Mozilla has initially launched the Open Web Docs organization, aimed at providing support to the MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) project as a single source taking care of publishing documentation for web developers and maintaining technologies included in modern browsers, such as JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and various Web APIs. In August 2020, the entire MDN team was dismissed during the reduction of Mozilla’s staff. Since then, modifications and additions to the documentation have been made solely by individual enthusiasts.
With the assistance of the Open Web Docs organization, an attempt was made to invite interested parties to co-finance authors that are dedicated to maintain up-to-date documentation in MDN. Open Web Docs technically lets you make MDN funding independent, and the project itself does not belong to any individual company. The main sponsors of Open Web Docs have already included Google, Microsoft, Coil and Igalia, which in total contributed to the project around 620 thousand US dollars.
How Useful is Open Web Docs?
Open Web Docs directly works with available platforms but its main priority still remain MDN Web Docs. This is a really big project, in terms of providing the long-term productivity of web Platform documentation on standard resources, regardless of any single investor or enterprise. Solely through its staff, community support, and network of Open Web Docs partner organizations, it has limited resources to keep up with the work of core Web platform technologies.
What is the Purpose of Open Web Docs?
Open Web Docs aims to advance existing platforms through its connections, rather than creating new document sites. Nyman states that their 2021 priority is to “include working with Mozilla’s MDN writers and engineers to support the recent infrastructure transition and to prioritize and move forward with key documentation work, developing a community of contributors around core web technology documentation, browser compatibility data, and improving JavaScript documentation”.
Note: The release of Firefox 85 officially happened on January 26. Announcement that was made on January 25 on hacks.mozilla.org was published by mistake and therefore immediately removed, the processes of opening archives to mirrors and arranging the infrastructure for release have not yet been finalized.
