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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."
Now that there'll be an official, legal, centralized authority, does this mean that the plugins/modules will finally work with each other?
I think Mozilla needs some PR people. I was watching C-SPAN the other day and the issue was spam. Lots of callers were complaining about pop-up windows as well. I really wanted to tell them about Mozilla, but it was a taped show :(
Anyway, there is a lot of frustration out there and the Mozilla people really need to get the word out that they have a competitive product. Place some ads in the weekly magazines, some big newspapers, and get a buzz going. Open up a Paypal account that we can donate to so Mozilla can get an ad in the New York Times.
Very nice.
As much as we might hate AOL for littering the physical world with their signup CDs and the virtual world with their users, one has to give them props for continuing to support Mozilla.
Granted, they mainly have used Mozilla as a barganing chip to get a deal with MS, but I suspect that isn't a long term situation anyway.
A better question would be:
"Why don't you give to the other open-source software projects?"
I know it seems like a pain, but pick a few of your favorites (maybe 3 to 5) and start setting aside a little money. Collect your spare change, or sell something on eBay, or whatever. Then donate 5 to 10 bucks to each of the projects.
I would expect you'd want to feel reasonably certain the developers will put the money to good use (buying helpful books or equipment), rather than dipping into the project fund to buy pizza and beer. Still, I imagine that once you've selected some worthy projects and sent them a little money it will make you feel good to have helped, and maybe you'll even be more likely to do it again in the future.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
One thing that the Mozilla Foundation could do to raise money is set up a "Cobrand Support Center" where people can contract them to create and support branded versions of Mozilla.
If the price were not too high, I imagine a lot of technology companies could impress their users with a branded web browser that's better than Internet Explorer.
"As a complimentary service to our customers, we offer them the SuperTechnologyCompany Web Browser which has features that prevent spam and popups..."
Engineering and the Ultimate
I liked that they said their money was going for salaries. This is refreshingly honest. Most press releases from organizations steer away from the fact that everybody needs a little $$ to survive.
This is better than trying to make us believe that first they save the whales, then go for profitability..
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Let the "Mozilla is dead" postings start in 3..2..
I guess Mozilla's ready to actively try to knock IE down.
/preemtive anti-flame strike. Personally, I'll stick to Opera (ID'ing as Opera too) as my primary browser, just personal preferance.
The technical aspects aside, I don't think the companies are in this for winning a war on Microsoft. But they do want there to be alternatives so IE can't exercise (read: abuse) monopoly power, particularly since the browser is the primary control of the Internet experience influencing all kinds of other services (searches, default bookmarks, passport integration etc.)
They're interested in supporting Mozilla to ensure it stays a viable alternative, but I hardly think they'll use more money than they have to in order to compete against a "free" product. "free" in the meaning of "at no apparent cost to Joe Sixpack"
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Mozilla will never knock IE down.
Why?
Because I know HUNDREDS of people that refer to IE as "the internet".
If the IE shortcut gets deleted? "My internet is gone."
You can't fight the internet guys...sorry.
-Ben
As for the IP donations - that is pretty much worthless anyway since it is a free, open-source project.
Not at all. The IP donations include the mozilla.org trademark and domain name, which are very far from worthless. They also include the MPL license.
Gerv
IANAAccountant, but since Mozilla was a legitimate business expense, the money that AOL put into it was already a write-off, in the sense that it was money that didn't show up on the bottom line.
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
I think this is a big positive for Mozilla. I've always been worried that AOL's lack of dedication to Mozilla and Netscape would lead to its demise. The creation of an independent organization to manage the project (and own all IP, trademarks and associated domain names - thanks AOL!) is huge.
AOL may be pleased to "dump" it. But I'm pleased they are too. In addition to the autonomy, perhaps other ISPs (Earthlink, etc) may be more willing to adopt Mozilla as their default browser now that it's disassociated with AOL.
It's too popular and useful to die. The foundation will continue to be supported by the major Linux players (with developers, hardware and money) just like Linux itself is.
-j
From the parent:
> what happens in a few years when the Foundation has A) run out of money, and B) hasn't gotten any significant donations?
From the site:
> AOL, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, and other companies will continue to support Mozilla through the Foundation.
I wouldn't worry. Me thinks these companies et al will stop supporting Mozilla when Internet Explorer has a user base of <5%. These are big competitors of Microsoft. Either way, if the money dries up, I would be surprised if people still didn't continue to develop Mozilla (even if it's at a slower pace).
There will always be alternatives.
Companies using Mozilla and paying zero will also not be as prevalent as companies using IE and paying zero so it is basically a wash.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Starving, illiterate children in the world and people are going to give money to AOL-backed, Netscape-backed Mozilla which competes directly with Microsoft? The only thing brilliant about this is that Bill Gates is slapping his forehead wondering how he didn't think of making a charitable organization of Longhorn.
Firebird rules. Thunderbird rules. But they're software. I'll be giving my non-profit dollars to the local food bank, as usual.
And since non-profits are exempt from the Do Not Call list, does that mean I'll be getting phone spam from AOL?
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
Because I know HUNDREDS of people that refer to IE as "the internet".
If the IE shortcut gets deleted? "My internet is gone."
I've had Mozilla Firebird as my default browser on my home windows box since the first alpha release of Phoenix. At this time I removed the IE shortcut from my wife's desktop and replaced it with a Phoenix shortcut and then told her to use that for web access in the future.
Recently, I had to reinstall the box, and forgot to replace her shortcut, and guess what... She said "My interet is gone". So what you say is true, but it doesn't just apply to IE.
FWIW: I told my wife to use IE until I got round to fixing the shortcut, she later complained that IE was not as good as the "normal internet" she was used to using.
AOL, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat,
Note that these competitors of Microsoft don't have:
- US$4e10 cash reserves
- revenue cows like Windows & Office to bring in money without lifting a finger
AOL has been scrambling to compete with MSN, surviving on razor-thin margins (Time Warner is the bigger, stronger part of the company).Sun can't afford to develop competitive successors to its UltraSPARC hardware in a timely fashion. Meanwhile, Lintel servers are eating into the UNIX server business, making the market much smaller than it was once (the flip side is that Lintel make Wintel look expensive, even if Wintel is cheaper than Solaris/SPARC). These days, the one reason to go with Sun over Linux on clusters is for HA 64-way high throughput machines connected to SANs. Despite the margins on that class of machine, not everyone needs one, and there are ferocious competitors like IBM, HP and SGI with which to contend.
Red Hat is only now barely getting profitable, mainly selling Linux services. They certainly don't have oodles of money to throw around.
IBM is really the only financially strong player in the whole deck.
Despite my pessimistic tone, I'm a Mozilla (and now Firebird) user and wish the project success. I will continue to be a Mozilla advocate because I want to see open standards on my computer instead of yet another road to getting ruled.
"Provided by the management for your protection."