Feb 15, 2011 12:06 GMT  ·  By

Another high-profile figure at Mozilla is leaving for greener pastures or, in this case, for browner ones. Firefox director Mike Beltzner, the man who oversaw much of the development of the open-source browser as we know it today, is leaving Mozilla for a very unlikely company which makes geo-modeling software.

"I’ve been getting antsy for the past few months, as some people may have noticed, and have decided that it’s time to challenge myself by jumping into an industry about which I know next to nothing," Beltzner writes.

Beltzner will be moving on to Dug Software, a relatively small company of 70 people, building geo-modeling and analysis software.

While it's technically still software, it's a big change from a world-renowned open-source software company which relies heavily on the community, to a company that caters to a very small, niche audience.

"It’s not a choice I made lightly, I can assure you. I’m incredibly eager to see how Mozilla continues to evolve," he added.

He made a similar jump when he moved from IBM to Mozilla. This was six years ago and since then he brought to completion six major versions of the browser, from Firefox 1.5 to the soon-to-be-released Firefox 4.0.

As Mozilla's Director of Firefox, he handled everything about the product and made sure that each version shipped as soon as possible and at a quality level Firefox users have grown accustomed to.

"It would be the most absurd hubris for me to believe for one second that Mozilla couldn’t face those challenges and opportunities without me. My role here has mostly been that of a lens, focusing the efforts of others in order to burn away obstacles," he explained.

He believes that Mozilla will have no problems moving forward without him. He will be staying on until Firefox 4.0 is done and until the team is ready to start working on Firefox 5.0.

Last year, Mozilla's CEO John Lilly left the company as well. Aza Raskin, one of the most respected figures in the industry, also left late last year.