Mozilla Foundation Hires Axel Hecht to Improve Localisation Coordination

In a newsgroup posting, Asa Dotzler has announced that Axel Hecht has joined the Mozilla Corporation to improve the coordination of the localisation projects. Axel's main priority will be to improve communication between the multitude of volunteer-run localisation teams and the core Mozilla project management and decision makers. He will represent the interests of the localisation teams in relevant Mozilla project management and release planning meetings and will try to bring the overall Mozilla project and the localisation efforts closer together.

Axel has posted a weblog entry about his new role at the Mozilla Corporation, discussing some of the localisation project tasks with which he will be involved. In addition to his localisation work, Axel will also continue to help make the Mozilla platform better and do some technical marketing and evangelism. However, these tasks will have a lower priority than his localisation commitments.

Axel has contributed to Mozilla since 1999 and is a member of the Mozilla Europe Board of Directors. He is the RDF module owner and has also worked to improve the Mozilla XSLT implementation. Over the years, he has organised several Mozilla conferences in Europe.

In the past, localised versions of Mozilla software usually lagged behind the standard US English releases because each localisation team was required to create their own builds and arrange for them to be uploaded to the Mozilla FTP servers. In the run up to the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0, many Firefox localisations were moved into the Mozilla CVS repository, allowing the Mozilla build team to compile and release the localisations at the same time as the US English builds. A similiar arrangement is being brought in for Mozilla Thunderbird, starting with version 1.5. The most successful multi-localisation release to date was Firefox 1.0.6, which was launched simultaneously in 28 locales in July. According to Gervase Markham, over 90 percent of the Internet's population can get a copy of Firefox in their language.

More information about localisations can be found on the Mozilla Localization Project pages or the L10n wiki pages, which seem to be more up-to-date.

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