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Looking Into Mozilla's Financial Success
NewsCloud writes "'Thanks to the Google agreement, the Mozilla Foundation went from revenue of nearly $6 million in 2004 to more than $52 million the next year [similar revenue is expected in 2006]...In 2005, the foundation created a subsidiary, the for-profit Mozilla Corporation,...mainly to deal with the tax and other issues related to the Google contract...By creating a corporation to run the Firefox project, Mozilla was committing to be less transparent. In part, that is because Google insists on the secrecy of "its arrangement and agreements," said board member Mitch Kapor.' The NYT article compares this approach to Wikipedia's ongoing fundraisers and raises the issue of transparency in open source projects. i.e. should Firefox's 1,000 to 2,000 developers and 80,000 evangelists have full knowledge of how revenue is spent as well as the extent to which Google is able to influence strategy vs. other stakeholders."
Yes, well, bring that up on the Slashdot if you want some suggestions on where to spend the money. Maybe even ask the Google about it, since that's where the money came from.
I don't know why use of "the" here amuses me so much, but it makes the author seem very unfamiliar with the companies and products they are writing about.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Apparently its ok for Google to chuck cash at Mozilla to default to them, but they dont want the terms of the deal disclosed? Dodgy. Imagine the screaming hissy fits about conspiracy if Microsoft brokered a similar deal with Opera to default to whatever MS call their seach engine these days (yes I know Google got there first as well).
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
It will be interesting to see how much influence the Mozilla Corporation becomes on the project.
Given the way money and power corrupt, I'd say there's a fork coming in the next 10 years.
All hail the IceWeasel! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
When you compare the reason that the free SSL certificate providers like CAcert have been kept out of Mozilla's root certificate list (because CAcert can't pay up $250,000 for a bullshit audit from some US accountancy organisation which proves that CAcert won't mismanage funds), and now we have Mozilla doing secret deals with Google (and who knows, they could do them with Microsoft in the future). Mozilla is moving rapidly into the EvilNonOpenCompany territory... but at least the code is all GPLed.
It's not so much that the Mozilla Corporation continues to paddle around in the murky waters as it's more about how *content* the Mozilla Corporation is to be in murky waters.
My humor is probably your flamebait
Do slightly less evil than Microsoft
we are used to looking at systems and asking, 'will it scale?'
when you look at the products that do scale- or implement something at a very large scale, it takes money. i've not seen an exception yet. i don't care about firefox, google and their deal - as long as the browser works the way i want.
on a side note-- as for what to do with the 'extra' money. i'd love to see it invested in making other open apps - like sunbird and thunderbird great.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Any time a project gets big and starts bringing in money, it gives up a certain amount of control that each person who works on it previously had. When I heard they were making a for-profit corporation to make secretive deals with massive corporations like Google, I initially thought things were worse than they are. But there's no question that there's a slippery slope in this deal where an open-source project that was previously fueled by the interest of developers could become entrenched and weighed down by the monetary and business aspects in the politics of a company.
The best way to keep things open and developers interested is to release all the information except that which Google requires be kept secret. It's already pretty clear the type of revenue that is coming from the Google. When things get this large, it's easy for those interested in developing to fall out of touch with something that resembles Microsoft a lot more than a community undertaking.
They should give it to me. That'd be fair for everyone involved.
That's a lot of money. I hope the developers who did all the work don't come to feel taken advantage of through the maneuverings of these foundations and corporations. Transparency is the only way I know to handle this kind of thing.
What's the point of the secrecy in the google deal anyway?
How about Mozilla opens the kimono? If Google likes secrecy more than the deal itself, I'm sure that MSN or Yahoo or another competitor will be happy to take their place...
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Hmmm...a couple hundred/thousand contributors in the dark and a $52M bullseye. I'm not a lawyer, but if I was I'd probably be busy trolling for anyone wanting to class-action -itize their favorite complaint.
If the Mozilla Foundation goes down a path of secret agreements, proprietary code, and strings-attached Google sponsorship, then wouldn't the original contibutors that want to continue on with the original project goals be considered forkers? Iceweasal anyone
I'm happy Mozilla is making a nice amount of money, that's really the point we are trying to make with the GPL isn't it? you can still be commercially viable and open source - don't fear it...
I would also say that there is no danger for the community, it'd be really easy to fork it if things really got that bad... hell, we already have Ice Weasel...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
No, Mozilla's developers and evangelists should not have more control over the ways money is spent. People who live lower on the totem pole often do not understand the true costs and requirements of doing business. 2000 developers arguing over the neccessity of spending a few hundred dollars will do no good for the overall project.
Some will claim that only a small percentage of the overall developer base will be interested in it, but this is still an invalid position. If they want to participate in those kinds of positions, they need to adopt a second position within the corporation. Just being a developer is not good enough. At your job, working on your company's web site does not entitle you to dictate marketing dollars use to the CEO. You're still free to offer advice in either scenario, but advice need not be acted upon.
As for the evangelists and financial contributors: If they do not like what they see happening, they are free to cease contribution.
The point is that although Firefox is an open-source project, conflict of interest and incompotence still exist, and the corporate structure helps to mitigate it. Let the business people do what they do best, and the developers do what they do best. If software development positions within Mozilla were available, people would be clamoring for such a clearly-split division of responsibility. Although developers here are not paid resources of Mozilla the corporation, nothing changes. And if you don't like that, you can always fork the code into yet another design-and-management by the community open-source project that nobody uses.
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
Aren't we all?
I can't imagine the screaming hissy fits if Microsoft made this type of deal with Opera. I doubt there would be any. Opera has no more responsibility to its developers than any other for-profit corporation. And they're free to follow money wherever it may lead.
Mozilla deals are different because the Mozilla non-profit organization is a representation of the community that develops Gecko and the projects they base on it. When a for-profit company is founded with an ambiguous relationship with the original organization, the role of the development community comes into question. Sure, they're still be contributing to GPL code, but will the spirit of the project still inspire such developer devotion, with so much non-paid contribution? Could they?
They should spend the money to develop the social networking features that their userbase is begging for. Then, they should integrate a calendar and mail client, and only make it available as one big download.
They could call it... Mozilla Navigator...
No, but seriously. How about paying some major contributing developers, and maybe hire some on full time to develop better web standards support, instead of fucking around with features like social networking and offline browsing. Features that are way out o the scope that made Firefox popular to begin with. They need to continue to look at themselves as losing. They need to strike deals with PC manufacturers like Dell to become the default browser on new systems, etc.
"When people succeed, they tend to party. When people fail, they tend to ponder." -- Tony Robbins
Mozilla needs to be pondering, regardless of what their bank account looks like.
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
The author of this story is all wrong! Firefox is a FREE product. Mozilla can't make money off free product. STORY FALSE!
+5 Insightful!
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Remember microsoft killing netscape because of no revenue from the browser? I'm happy Google is doing this. Firefox is enough of the market that m$ can't force people to use IE only. People have to code to standards.
Get over it.
is there a department of manageing this project? if there is one, so it should try to spend these money on making firefox better software and spreading firefox to more people. otherwise, they should make this transparently, any way, it's not import where these money came from, but where this money will be spend on
"By creating a corporation to run the Firefox project, Mozilla was committing to be less transparent."
And this follow from what? There is nothing about the existence of the Mozilla Corporation that commits us to being less transparent. That's just bunk and it makes no sense given how transparent we are from our development process and planning to our financials.
As far as the details of specific financial relationships with search partners, those were never disclosed in detail (long before the creation of the Mozilla Corporation, in Mozilla Foundation days) and probably won't be since our various partners weren't then aren't now willing to divulge the specifics of their financial relationships with anyone. Mozilla is as transparent as we can be around those relationships, releasing our annual financials and explaining that the bulk of it comes from relationships with various search partners including our default search, Google.
The article overall is fine, but that line is just fiction.
From the search box in firefox do a search on Amazon. Look at the url. See that, "mozilla-20" in the url? That's mozilla's Amazon Associate link. So if you, like me, tend to buy stuff from Amazon after searchinf for it with the firefox search box, then Mozilla is getting a percentage of whatever you buy. I don't mind that, but I've just never seen it mentioned anywhere. It would be nice if they were a bit more upfront about that kind of income as well
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Yes.
Open source was a method that is unheard of for creating and publishing things some time ago, and its proving that it is an unprecedented success, as it was pitted against hulky big proprietary method-using corporation's stuff and coming out stronger every day.
Some non-it sectors and foundations are going to employ open source methods for doing things. Manufacturing, hardware was recently discussed. If it goes like this, we can find many stuff being further developed by open source methods, imitating its success in i.t. So, it is changing our world.
Now hear this - privacy, finance and transparency are the present issues to integrate with open source, but when they are once integrated with it, and a transparency by ensuring privacy and a usable financial method is achieved, then there will be no reason not to implement these methods in areas from manufacturing to government.
in short, i am telling that the methods invented in open source foundations can be the key to revolutionizing the governmental systems in the world, getting much more closer to direct democracy and full transparency concepts.
Read radical news here
Mozilla in bed with a company that condones censorship in China to make a few bucks. Nice!
What ever happened to talks of the Firefox/RealAudio partnership? That's one app I do NOT want on my computers.
It's funny to see all these "Mozilla is Evil!" posts. So what if Mozilla made corporate subsidy? It's been a year know that Moz Co has been in operation, so where is the fallout? Did Mozilla the organization do anything shaddy? The whole Iceweasel thing is a lot of bullshit, if Mozilla wants to engage in marketing they have to protect their trademark, there are no exceptions. Mozilla's policy on trademarks is very sane, they don't act in an aggressive manner, they get in contact with the right people and sort things out.
Mozilla succeeded exactly because they are able to make a product that can be used by average users (while at the same time allowing geeks to customize Firefox to any degree we want). Mozilla should continue with their policy of ignoring OSS populism and innovating . The idiots who are too stupid to understand why Mozilla makes certain decision should use Iceweasel.
Could you provide a link that shows the depth of these financials? I don't think anything can prove your point better than the numbers themselves can.
The philanthropic W. K. Kellogg Foundation has a similar arrangement. The foundation receives funds from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Trust, which is the majority shareholder of Kellogg's Corporation.
Prediction: I see AOL in Mozilla Corp's future...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
There is one very good use for the money, advertising.
After a certain point, the only way to grow a brand is through advertising.
The Firefox adoption rate amount techies (and friends and families of techies) has probably peaked. The only way non-techies will learn the benefits of Firefox is through mass market advertising.
Some will probably be agast at the thought of open source revenue being funneled to mass market, for-profit companies. But I believe these ends justify these means.
Advertising could result in a tremendous growth in Mozilla's adaption. This growth in market share would in turn result in ever larger revenues.
Even so, the ends are not revenues, the ends are market share. And with ever larger market share come larger revenues. With larger revenues, Mozilla could afford to spend/donate ever larger amounts of funds to worthy projects. They could even specify that the marketing budget be limited to a certain dollar figure or percentage of revenue.
Without advertising, Firefox will probably continue a slow growth curve over the next few years. But the days of rapid increases in Firefox's install base are probably over unless there is some form of advertising.
Is someone there making 5 million a year? Which devs get paid and how much? $50 million is a lot of money to spread around when you have only ~40 employees( per mozilla.org site announcing reorg from 2005). Are you more or less inclined to work hard on a project that is making that much money from your contributions?
These same questions have been around for quite a while but it's still fun to revisit them. While I don't think that the money will stop people from contributing their time, I do think they have a snow ball's chance in hell of ever asking for money again to do another NY Times ad.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Firefox is primarily a Microsoft Windows product. That's the real economic bottom line and the big huge problem that is always there, yet very few FF evangelists will recognize it or admit to it. Most of the effort with FF goes into perpetuating the windows operating system. The vast bulk of FF users still shovel cash and mindshare towards Redmond and are helping to maintain that destructive economic monopoly. If anything, the mere existence of FF/Mozilla being ported to windows from day one (the originator is a windows user) gave MS a lot of welcome and needed breathing room while they were developing vista and trying to improve IE and deal with a complete lack of security. It was worth billions to microsoft as a bandaid they didn't have to pay a penny for, while they developed more, so all this talk of google and a few paltry million is what is called a "red herring".
Mozilla is a Microsoft *partner* for all intents and purposes.
Now imagine if FF/mozilla products were developed for open source operating systems *exclusively*, with zero windows port. All the latest nasty web based bugs over the past few years would have forced MS OS users to look elsewhere, probably to apple or open source. Instead, FF gave them a security and functionality snuggle blanket to continue to be able to surf on windows, which just perpetuates the MS desktop monopoly.
And before anyone chimes in with the expected knee jerk indignant reaction "but..but.. FF is open source,we have a secret plan! Using FF will magically make people adopt open source OS!". I say that's pure unadulterated crap, there is no proof, open source operating system adoption on the desktop is statistically no better now than it was 3-4 years ago, it hit a plateau at around 1-2% and remains there. Apple/mac has increased some, but not linux! Not in any huge way, any gains are so pitifully small as to be lost in the web stats noise. Same to be said for Open Office, another stealth microsoft product crutch.
How about this -- antiphishing protection in FF2 exists mainly to allow harvesting data about FF's userbase by Google.
For instance -- bug 368255 is still not fixed; not only that - it looks like it is completely ignored by devs: "UNCONFIRMED" status is default for all new bugs.
Also, feel free to browse all bugs related with anti-phishing protection...
they could afford to get a couple of proper programmers for that.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
MSOC would be a better idea IMHO. Money for new features.
Mozilla could even extend it far beyond Mozilla (why not KDE, Gnome, GCC, Perl (Javascript on Parrot?), etc. pp.?)
Btw. I think the deal with Google is *so* good, that e.g. the KDE guys (Konqueror) should do a similiar deal too.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Is the software free (as per FSF's definition?)
The good guys are the ones that keep these fundamental freedoms. The bad guys would be the ones limiting our computing infrastructure choices and imposing artificial lock ins.
Fill in the blanks as appropriate.
I don't care which commercial deals are agreed between the different entitites supporting differen software projects, if they want to trade first borns it is up to them, I just want software I can migrate if necessary and that does not kidnap my data by following and encouraging industry wide standards.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.