14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is currently looking for volunteers that could help with the nightly crash triage roster, with the company itself explaining that it has some spots to fill after “the recent layoffs.”
In emails sent out this week, Mozilla says the bug hunting wouldn’t take more than 30 minutes per week and “is a good way to learn more about Firefox internals and interact with code you're not necessarily familiar with.”
The company then points to the Nightly Crash Triage Mozilla wiki page where the roster shows that the company currently has a bunch of available spots on Tuesday and Wednesday to analyze Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday builds.
“Due to the recent layoffs the nightly crash triage roster has a lot of holes so if you have some spare cycles please come and help out! Nightly crash triage consists in looking at the crashes for a specific version of nightly (e.g. the previous week Monday build), catching regressions and filing them,” Mozilla explains.
“Usually it takes no more than 30 minutes per week and is a good way to learn more about Firefox internals and interact with code you're not necessarily familiar with. We've got detailed documentation to get you started. We'll be adding more docs about tools that make the job easier. We've got four slots to fill ATM but in the lucky case there's more candidates than slots we're happy to rotate.”
The layoffs
Mozilla has recently decided to lay off approximately 70 employees (with more possibly affected at offices in other countries) as the company struggled to find long-term sources of revenue.
Mozilla officials blamed the slow growth of its subscription-based products for the layoffs, explaining that it doesn’t want to “spend more than we earn.”
“You may recall that we expected to be earning revenue in 2019 and 2020 from new subscription products as well as higher revenue from sources outside of search. This did not happen. Our 2019 plan underestimated how long it would take to build and ship new, revenue-generating products,” Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker said.
The most recent builds of Firefox Nightly are available here.