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."

Comments

Something doesn't make sense

[amliebsch]

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).

Re:Something doesn't make sense

[Brendan Eich]

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.

The issue with non-profits in the US is not about accruing "private profits" but about the type of activities pursued for the non-profit's "public benefit purpose". "Acting as if" we were a for-profit entity is a problem, even if we never accrued private profits and never distributed them somehow to the owners (in this case, the Mozilla Foundation is the sole owner).

So even if we act to further our public-benefit purpose, and distribute funds as grants, or otherwise avoid profit-taking, if our action in the market and with partners resembles for-profit commercial activity, we may lose our non-profit status. That is something the Foundation does not want to risk.

This is the main reason for the reorganization.

Yes, it means Firefox is making money, and in ways that may put us in the position of "acting as if" we are a for-profit commercial entity.

No, we will not start charging for Firefox or any of our other free (beer and speech) products.

/be

The Google Connection

[MBoffin]

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.

deviantART?

[IAmTheDave]

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.

Will this help

[C_Kode]

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...

Re:Will this help

[jurt1235]

You can help in the following way: Instead of your time, you can use a small bonus for the person who solves the problem. That way you and the community both benefit from it.