(Translated from French)

In another life, I was a Wikipedia contributor. Not full-time contribution, but I would give a hand from time to time, mostly by correcting and translating texts. Actually, my involvement in the FLOSS world started at the event Paris Capital du Libre (Paris Capital of the Libre), more specifically during Richard Stallman's speech, in which he described "the user's Human Rights". I immediately adhered to this ideal of knowledge-sharing under the form of source code. Freedom in using code, freedom to modify, freedom of sharing... A beautiful concept that made me want to start helping Wikipedia, the universal and free online encyclopedia project.

But how have I come from Wikipedia to Mozilla?

The Ubuntu party was the first real contact. I remember going there out of curiosity, with my camera, thinking I could make a good video documentary. That's when I met the Mozilla Europe team, who were all really friendly from the start. Pascal described to me the ideology of the French Mozilla Association, as well as the contributors, the goals, and Mozilla's implication in the world of Free Software.

- "So, what about you? What are you currently working on?"

I mumble about my small experiences, my masters degree in computer science, my modest translation activities -modest because absolutely amateur-like. But everyone has always told me that motivation counts more than anything.

And that was when I told them I was really motivated. Then followed what gamers call an Aggro -or attracting the opponent's attention on one's self.

- “Oh, so you know all about SVN, LDAP, HTML, CSS... ?”

Well, yes, it's part of my studies...

- “And would you be interested in contributing to Mozilla?”

Well, yes, but what could I possibly do?

- “Oh, don't worry about that...!"

And that's how I became a contributor.

That's also how I found myself, two months later, in Brussels for FOSDEM. Housed by another contributor (thanks again Benoît!), I was able to meet many more contributors and exchange many things, without ever having seen them before. And I also got to know other Mozilla communities, and attend great conferences.

"'Join the army!' they said, 'Join the army!'" (- Asterix)