Expansion of Mozilla's non-profit international affiliate in Europe as worldwide Firefox downloads surpass 50 million.
Paris, France, May 9, 2005 -- Mozilla Europe, a non-profit international affiliate of the Mozilla Foundation, today announced it has appointed Tristan Nitot and Peter Van der Beken, long-time contributors to Mozilla, to work for Mozilla Europe on a full-time basis. Nitot and Van der Beken, co-founders of Mozilla Europe, will provide marketing and technical leadership, respectively, and will advocate and support adoption of Mozilla products and hone developer community relationships in Europe.
Nitot has been a contributor to Mozilla while he was at Netscape, where he most recently served as the technology and standards evangelist for Europe. Nitot frequently speaks at industry conferences and authors a well-read French language blog about Web standards and Internet technologies. Van der Beken is a Mozilla developer, a super-reviewer and four times module owner. Prior to his appointment to Mozilla Europe, Van der Beken started contributing as a volunteer in 1999, before being hired by Netscape.
"Mozilla Europe continues to be an important catalyst to the rapid adoption of Mozilla products like Firefox, in Europe." said Mitchell Baker, President, Mozilla Foundation. "Tristan and Peter's appointment brings valuable expertise and passion for Mozilla that will further mobilize significant community-driven engineering, product advocacy and marketing in Europe."
Since its inception in early 2004, Mozilla Europe has been integral to Mozilla's community, mindshare and market share in Europe, participating in projects such as the annual European Mozilla Developer Day, the Mozilla Localization Project, while helping on conferences, public relations, enterprise relations and advertising.
For more information visit Mozilla Europe's Web site, www.mozilla-europe.org, which is localized in 15 languages.
Established in January 2004 by long-time Mozilla contributors from several European countries, Mozilla Europe aims to promote, develop and contribute to the Mozilla open source software project. Mozilla Europe is based in Paris, France.
Tristan Nitot, nitot@mozilla-europe.org