The Mozilla Foundation

gemal writes "We're very pleased to announce the creation of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization that will serve as the new home for mozilla.org. The Mozilla Foundation will continue mozilla.org's work of coordinating the development of the Mozilla codebase. With an independent non-profit as the legal home for Mozilla, we will also promote the distribution and adoption of Mozilla applications and technologies. In addition, we will raise funds to ensure Mozilla's long-term survival." Update: 07/15 21:47 GMT by T : Yablo writes "MozillaZine is running a blurb about how since earlier today, when the Mozilla Foundation was created, AOL has laid off all the Gecko developers. Ex-mozilla.org has a list of the casualties."

Comments

Read the f***ing article!

[jonasj]

From http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-foundation.ht ml:

"To help launch the new organization, America Online has pledged $2 million in cash to the Mozilla Foundation over the next two years. AOL will also contribute additional resources through equipment, domain names and trademarks, and related intellectual property, as well as providing some transitional assistance for key personnel as they move into the new organization."

$2M kiss-off

[davidflanagan]

The new foundation gets $2M over 2 years from AOL. Plus, Mitch Kapor kicks in $300K and becomes chair of the foundation. AOL also continues to supply infrastruture and "domain names". (How generous!)

I'd say AOL wants to be rid of Mozilla. I wonder where this leaves Netscape? Is Netscape 7.1 the last browser release from this former browser company?

Re:the big mo

[Zurk]

its sluggish because the event loop in mozilla which handles PREvents isnt that hot. with applets and javascript it tends to send invalid events to objects which dont exist and corrupt the stack. well known problem, no fix.
the event handling code probably needs a good overhaul. see my bug for more info :
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211 436

particularly this comment by a sun engineer :

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2114 36 #c19

the code in my bug can demonstrate it -- just download and run the class/html file and click ok to corrupt your event Q/stack. may crash the browser or may just hang it.

Re:Time for some advertising

[bartdecrem]

We just launched Mozilla Marketing and a marketing mailing list. So we're going to start marketing Mozilla's products much more proactively. Please join us in this effort by joining the new marketing mailing list.

Contributions not yet tax-deductible.

[David Hume]

2. Would said contribution be tax-deductible (not all non-profit donations are)?

From http://www.mozillafoundation.org/press/mozilla-fou ndation.html

The Mozilla Foundation has been incorporated as a California public benefit corporation and is seeking to obtain 501(c)(3) status as a non-profit organization.

(emphasis added). Since the Mozilla Foundation is applying for 501(c)(3) status, contributions are not yet tax deductible. Which raises the interesting question, i.e., should 501(c)(3) status be granted? In particular, should contributions by AOL to the Mozilla Foundation be tax deductible when AOL will use any work performed by the "public benefit corporation" in its Netscape product? Is this a way for a for profit corporation to fund research in a tax-deductible way?

Perhaps a counter-argument is that given the license used for Mozilla (I forget which it is; it may be important), *anyone* could use the work... but could anyone use it in for-profit software?

I haven't thought this throught, but it might be an interesting issue.

Moz better than Safari at the moment

[sulli]

I use both and prefer Mozilla (better features). Safari is ooh-pretty, but Mozilla gives me better control over things, particularly via the PrefBar that one can download at XulPlanet. I love the new "Kill Flash" button.