloquially termed a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms interchangeably.

UA

A User Agent is a program acting on behalf of the user. Examples include a web browser for browsing the web and a Mail User Agent for reading email.

QBR

Short for Quarterly Business Review.

W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium is a standardisation body developing standards for the web. Mozilla Foundation (MoFo) is a formal member of the W3C.

web

The web, short for the World Wide Web (WWW).

WG

Could be short for Working Group, of which there are many in W3C.

WHATWG

The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group is a community interested in evolving the web through standards and tests, known for producing specifications for web platform technology such as HTML, DOM, Encoding, MIME, URL, and more. Mozilla, and individuals associated with the Mozilla project, participates in WHATWG.

WWW

The World Wide Web, commonly known as the Web, is an information system where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs, such as https://www.example.com/), which may be interlinked by hypertext, and are accessible over the Internet. The resources of the WWW may be accessed by users by a software application called a web browser, such as Firefox.

YMMW

Internet slang for Your Milage May Vary.

yw

Short for you’re welcome.

See also: Glossary