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Most of the 40 or so people who worked for the Mozilla Foundation will become employees at the corporation; the foundation will be left with just three staff. The volunteers and commercial groups that contribute to the project will not see any change in the way Mozilla code is developed, according to the group..."It's not the case that someone is taking Firefox and making a lot of money," he [Tristan Nitot, Mozilla spokesman] said. "The revenue we have made is almost accidental, it was not initially expected but it happened, so we needed to evolve the legal structure and fiscal structure to reflect this."
[pcworld.com...]
"The revenue we have made is almost accidental"
Notice the "almost" . I bet they DREAM about it. It is time for people to get mature and assume themselves.
It is time for people to get mature and assume themselves.
So you don't think that starting a corporation is a sign of maturity? I think it's a definite sign of maturity. More power to them.
Also, what do you mean by saying that they should "assume themselves"?
The Mozilla Corporation went public today and achieved one of the biggest IPOs in hsitory. The company has been earning record earnings since it started selling its browser for $60.
:)
[mozilla.org...]
Press release from Mozilla:
[mozilla.org...]
I'm still a little confused about the status of the new Mozilla Corporation, though: the Mozilla Foundation was formed a couple of years back with a $2 million cash injection by AOL. The Corporation is a wholly owned entity of the Foundation, but is the Foundation still owned, at least in part, by AOL/Time Warner?
Of course, one of the biggest collaborators of the Mozilla Foundation was no other than Google, which has hired several Firefox developers, and provides infrastructure including the default Firefox home page [google.com].
The Mozilla Corporation went public today and achieved one of the biggest IPOs in hsitory. The company has been earning record earnings since it started selling its browser for $60.>
This is the nice thing about open-source. The existing Firefox browser is open-source, and anyone can fork off their own development of it. If the company decides to go completely closed-source and sell their browser, then someone will take the existing open-source code and use it as the base of their own open-source browser.
If the open-source version of it can keep up, or at least come close, then The Mozilla Corporation won't be able to sell their product because a very similar one exists for free. If, on the other hand, the closed-source browser is far superior to anything available for free, then they've earned their $60 for each sale.
The point here is that the community won't be left high-and-dry without a browser that we've become accustomed to. That's the whole reason for open-source existing: Freedom.
The whole story about these anti-microsoft / open source / no bug (?) / more safe ( joke?) progs are highly hypocrite.
I love this comment!
I agree with Emodo's fast forward four years post though, and also say that this was definately inevitable with the success of the project, especially recently.
Firefox generates most of its money through a tool that lets users search the Web with various search engines, and also search for products at Amazon and eBay. Firefox takes a small share of revenue through contracts with those partners.
So does this mean, when I'm using the upperright search function, Mozilla earns some money?
If the open-source version of it can keep up, or at least come close, then The Mozilla Corporation won't be able to sell their product because a very similar one exists for free. If, on the other hand, the closed-source browser is far superior to anything available for free, then they've earned their $60 for each sale.
Yes, which is why this stinks for users. As seen elsewhere, because of this open-source competitive threat, the com version will be held back until it is far superior to the open source version they started with. That means OS FF ages and ages while the com version is under development. That means FF gets partial features that are really tests and data collecting oppty's for the behind-the-scenes development, as the com version integrtaes that new knowledge into the future com category killer product.
Then one day we get a commercial version (Google browser?) that is killer, and the free version looks old and hopeless. If it *is* Google Browser, it will likely have all sorts of cool API opportunities as well, so developers are attracted to extending it instead of competing with it.
It's just the anti-capitalist, anti-microsoft supporters of Mozilla / firefox that get me mad. In fact i'm jubilating to see Mozilla taking the usual path ^^.
Brakkar
There are no plans to introduce any new, paid services to make additional money for Mozilla, Nitot said....The corporation does not plan to do an initial public offering and its only shareholder will be Mozilla Foundation, Nitot said....
The volunteers and commercial groups that contribute to the project will not see any change in the way Mozilla code is developed...
Even further, from the Mozilla website:
Will users need to start paying for Firefox?
No. Firefox and Thunderbird will remain as they are today: free (i.e., no charge) products based on open source code.[mozilla.org...]
I was joking when I made that 4 year prediction.
The change was simply for legal reasons (I'm worked for a NPO, the red tape and paper work is simply INSANE) in order to better structure themselves.
Mozilla knows they exsist solely because they have a GREAT community (go to spreadfirefox if you don't believe me) which volunteer many hours to debug and improve firefox. They are not about the go the route of microsoft anytime soon.
Still looks like OS, but ancillary coders know the core developers are bankrolled and on a mission that is economically quite promising. Is that OS? Nah.
There are plenty of NPOs who "own all of the stock" of for-profit entities they created. It's another twist on commerce, yielding power and influence instead of cash because the holding foundation wants the best of both worlds: accept gifts and grants as an NPO, yet hold the reigns of influential commercial entities.
Call me a skeptic or conspiracy theorist or whatever but if you have doubts, just watch the board appointments of the "Foundation" and then the "commercial entity" over time and see how deep the rabbit hole really goes.
They can make money selling a corp version that comes with support just like Red Hat. Funny thing about the corp world is they do not like free or cheap things. They want to spend money. I have a feeling that is exactly what will happen.
Most intranet developers have been happily developing for IE only and incorporating all kinds of bells and whistles like a kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Even more, intranets are often developed only for whatever version of IE their captive audience can be required to use.
If any other browser wanted to crack that market, they'd have to deal with all the legacy code that IE is now struggling to support, even as they work toward supporting more of the standards.
Regarding the idea that anyone can fork off a new branch in case FF corporation goes closed source: The true resource in software is not the software itself, its source code or the binaries. It's in the brains of the developers! Sure, anybody can fork off an open source branch - but the quality goes down the drain because the community is severely weakened.
I know you were being tongue in cheek, but it your comments don't typify corporate America and the lust for $$$ in our society, then nothing does.
Does anyone else see this as an opportunity for Opera? If Opera stop charging for the free version and get revenue from a "search tool" instead, they will be able to compete with Firefox on a much more even footing than they currently can.
Opera doesn't charge for the FREE version. ;) I do think Opera does something like this though. Try typing in the address bar "e [keyword]" (without the brackets, of course) and it will search ebay for whatever keywords you want. Right after you press enter, two other urls are displayed that look like some type of affiliates or something and then the ebay page is loaded. I don't think it does this for any of the other default searchs though....
Jennifer
Opera doesn't charge for the FREE version. ;)
*must proof-read posts more carefully*
