Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Foundation Launches Mozilla Corporation
An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine is reporting that the Mozilla Foundation has created a commercial subsidiary to continue development of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. Don't let the word "commercial" scare you, the new Mozilla Corporation (as it has been dubbed) will be owned 100% by the Mozilla Foundation. The change is mostly a legal/tax thing to avoid the problems of pursuing revenue-generating avenues while remaining a non-profit. There will be no change to the development process and end-users won't notice much difference either. See also the Mozilla Foundation press release about the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla reorganization FAQ."
I, for one, welcome our revenue-generating overlords.
This can only be a good thing, if all the fine products coming out of the Mozilla community are to compete with the likes of MS it needs to be done on a level playing field. Plus there's nothing wrong with making money for all your hard work!
It's not enough that Mozilla, this irresponsible pet owner who constantly loses its pets to suspicious ends, is now making a corporation. Its first pet, Phoenix, just vanished. Its second pet, a fox, got set on fire and presumably died. Its two birds are both in bad shape -- one is on fire and one got hit by lightning.
Would you really invest in such a corporation? How can a dinosaur be trusted to manage a corporation, when it can't even keep its own pets safe??
if this this a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, it makes Mozilla look like a more professionnal and organized software "company", which will help it's public image and also in negotiations but on the other it, in the long term, will diminish the visibility of the open-source movement's importance in the project's development.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
The change is mostly a legal/tax thing to avoid the problems of pursuing revenue-generating avenues while remaining a non-profit.
Hmm... This is unusual.
1. Fix this legal/tax thing
2. Avoid the problems of pursuing revenue-generating avenues
3. ???
4. non-profit!
The problem with Slashdot memes is that YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
I was under the impression that we should be paying for the software, and that hardware will be free.
How can these, for the lack of a better term, Hackers be expecting to make a buck off free software??
Naah, I don't believe in this. I'm with you Mr. Gates.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
NO!!!! Now Mozilla is all corporate! Corportations are evil! I can no longer surf the information super highway. =(
That's what I've been saying for years! =(
-Bill GatesI've always believed that small teams work better and more efficiently, so it sounds a pretty smart move IMO. Hopefully efficient development will lead to better development and and even better browser.
__Laugh daily new video clips
There's no reason that that a non-profit corporation can't have revenues. In fact, they can have massive revenues. The profits just can't accrue to private profits. So there's really only two reasons I can think of for this change: (1) the folks at Mozilla want to start getting rich, and/or (2) they want to attract private investment (which neccessarily entails revenues accruing to the investors).
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I think one of the underlying reasons for this is Google. It's not explicitly stated that this is the reason, but that's what I read between the lines when reading the FAQ about the reorganization. After reading Mitchell Baker's blog, I'm almost certain of it (though he doesn't explicitly state it either).
I think we will be seeing some more serious collaboration between Mozilla and Google now.
Mozilla Corp: new, now with 100% real corporate greed!
"You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
This may be cause for a tiny bit of concern, considering what has been happening over at devianART, with the ousting of jark (one of the two original founders) by the corporate entity.
The lesson of deviantART is that once the corporation starts pursuing profits, and this becomes more important than the community, the origins of the foundation and the original purpose and driving force of the community may become lost.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
This doesn't really affect things in the long term- for all intents and purposes, this is just a change of frontend. It doesn't matter one bit. Firefox isn't about to turn into Opera (Pity).
Sometimes I could almost wish one of these press releases would say our aim is to make the Internet a shittier place for everyone and to gouge the public so deep that their children's children will still be paying off the debt. I wouldn't approve, but at least it would reduce the entropy of the data stream.
It's not that I suspect the Mozilla corp of anything untoward, and short of omitting it entirely, I can't think of a better way to to say what they appear to be saying.
All the same, it's a bit semantically null, innit? Where's the point of a FAQ if you fill it with meaningless platitudes?
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
One might also wonder how everyone who has contributed to Mozilla's development because it was a project they believed in will feel. A lot of people have contributed to Mozilla through the years, and now Mozilla is going to profit?
In the end, I guess this is what it takes to take the battle with Microsoft to the next step.
But will Mozilla now lose the funding it receives from Google, IBM, Sun, and so on? Until now, hasn't Mozilla simply received donations from these and other large companies who didn't want to see Mozilla die?
Clever signature text goes here.
Keep an eye on the Firefox Extensions page for my imminent release, The Firefox Anti-Corporate Extension, which will remove the word "Corporation" from the the About pop-up.
Thank God for the awesome power and flexibility of extensions.
Fix the issues with filtering/moving emails around in your folders in Thunderbird? I'm getting close to being forced to abandon Thunderbird. I send an email and I cannot copy it into the sent folder (and I must have copies of my sent email) The filters stop functioning and I have to shutdown and restart Thunderbird to even manually copy the email to the correct folder.
Don't take this as a flame, I've used Netscape Messenger/Thunderbird since around 1997, but I am starting to have way to many problems... I've seen bug reports about this for several years now, yet no fix gets released. (Thunderbird hardly gets any new releases compared to Firefox)
My programming skills are minimal otherwise I would try myself to fix it...
Anyone know of another email client? (mainly for windows, Eudora, Pegasus, and Outlook) are either not options or I do not like them.
I like Thunderbird... It's a shame that it's such a task to use with this problem...
Fortunately, there are still some people willing to stand-up for the little guy. We have to stop these corporations from hijacking the Web. INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!
the CEO getting a $1,000,000 salary, but the company won't make any profit?
Becoming a corporation doesn't mean that an entity is all of a sudden going to change its practices and start pillaging the public. I am a corporation. The only reason is for liability and tax reasons. It makes it easier for me to hire and place subcontractors, and to pay them.
In the long run, this will probably be 100% transparent to everyone besides Mozilla, the IRS, and some of their business partners. It shouldn't affect their product at all.
/. ++
The business end of open source is still very much a work in progress.
I have a humble proposal. Open source becomes like science. People can make money from science. Scientists get grants and do research. Engineers, usually working for corporations, turn the research into technology. The knowldege is supplied at no cost to the end user by the scientists.
So, how about government grants for open source coders. (If you think this is too loosey-goosey, you've never had to apply for a grant.) The result is that groups like Mozilla don't have to figure out how to make money. Technologists then get paid to apply the open source knowledge in their own companies.
My wife just tried Thunderbird. It imported email from 3 accounts in the Mozilla suite. It mixed up all the mail between accounts. I switched to Fedora this spring, which uses Evolution for email and I like it just fine. There is a Windows port of Evolution in the works, but there is no firm timeframe for release yet. I see that it sent it's first message recently.
X years from now, when that corporation gets a new CEO who wants to do his job and improve the corporation's bottom-line, we'll be at the bottom of that slippery slope. Remember: it's easier to slide down the hill than it is to climb back up it!
As long as Mozilla keeps on making good software that is safe, secure, and free, do we really care what they call themselves???
Don't let this fool you. Very soon you'll see a Plus! or an Extendde version of Firefox & Thunderbird with all the bells & whistles for paying people and a stripped down/buggy version for unwashed masses.
It'll be like RedHat & its bastard child Fedora. See it happening.....
Here we go again - the fuck_it_up cycle .... it was a good product for a while!
It seems like they want to have an entity around to sell their products for revenue, and they can do that now.
Indeed, it seems almost counter-productive to have a seperate corporation. If MozFoundation sold the goods and put that right into investment, then there would be no profit. However, if MozCorp sold the goods and made a profit, it would have to pay taxes, cutting back the amount of money sent up to the Foundation.
There is another possibility, though.
The Foundation might generate a lot of revenue selling its product. They would attempt to invest this cash into the operation to prevent profitting. But suppose that they ran out of ways to invest the money, because there are rules limiting what they can do with their money in the Foundations by-laws or other bureaucratic issues.
That would be a conundrum. But if there's a corporation, it is much less messy because they can just hang on to the money while MozFoundation figures out what to do with it.
Remember, about a year or so ago there was talk of a Google web browser.
If they teamed up with Mozilla, they would save development costs, have a robust product already with a niche in the marketplace and also avoid alot of potential snags with P.R. and market perception.
I think the last thing that Google would want to do is be compared (or percieved threat...) to MS with thier own browser, search engine, maps, etc. What would be next? GoogleOS?
Something like that would give MS the perfect reason to 'lean on' Google, and perhaps even get some other companies who see an emerging threat to join in.
Well, Mozilla Corporation (MC) will sell one thing: programming services that tailors Mozilla Foundation's software for the customer. Suppose that a corporate client wants a version of Firefox to uses a special type (e.g., 256-bit ?)of encryption. Then, the programmers at MC modify Firefox's code to incorporate that encryption. The corporate client does not pay for the software but, rather, pays for the programmer's time spent in modifying Firefox.
It sounds like Mozilla is just putting on a suit and some nice slacks (or perhaps a smart looking suit and skirt combo). I agree with their motives as stated though since generally the tax situation for a nonprofit that has significant revenues is a little dicey. At least that's what I've heard. And oddly enough, if Firefox, etc. come from a Corp. it'll remove one more mental barrier that some companies have about adopting OSS. Afterall, if it comes from Company Inc. it must be good, right?
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
On the FAQ page it begins by saying "The Mozilla Corporation is a taxable subsidiary that serves the non-profit, public benefit goals of its parent, the Mozilla Foundation" yet Corporations have a duty to profit and serving the interest of its shareholders, not the public benefit. This is going to piss a lot of people off no matter what kind of spin they put on it.
Post to the correct discussion
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
some exec rubs his hands in glee thinking of yet another "if you can't beat 'em buy em" investment opportunity...
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
but corporations are evil! oh no? what will the evil corporations do with mozilla!! aaah!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Now really, "MoCo" isn't even half as cool...
I hope I don't see a slight similarity between Mozilla Corperation and Microsoft Corperation!
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
...that they don't turn out like the Umbrella Corporation. Last thing we need is Mozilla spawning zombies. That's the job of your local clueless end-user, Internet Explorer and Active X.
Another soon-to-be-obligatory-on-/. reference.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Setting up a corporation does not necessarily mean that they will be taking home any money they make. Money can be used for all sorts of things, including advertising and the like. This allows them a way (outside of donations) to make money for various things they would like to do.
> The change is mostly a legal/tax thing to avoid the problems of pursuing revenue-generating avenues
> while remaining a non-profit. There will be no change to the development process and end-users won't notice much difference either
S U R E . . . . . . .
In the beginning, this little non-profit organization set out to destroy the evil Microsoft IE browser and yet again restore peace throughout browser land! GO MOZILLA GO!!
Of course now, once 10% browser usability was realized, the greed of man set in and statements like "end-users won't notice much difference" became more common place.
*** GOD BLESS CORPORATE AMERICA ***
How can there be FREQUENTLY asked questions if it was just announced TODAY??
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Not just throwing out the jeans and t-shirts for slacks and a white, button-down shirt, but a necktie.
The love of money is the root of all evil, and the necktie is its symbol.
I don't give a rat's ass about corporations adopting Mozilla, they deserve spyware and virri. Let 'em suffer.
From Mitchell's Blog
It is difficult to know what relationships with commercial organizations make sense for a non-profit or how to structure them. It is difficult to know what activities the non-profit should and shouldn't engage in. It is difficult to determine what ways of generating revenue make sense for a non-profit and which ways of generating revenue are not appropriate.
Reading between the lines, it may be he is talking about revenue streams from corporate products that want to incorporate Firefox or Thunderbird. For example, this would provide a portable platform for help files. Sounds like a good thing to me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seriously people, why are you so afraid of a word? It seems to me that most people don't like corporations because they're stuck in their basements writing conspiracy theories on Slashdot instead of doing something productive. If you had any idea how to run a business, you would understand that being a corporation has a LOT of benefits.
Also, if Microsoft is the biggest evil in your world, you live an extremely sheltered life.
Now Microsoft can buy Mozzilla and all it's "holdings". Wouldnt that be ironic. If I were Microsoft, I would seriously be considering just that. Yes, Mozilla is open source, who cares, just gaining rights to the name "FireFox" would be worth it.
While suspicion is admittedly the kneejerk reaction, I'm assuming that Mozilla.org, like any other organisation, needs to find ways to pay the bills.
What will be most interesting will be seeing if they can resist the instinctive corporate urge to commit gradual financial and PR suicide via the usual scorched-earth tactics. A turn to the Dark Side probably is not inevitable, but given the usual nature of corporations, it probably would not come as a surprise.
How is this going to be different from Netscape? Give-away the free browser, make money on other software.
Didn't work out. Oh, yeah, they'll make money on "support".
pshhh.. if you're gonna suggest a text-mode client, you gotta suggest Emacs...
*don't shoot me*
Gravity Sucks
I see no reason for concern at all. Even in the event Mozilla would get completely corrupted by moneygrabbers, the source is still out there, and there are good alternatives, too.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I guess that with a corporation, they'll be finally able to do DECENT tv commercials (not the funny ones that were on the web).
Just a thought.
This is simply more evidence that the open-source model simply doesn't work in the real world.
Hopefully Mozilla will now begin to adopt a bit of corporate professionality akin to Microsoft. The Mozilla Corporation can begin by:
1. ending the anti-MS slander contained within their various marketing campaigns.
2. fully documenting their APIs, to the high standards of Microsofts MSDN.
3. settling on a standard for Firefox APIs to avoid breaking existing extensions on every major Firefox release.
4. invest in a software update system that actually works.
5. pay their developers a salary, which might discourage them from defecting to other companies
6. get back on track with the delayed Firefox releases
1) The Mozilla sets up a shell corporation to deal with the IRS. 2) Development & management will be unaffected. 3) Nothing else will change. Why is this "news for nerds"? Or "stuff that matters"? Where are the articles like "Man builds turbojet engine in backyard"?
There are some things that private enterprise doesn't do worth beans. If we had to rely on private enterprise to further science, we'd be back in the stone age. When private enterprise finds something interesting, they try to keep it secret so they can make more money from it.
When everybody pays for science, everybody benefits big time. The same might work for computer science.
Wow, I sense a bunch of hatred towards corporations. Non-profit corporations absolutely exist, and I can understand their desire for a better legal and tax stance for their own growth. And what's this about a corporation destroying what they've built? Is it believed that a non-profit, public organization is NOT capable of destroying their own product? Best of luck to you, Mozilla Corporation.
Scott M
mozilla.com is up and running, too!
(Not much content, though.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have asked Mozilla Foundation for a copy of their 2004 Form 990, which would reveal how much money they took in from Google. Rumor has it that it's tens of millions. I'm curious about whether they filed a 990-T to pay taxes on this unrelated business income. Mozilla is late with their 2004 filing, just as they were with their 2003 filing. It's clear that there is a massive jump in income from 2003, which was appropriate for a nonprofit, to 2004, which promises to be more interesting. There is no question in my mind that the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity status is not the ideal vehicle for laundering Google's lucre. It raises too many eyebrows.
The sellout to Google is quite substantial. We all know about the prefetch for the Google search bar, and how you can disable this in about:config under network.prefetch-next if you don't like collecting cookies from places that you never visit.
What's not commonly known is that this configuration option does not affect the behavior of terms entered in the address bar. If Firefox cannot parse the URL, it will go to Google and pick up the number one site, and then take you there directly. It's like a built-in "I'm feeling lucky."
Convenient? Sure, assuming that a huge percentage of surfers haven't a clue about the difference between search terms entered in a search box, and a URL entered in an address bar. Studies show that this is indeed the case.
Explorer does something similar, in that a search term in the address bar will take you to a search preview, assuming that you don't have Active Scripting disabled. But arguably, this is more benevolent than what Firefox is doing with Google. The way that Firefox is doing it gives Google much more control over web traffic patterns. It makes it much more important to be number one on Google for your selected keywords than it is to be number one on MSN for the same keywords, if everything else is equal.
And it's not like Google's first result is always the best. Recent studies show wide disparity between various engines for the top results.
Moreover, all the several-year-old Google bombs still work. Except one, that is. I made a Google bomb for "out-of-touch executives" that led to Google's corporate executives page. It was doing great in all the engines for the first half of 2004, and even got mentioned in the New York Times in June, 2004. But then Google defused this particular bomb by doing a hand job on their algorithm in July, 2004. It disappeared in Google, and I took my links down. But it was a great bomb nonetheless, and is still doing fine in Yahoo and MSN.
So Google cannot even claim that their mathematical methods are untainted by self-interested sabotage in certain cases. That makes them evil. And with Firefox going along with their game plan, that moves Firefox one step closer to the dark side.
Microsoft == profit == bad Mozilla == profit == good
I mean, I know they're both shining examples of niceness, but the amount of sheer webwide clout they could wield...
How long until we start seeing little icons saying "this site only works with Google Firefox"?
It's still on verse 7:15. No mention of the great bird of fire begetting the sacred Fox of flames at all!
I think those cowardly followers of Mammon have some control over publication of the good book. Say it ain't so!
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
Why are they forming a for-profit corporation? Some reason other than "because of specific laws" or "it's a tax/legal thing". If there's specific laws that motivated this, please say what they are, and describe how they were blocking the original foundation.
I find it interesting that none of the discussion messages, as I write this, scores a 5, or even a 4.
One of these days, the silly, utopian, nincompoops that fill that ranks of the FOSS movement will actually realise that someone, somewhere, has to profit by his labors, in order that he and his family can eat (and by extension the rest of us).
That's how the world works since we stopped being hunter-gatherers folks!
So, where's the shame in that? Profit, honestly made, is a good thing.
Does this set them up to be bought out?
When a company forms into a corporation, the board usually symbolizes the end of innovative thought for a company. There is a reason large corporations cant break formats. A: if its broke dont fix it as long as it makes money B: brain drain, the real ideas cant make it past management C: Formats that work cant be broken for formats that may be infinitely better. A prime example is Microsofts challenge to google.. They cant break googles search dominance, because the refuse to give up their "format" of msn.com as a portal page. Google not only has a one stop page, but they allow the user to create aportal now aroudn it if they want. Myself, I will always take the 1 second loading plain and simple homepage of google.com, which I even use to test my connections.. faster than cmd shell. Corporations signal the end of innovation, and the beginning of buying comglomerates.
Spazzers just don't get the jokes
A non-profit org owns a for-profit org? Hmm, sounds like a conflict of interest to me. I would think such a setup would actually confuse tax laws, not help clarify them.
Personally, I'm getting sick of lawyers getting rich off whacked corporate accounting gimmicks. Have we not learned anything from the likes of Enron, et al.?
Sure, I guess I can trust a for-profit Mozilla Corp. They aren't publicly traded, after all -- so who really cares if internal employees, partners, and personal investment bankers get screwed, right?
One of the lures of Firefox is the K.I.S.S. principal -- it's too bad the organization doesn't adhere to the same philosophy.
No, I hadn't know about that, thanks for mentioning it. (For anyone else unaware, here's Mozilla.org's FAQ about it.)
Anyway, you mention collecting cookies: do you know if prefetching and cookies that come from it follow the "originating web site only" preference?
And here's a test to see if your browser is prefetching.
This news requires an update to the /. hypocrisy list.
Old hypocrisy:
Bug found in software product.
if MSFT, say "This shows how buggy proprietary software development is!"
if Mozilla, say "This shows how great OSS is at responding to bugs!"
New hypocrisy:
Company adds support for linux.
if IBM, say "Don't be fooled, they're just trying to make money!"
if Mozilla, say "Why shouldn't they get paid for all the hard work they put into OSS?"
"The change is mostly a legal/tax thing to avoid the problems of pursuing revenue-generating avenues while remaining a non-profit."
;)
This is like a zen koan of accounting. The doublespeak that is so familiar to corporate America.
"Uh, yeah Bob, we're gonna have to take our money making discussion off-line because of Sarbanes-Oxley so that we can sort out some of the tax implications of the outstanding revenue from Q3, which we want to preserve for our earnings estimates despite the obvious effects against our write-offs."
which translated means
"Bob. Holy shit, we're rich! Dude, whatever it takes we gotta hide this money from the G-Men so we can take trips down to Jamaica and smoke log-sized joints on the company yacht!"
Don't matter if it's Microsoft or Mozilla foundation
How is it possible that so many of Slashdot readers are such idiots.
All your dumb little conspiracy theories... Do you not have functioning brains? Can you not read?
What the hell is wrong with you people?
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2003/200/097 /2003-200097189-1-9.pdf
From Planet Mozilla: D.Glazman blog
...
Cons:
3. stricter division of workforce between "mozilla products" that generate revenue, and "mozilla projects" that don't generate revenue, potentially disadvantaging the latter.
I hope this is not true. I'd hate to see a firefox Pro version that you need to buy, and a separate lesser free version of firefox.
VStrider.
It strikes me as odd that Mitch Kapor would go for this.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
They're making a big deal about how there's no stock for employees, but what's to stop them from rewarding themselves with half million dollar salaries?
I'd be perfectly willing to pay a reasonable yearly fee for a good quality open source browser (like moz suite or firefox, etc) if it was developed solely for use on open source operating systems, and if they had a forum where you as a paid-for member might post a question and you actually get a reply from a corporation employee who can either adequaltly answer the question or at least have the oompah to say that they don't know or can't do it, etc.. And any bugtracking has to be a lot easier than the submission way bugtraq works now.
As it stands now, no, won't pay for mozilla,won't even donate, because it's a windows company *primarily*. They collectively spend a huge amount of time and resources working on closed source OSes which hurt the computing public and the computing business world tremendously. I disagree with that. They can do it, other people can do it, but I don't have to like it or support it though. I have absolutely no desire to pay to make windows "better". or to pay/donate to give people a crutch to stay on windows. The longer windows stays the dominant OS, the longer we have to put up with hardware that is designed "for windows-XP ready!". That just is dismally sucky. That's microsoft's (and apple's) job, they certainly have the billions to throw at it to develop windows or apple applications like browsers.
Try Becky - excellent IMAP/POP/SMTP MUA (I assume you're a Windows user).
It can copy sent mails to the Sent folder and has many other nice features.
http://www.rimarts.co.jp/becky.htm
So why don't you guys just fork the code and start from that point onwards, and ignore this Corporation. Although this maybe a naive extreme view, wouldn't it work well?
If the Mozilla Corporation should go wrong, the Foundation can just re-start to release the official Firefox/Thunderbird versions themselves, including any improvements dome by the Corporation in the mean time. That's the power of Open Source: Even if the corporation gets evil, it cannot suddenly remove the code. The only possible weak point would be the trademark, but I hope the trademark rights remain at the Foundation.
Funny, this has already happened to an extent. When the Mozilla foundation decided to cut the Mozilla suite (the project that got Mozilla to where it is today), many longtime users felt as though they had been stabbed in the back in favor of a wider, Firefox-oriented audience, and started the Seamonkey project. They aren't allowed to use the Mozilla name or icons anymore, now that the foundation owns them. You can google the project and see what their reasons are for forking.
If it's good enough for the Mozilla underwear-gnomes
But is it good enough for the Konqueror underwear-KDEs?
Every corporation is supposed to generate profit - later or sooner... Scenario is many times the same. Let the people get used to new brand, then say the Corporation has financial problems and for the good of the users we need an investment... and investors are available... and investors need to return back their investments... and who remembers how the Mozilla started long long time ago as Mozilla FOUNDATION? Only few... If you want to get somewhere it seems to be difficult then make small steps... People are as sheep. Sorry for being skeptical/"chandra".
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
You were pissed off, and decided to have your revenge. Daniel is your name, Slander and lies against Google is your game.
You basically have no credibility what so ever when you talk about Google.
These are exceedingly lame. They are terms hardly anyone uses or links to, so it's no wonder Google doesn't have any high-ranking links for those. The only value of "Google bombing" is for the fun of it.Clever signature text goes here.
To be honest: I prefer Microsoft in this situation because Microsoft doesn't play the FOUNDATION game. I know what sort the MS is from the very beginning.
I don't like projects that gain the strength and popularity by pretending something (for example pretending Microsoft's alternative) and suddenly you realize that all the years you were supporting just another Microsoft-like Corporation.
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
Open source stock! Anyone can be a share holder with as much stock as like. They can also modify and redistribute their stock as their own. Novel!
Waaahhhhaaaa, Whaaahaaaaa, Wahahahaha.....( babies crying ) If you were a mozilla 365 premere member then you would not have had to hear that........(sob) ...suddenly you hear the computer crash because the power has been shut off because of the premere power membership ran out and the power company shut you off. So enjoy the quiet and read a book instead. ( Oh shoot forgot my premere book club dues and nothing new ). Oh well go and get a big stick and play with that ( oh f***, fogot to get a premere stick license from the FOP and no stick playing allowed without said license ) . Twiddle thumbs and wait ( not twiddling thumbs without a assembly license "2 or more thumbs" ) Go to bed ( thought police arrest me for dreaming of surfing with mozilla ). Dam this sure is a tough planet to live on !
They collectively spend a huge amount of time and resources working on closed source OSes which hurt the computing public and the computing business world tremendously.
It's a lot easier for a business to migrate from IE on Windows to Firefox on Windows to Firefox on GNU/Linux than it is to just jump from IE on Windows to Firefox on GNU/Linux, especially if the migration involves changes to applications on the intranet.
Many non-profit status organizations have wholly-owned "for-profit" corporations.
Chambers of Commerce and other business advancement non-profits routinely do this to funnel advertising and other "for-profit" revenue into the non-profit to offset costs of programs and staff.
I wouldn't go so far as to throw out a "nothing to see hear", however. These for-profit divisions can make decisions based solely on cash generation that can go counter to the mission of the umbrella organization.
We have to keep in mind that Firefox and kin will quickly become victims of their own success. As FF picks up steam, many of us will (unfortunately) be less motivated to donate cash to further their efforts.
Large companies with agendas will likely be picking up our slack anyway.
By adding a "for-profit" arm, Mozilla may be able to start offering us services that can generate funds for their projects.
Spiritual Leader of Green Bay Net
Q. How do you double the value of a Yugo? A. Fill the Tank. Q. What do you call a Yugo at the top of a hill? A. A miracle. Q. What is found on the last two pages of every Yugo owner's manual? A. The bus schedule. Q. What did the parts dealer say when the customer said, "I'll take a set of wiper blades for my Yugo"? A. "Sounds like a fair trade to me." Q. What do you call a Yugo with brakes? A. Customized.
is this just one step closer to being able to become part of Google Corp?
If this becomes anything similar to Redhat it will be depressing IMO.
Charles Angelich
Except that Yahoo has 2.7 million shares in Google due to patent lawsuit, as covered in this Slashdot article http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/09/2
The bottom line: Google is a licensor of Yahoo's patented technology that was created by Overture. This is the technology that makes Google's profits possible.
So...
1. Patents are evil (TM).
2. Yahoo owns a patent...therefore Yahoo is Evil.
3. Google chose to honor the Yahoo patent rather than fight and invalidate it... therefore Google is Evil.
4. All defaults in FireFox/Mozilla software point to Google's website...(similar to the Evil in how Microsoft's Internet Explorer was the default web-browser on Windows 95)...therefore Mozilla is Evil.
QED.
They're selling the search bar, home page, and resolution of incorrect URLs! Anything entered into the firefox address bar that doesn't resolve as a URL will be treated as an "I'm Feeling Lucky" Google search. A poster above makes a good point about how this does give Google power to shape internet traffic. And of course being on the home page and the search bar helps drive up traffic too. Google and the other companies on the search bar are all perfectly reasonable defaults. But the Firefox team should make these decisions solely on the basis of what will help the users, and they certainly shouldn't accept bribes from the companies who benefit!
:)
They also mention selling "modifications" for companies that want to use firefox; anyone know of an example or two?
(Incidentally, I use the blank page as my home page, and instead of the search toolbar I use Firefox's great built-in bookmark keyword tool. It lets me type "i the incredibles" in the address bar for an imdb search, "g Austin movies" for a google search, w for wikipedia, e for everything2, and so on, and I can add any other site that offers searching.)
Of course, it is copyleft. If the ads get bad, fork it.
SeaMonkey is "SeaMonkey". Firefox is "Firefox". Neither product uses "Mozilla" in the title. It looks more like a change in naming convention than a matter of being allowed to use it or not. They're on equal ground.
There is a difference, of course, in the focus. SeaMonkey is a "Project" and Firefox is a "Product". They're both on the Mozilla site, and since Mozilla's focus is Firefox, SeaMonkey is rightfully less important (Ignoring the reasons for why it is or isn't).
Personally I am happy that Mozilla moved over to Firefox. The Mozilla Suite was a bloated mess in that it did so much that people often didn't want. Do I really need an IRC client built in, and a HTML editor, newsgroup browser, and the kitchen sink? Jack of all trades, master of none. Except I don't USE most of the trades.
That was the problem with the suite. Everyone wanted something it did, but also everybody didn't want something it did. With the new system I can grab the parts I want (Firefox, Thunderbird) without the extra bloat that I couldn't care less against.
Complaining that Mozilla shifted focus away from browser suites is like complaining that Microsoft shifted focus away from Windows 3.1. Progress marches on and we do away with antiquated stuff that isn't suited to the current environment.
This is outrageous. There's absolutly no law against non-profit organizations seeking, earning, and keeping revenue. The real story here is that Mozilla has become profitable, and is moving so that those in control can take advantage of it. This is not how successful open source projects should behave. They should not beg for donations so they can advertize (see spreadfirefox), and any profits they earn should go back into the project, then to the developers, and then into the open source community.
Let me preface my next statement by saying that I love and use firefox exclusivly, but it's time for firefox to fork so it stops fucking up the mozilla foundation.
I donated to Mozilla before because it was a non profit, and IF this is just some stupid tax/legal thing why did they make Mozilla.com a completely difforent site than Mozilla.org. If it was just a tax/legal thing why didn't they just call it that, and keep it kinda silent and just use it on tax forms. Also I don't want some stupid-ass CEO or something getting rich off of these developers. If I make a donation to the Mozilla Foundation, I want my money going to expenses such as servers, bandwidth, and maybe enough to help the full-time mozilla foundation employees pay some bills, but I don't want anyone to get filthy rich from donations because mozilla is a community.
This might be the death of mozilla as we know it.
plus, now I you can't say Mozilla is a non-profit organization anymore.
stupid stupid decision
From what I read here: (got the link from mozillazine)D ept.1202pg.57.htm
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2001/1200/dept/
It seems like the creation of the corporation is so that they can do things more "officially." So instead of the way companies like IBM participate in certain OSS effort, (that is, give some money and provide some developers and then get some not so tengible assets, such as "influence" of the development direction), a company like Google can say... consult me on the browser source code and I will give you this much money... or put in this feature in firefox and I will give you this much money... (and this is perfectly fine right? as long as they keep the product open source...)
Now I have no problem with this move in and of itself since this is not the first time OSS is used this way. It's perfectly fine, even if someone just uses the Mozilla code and build a viral-type marketing vehicle out of it. (and let's face it folks, there are more sophisticated marketing method than pop-up ads...Netscape being a commercial brand of Mozilla also have pop-up blocker... and You don't think this can happen? Who's going to stop? Moz Corp don't even have public shareholder to answer to.) However, was this a long term strategic move of some people within MoFo? Is this why there was a need to put all the supports behind Firefox and stop development on Seamonkey when there's clearly an audience for it? Is that what it takes for firefox and the like to be commercially viable (by having more resource for faster time-to-market)?
Again... if someone comes along and did this all by themselves without using Mozilla Foundation's resources and its legitimacy I wouldn't really care. But this really feels like a hijacking for me. May be having all after tax profit going back to MoFo will make me feel better.