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The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization which was created for the sole purpose of supporting and providing leadership for the open source Mozilla project. It owns two taxable subsidiaries, namely Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Messaging Inc, which coordinate the releases of Mozilla Firefox (web browser) and the Thunderbird Email client, respectively. The Mozilla foundation was originally founded in 2003 by an organization affiliated to Netscape. Currently, the Mozilla Foundation is headquartered in the Silicon Valley of Mountain View, California, USA. The Mozilla foundation has described itself as "a non-profit organization that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet".
So how and when was Mozilla created? On February 23, 1998, Netscape gave birth to the Mozilla Organization, which was responsible for co-coordinating the development of the Mozilla Application Suite. The organization was operated separately and not with Netscape. It was not until the creation of Beonex Communicator that end-user versions began being released. In 2003, AOL decided to reduce its involvement with the Mozilla Organization and that was when the Mozilla Foundation was launched. On July 15, 2003, to ensure the survival of Mozilla, the Mozilla foundation was created without the support of Netscape. AOL in fact helped Mozilla during the transition, transferring hardware and intellectual property to the organization and ALSO donating $2 Million to the foundation over two years!
So what does the Mozilla Foundation constitute? It constitutes the following subsidiaries:
- Mozilla Corporation: launched in August 2005 for the development and delivery of products such as Firefox and Thunderbird. The corporation is a taxable entity and hence has greater freedom in revenue. The majority revenue for Mozilla Corp comes from Google Inc., which is the default search engine for the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
- Mozilla Messaging Inc: announced in February 2008, its primary focus is to develop software to tackle problems in "Internet Communication".
- Mozilla Online Ltd: this is one of the wholly owned subsidiaries headquartered in Beijing, China.
In order to expand its target user base, the foundation had to make deals with various commercial companies to sell CDs containing Mozilla software. Mozilla became more assertive with time, protecting its intellectual property with policies put in place for the use of Mozilla trademarks and logos. Mozilla was financed in two major ways, these are:
- AOL's initial donation of $2 Million.
- Donation by Mitch Kapor of $300,000 at the launch of the organization.
Mozilla has generated majority of its revenues through Google Inc, since there has been an ongoing deal between the two corporations by which Google has been made the default search engine in the Firefox browser search bar. The contract between the two expired in November 2006, but Google Inc managed to renew the contract through 2011.
The Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors has five members:
- Mitchell Baker (Chairman)
- Brian Behlendorf
- Brendan Eich
- Joichi Ito
- Bob Lisbonne
Majority of the employees working at Mozilla Corp. were originally working for the foundation before the corporation was established. Mozilla has been supporting a healthy online space for users around the world. A fun fact about Mozilla's two software releases, namely Firefox and Thunderbird, is that these are codenamed after names of parks for each product release. Mozilla also did spread awareness about endangered red pandas in 2010.
As time passes by, and corporations take big leaps in the field of technology, corporations like Mozilla will really make the difference. The creation of Firefox has really changed the lives of millions of internet users, and Firefox has also been reviewed as the Best Internet Browser for two consecutive years (2010 and 2011). If possible you could donate to the foundation, and support the goal for easy access to everything on the World Wide Web!
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