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With the recent Mozilla layoffs, MDN is in peril. This is an emergency for the web development community.
The web development community has so much to lose if MDN is allowed to die. https://twitter.com/chrisdavidmills/status/1293264395603148802
The web development community has so much to lose if MDN is allowed to die. https://twitter.com/chrisdavidmills/status/1293264395603148802
Here is a more optimistic take from Chris (who is/was a technical writer and a manager of technical writers for MDN): https://twitter.com/chrisdavidmills/status/1293555708634464256
And here's an official tweet about the status of the MDN *website*: https://twitter.com/MozDevNet/status/1293647529268006912
Note, however, that you can't lay off the writers and expect MDN to continue as a going concern for very long. MDN is technically a wiki, but the content was almost entirely created by the professional technical writing staff. https://twitter.com/rachelandrew/status/1293820019017744385
Before I get deeper into this thread, two things about me. First, I was part of the MDN team for 9 months, so these layoffs are personal for me. MDN is created by a small team of amazing writers and developers who do great work. I have the utmost respect for this team.
Second, I'm now doing a lot of Java programming, and I can tell you that I did not know just how good we web developers have it with MDN as an information resource. When you google Java development topics, you get serious crap and so many ads it feels like malware.
(It is truly astonishing how bad online Java documentation resources are. If MDN is allowed to stagnate and die, that will be the future that web developers will face. We must not let this happen!)
I know that Mozilla is in a tough financial situation and had to make difficult decisions. Still, I'm quite surprised that the MDN team was laid off. When I was on the team I thought we were pretty safe, since MDN is Mozilla's best-known brand after Firefox.
MDN is not self-supporting, though. The team was trying to monetize it without running ads, but nothing ever really stuck. So MDN was a free service to the web community provided by Mozilla who paid the salaries of the team and the hosting costs.
I guess Mozilla no longer feels it can shoulder the financial burden of providing that service. It seems like a blunder to let MDN go. I have no inside knowledge of Mozilla's thinking here, but "working with partners" sounds to me like a huge opportunity for other companies.
It takes 10 to 15 people to keep MDN running. A drop in the bucket for any of the other browser vendors. And I hope Microsoft, Apple and Google are competing with each other to snap it up. The value of the community goodwill generated by supporting MDN is huge!
MDN is talented team of writers who produce insanely high-quality documentation for web developers. MDN is a unique resource that sets the web development community apart from other programming communities. Without MDN, we will descend into Java hell.
If you work at a web giant, please see if you can get your company to partner with Mozilla to rescue MDN, or just flat-out acquire it.
Thanks for reading. I really think this is important.
Thanks for reading. I really think this is important.
