Meet Mozilla Corp
p2pnet.net News:- Effective immediately, Mozilla is jumping into the business arena with a wholly owned commercial arm called the Mozilla Corporation.
As a non-profit foundation, Mozilla’s commercial activities have been restricted but, “By forming a commercial subsidiary, the revenue-generating activities of the new entity can provide funds to support development, testing, and productization of the various Mozilla open source technologies,” it says.
And the Big Question: Will you now have to start paying for Firefox?
“No,” says Mozilla. Firefox and Thunderbird will remain free products based on open source code.
But having the Mozilla Corporation handle revenue-generating activities associated with products such as Firefox and Thunderbird, “also allows the Mozilla Foundation to achieve its goals while still itself remaining a tax-exempt organization,” it says.
A modern corporation exists for one purpose: to make money for its shareholders. All else is secondary to that over-riding requirement.
But the Mozilla Corporation, “is not a typical commercial entity and will only pursue revenue-generating activities that are consistent with offering end-users with the best experience possible,” it promises.
“All income generated by the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation (whether through charitable donations to the Mozilla Foundation or revenue generated by the Mozilla Corporation) will be used to further the goals of the Foundation, whether that income is retained by the Mozilla Foundation or the Mozilla Corporation.”
Mozilla Foundation employees whose primary responsibilities involve developing, testing, and “productizing” branded products (Firefox and Thunderbird) and assisting with development of their underlying code (e.g., the Gecko layout engine) will move to the Mozilla Corporation.
The foundation, “retains oversight over the Mozilla open source project, and its employees will be responsible for project governance, promotion of the project, and other activities to ensure the future success of the project as a whole,” it says.
How will Mozilla Corp work with the Mozilla Foundation?
“In terms of overall governance the Mozilla Corporation will have a separate board of directors; members of the Mozilla Corporation’s board will be appointed by the Mozilla Foundation board of directors. In terms of day-to-day project-related activities, employees of the Mozilla Corporation will interact with the Mozilla Foundation and other Mozilla project participants through the governance structures established by the Mozilla Foundation, including mozilla.org staff, drivers, modules owners, and so on.”
It will not offer stock options and other traditional ownership interests to its employees.
Mitchell Baker is the new company’s president and Brendan Eich, a co-founder and long-time technical leader, becomes the Mozilla Corporation’s chief technical officer.
Mozilla Foundation activities will be overseen by Frank Hecker.
The board of directors includes Baker, Mitch Kapor, Christopher Blizzard and Reid Hoffman, ceo of LinkedIn.
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See:-
Mozilla – Mozilla Foundation Reorganization, August 3, 2005
August 3rd, 2005 at 6:07 pm
if mozzila keeps to open source then they will still remain good, but if they begin to charge for products and start stealing then they are as bad as the cartels now.this would be intresting to see if mozzila will change or not.
I would say it shouldnt have done that. just remained what it was, and would have been a great example.
August 3rd, 2005 at 6:49 pm
‘Corporations have one purpose; to make money. But Mozilla Corporation will be different, and only benefit the end-users’
ugh, yeah. no matter how much they will sugar-coat it, its a dark day for Mozilla. All along by supporting free open source software, we thought we were beating the system (the ’system’ being money and greed that dominate the corporate world), but with just a drop of a signature and no public discussion, Mozilla joined the dark side.
Sure, in the immediate future, it will remain free. maybe there will always be a ‘free’ version. and then an optional ‘pro’ or ‘premium’ or ‘plus’ or ‘enhanced’ version, for a minimal fee. and then who knows. bottom line is this: Corporations have only one purpose, to make money. screw the fact all the thousands of hours people devoted to coding and debugging the software, now that its getting traction, we wanna get rich off other people’s work. Nice to know anyone who ‘donated’ to the charitable orginization of Mozilla had some of that money diverted to paying for lawyers and business and tax consultants to start a privately held corporate entity.
August 3rd, 2005 at 11:15 pm
Step 1: Make something interesting
Step 2: Spread the word about your interesting thing
Step 3: Figure out a way to collect the profits
Step 4: … ?
Step 5: Profits
August 4th, 2005 at 3:46 am
re: step 1 – thousands of volunteers made Firefox what is it.
re: step 2 – word-of-mouth is what gave Firefox the market share it now has. All mozilla foundation could do is a cheezy 2 page ad in the New York Times, 1 time deal. whoopee. not exactly marketing wizards.
re: step 3 to 5 – this is where Mozilla now turns its back on its source, and tries to cash in on the success. There are 40 employess in Mozilla Foundation, so all da cash goes to them, and its their discretion where to allocate it. If they wanted to be fair, go make a public company, and allocate shares to everyone who contributed to the project.
August 10th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
Can you say “Underpants Gnomes?”
August 10th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
Tragic events such as these are the reason I tend to use out-of-date software.
Windows XP + Kazaa Lite K++ + lots of downloads = hard drive light that didn’t even blink. That’s when I knew there was something dreadfully wrong with the way XP works with hardware. Intentionally slowing things down, apparently. Revert to the little box with Windows 2000 in it, and all of a sudden, the light blinks again and download speeds skyrocket, for no apparent reason.
Internet Explorer + malware assault + ActiveX crap + Outlook Express virii = jump to Mozilla products and leave the bugs behind.
Mozilla + for-profit future roadmap = Firefox 1.0.6 will be on every Windows system I use from now to eternity, until a better freebie appears.
I’m waiting for Windows 2000 support to run out. Then I’ll make a Linux distro that’s not confusing for myself and never use any of the for-profit bull again.
I still run Windows 98 on my Pentium III/700 laptop.
I still use a 486 laptop for stuff.
Fuck corporate idiots.