Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla Foundation
URL = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation
Description
Summary from the Wikipedia article:
"The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property. It owns a taxable subsidiary called the Mozilla Corporation, which employs several Mozilla developers and coordinates releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. The Mozilla Foundation is based in Mountain View, California.
The Mozilla Foundation describes itself as "a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet".
Manifesto
From http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/03/mozilla_foundation_statement_o.html :
"1. The mission of the Mozilla Foundation is to create and promote the Internet as an open platform that supports the principles set out in the Mozilla Manifesto.
2. As described in more detail in the Mozilla Manifesto, an open Internet is one where:
People can participate at all levels, with low barriers and without the need to "buy into" a centralized agenda, data source, hardware or software system
Open standards are the basis of key technologies
Open source software is available for key activities
Open alternatives for key Internet activities are competitive with closed, proprietary offerings and with desktop-centric offerings
Heterogeneous environments are possible - we don't all need to use the same hardware, software or data sources
People can make and implement decisions about their online experience and their data
3. Building an open Internet requires many actors. The Mozilla Foundation will focus on the areas of our particular strength and expertise.
The Mozilla Foundation's DNA is in building software and building communities; in essence we are building part of the Internet itself.
We build (software, communities, the Internet we dream of) by empowering people to help themselves and to work together in a loosely coupled way with maximum transparency.
We work primarily in areas that touch individual people. We can think of this as the "user experience" aspect of the Internet.
4. The Mozilla Foundation seeks to effectuate these goals both by building broadly-used products that impact Internet development as a whole, and by empowering people to act in highly decentralized, experimental ways. The work of creating general consumer products that influence broad aspects of Internet development is currently handled through the Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation plans to increase its direct involvement in other activities which enable people to participate in the development and enjoyment of the Internet in a decentralized, self-directed manner.
5. The Mozilla Foundation can do this through any number of programs: grant making, supporting other projects, being the "voice" for users, increasing its operational activities, etc. We're not yet sure which of these is the right thing, though there is a very strong interest in grant - making, prizes, etc.
6. The next steps are refinement of this statement, and putting the relevant resources in place to develop more specific plans and then to execute well." (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/03/mozilla_foundation_statement_o.html)
Discussion
Financial Sustainability of the Foundation
From the Mitchel blog at http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/01/the_mozilla_foundation_achievi.html
"Mozilla is a global community dedicated to improving the Internet experience for people everywhere. We do this by building great software - such as the Mozilla Firefox web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird mail client - that helps people interact with the Internet.
We build great software by building communities. Our software is "open source software." The source code is available to everyone; as a result people are able to work together and we all share the results of the combined efforts.
The Mozilla project has been building software and communities since 1998.
The Mozilla Foundation recently completed its financial audit and filed its tax returns for 2005. The tax returns should appear on Guidestar shortly, and in any case these materials are available directly from the Foundation. Because the steady revenue stream is so important to our long term sustainability I'll give an overview here.
How Mozilla leads its online volunteers
"Even as Mozilla's internal staff has grown to 250, from 15 in 2005, an army of volunteers still contributes about 40% of the company's work, which ranges from tweaks to the programming code to designing the Firefox logo.
How Mozilla channels those efforts is a model for a growing number of companies trying to tap into the collective talents of large pools of software developers and other enthusiasts of a product, brand, or idea. "There's structure in it," says Mike Beltzner, who runs Firefox. "But at the same time you allow people to innovate and to explore and [give them] the freedom to do what they want along those edges—that's where innovation tends to happen in startling and unexpected ways."
At Firefox, Beltzer calls it "leading from behind." His team makes only the highest, direction-setting decisions, such as the date each new version of Firefox has to ship. It's up to Mozilla staff and volunteers to meet those deadlines through a process of identifying specific tasks that need to be done and accomplishing them. A system of recognition has formed among volunteers, who can be designated as "module owners" and given authority over certain areas, such as the layout." (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2009/tc2009071_384108.htm)
History
For the prehistory, see our entry on Mozilla Org. Mozilla.org is now the website of the Mozilla Foundation.
In 2003 the Mozilla Foundation was established. The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization organized to provide a home for the Mozilla community and stewardship for the assets of the project. The Mozilla Foundation started with around 10 employees. This was just barely enough people to make the Foundation functional and support the community. Still, supporting 10 people is a noticeable financial commitment; doing so consumed most of the funds the Foundation had available to it. (For those interested in historical detail, we had one person for QA, one person responsible for all of our tools and infrastructure, one person for each of the Firefox and Thunderbird front ends, 2 people for all of the rendering, layout and internals, etc, one person responsible for our "build and release" function, one architect, one engineering manager, one person responsible for business development, and me). The employees were stretched extremely thin, struggling to keep up with the opportunities available to the project.
In 2004 we released the Mozilla Firefox web browser. It was the right product at the right time - an elegant product filling a huge need in the market. Millions upon millions of people began using Firefox. As a result we were able to generate revenue by making it easy for people to find and use Internet search services. We began adding employees. We also began expanding our infrastructure - bandwidth for downloads, modernizing the inventory of equipment used to build the software and provide services to developers, update the public-facing websites, etc.
In 2005 Firefox became a product with millions of users, a growing significance in the Internet industry and a significant revenue stream. The revenue is from the easy "search" capabilities built into Firefox and the related revenue relationships with the search providers. We found that our users like the easy, customizable search capabilities, and the revenue could provide financial stability without the need for ongoing fund raising requests to our users or community.
In August of 2005 the Mozilla Foundation established the Mozilla Corporation as a wholly owned subsidiary to guide the development of Mozilla products, including Firefox. Revenue generated by Firefox becomes an asset of the Mozilla Corporation, which is in turn completely owned by the Mozilla Foundation. The assets of the Mozilla Foundation are dedicated to the public benefit. Revenue generated from Firefox is reinvested in the Mozilla project to improve operational capabilities and to provide long-term stability.
The number of people using Firefox increased steadily through 2005 and 2006. The resulting revenue stream from our search partners allowed us to continue to expand. We did so in both engineering for product development, and in the services we offer our userbase. We hired more people. For example, we started to build a professional IT team to handle increased load. We expanded our infrastructure still more to handle the millions of people who came to get and use Firefox. The improved infrastructure was demonstrated during the Firefox 1.5 release in November when our bandwidth requirements went way up and our service levels remained high. We hired more QA folks to both test and work with the community. We hired more engineers. We launched the Mozilla Developer Center, the first time we've had an on-going, successful documentation program.
Our revenue stream remains steady. We're hiring a great set of people, with small teams where before we had a single person. We have a Firefox front-end team. We now have a build team instead of a single person. We have an Information Technology team. We have a set of people thinking about features and user experience. We have a platform team. We have people to respond when reporters call. We have a team of people maintaining our websites and webservices. We've been able to return to having a small set of people thinking first and foremost about community development. We're still stretched very thin and still looking for great people.
Our infrastructure continues to be modernized. We're upgrading the development infrastructure, in particular the "build" machines and infrastructure, which is a far larger job than it sounds. We're upgrading the website infrastructure to support easier and more complete localization. Firefox 2 shipped simultaneously in 37 languages. That's a massive and very rare achievement; I'm not sure who else does this.
2005 Financial Information
In 2005 the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation combined had revenue from all sources of $52.9M. $29.8M of this was associated with the Foundation (both before and after the creation of the Corporation). The bulk of this revenue was related to our search engine relationships, with the remainder coming from a combination of contributions, sales from the Mozilla store, interest income, and other sources. These figures compare with 2003 and 2004 revenues of $2.4M and $5.8M respectively, and reflect the tremendous growth in the popularity of Firefox after its launch in November 2004.
The combined expenses of the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation were approximately $8.2M in 2005, of which approximately $3M was associated with the Foundation. By far the biggest portion of these expenses went to support the large and growing group of people dedicated to creating and promoting Firefox, Thunderbird, and other Mozilla open source products and technologies. The rate of expenses increased over the year as new employees came on board. The unspent revenue provides a reserve fund that allows the Mozilla Foundation flexibility and long term stability." (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/01/the_mozilla_foundation_achievi.html)