Mozilla Foundation

The Mozilla Foundation is an American nonprofit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, operates critical infrastructure, and controls Mozilla trademarks and copyrights. It owns two taxable subsidiaries: the Mozilla Corporation, which employs many Mozilla developers and coordinates releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, and MZLA Technologies Corporation, which employs developers to work on the Mozilla Thunderbird email client and coordinate its releases. The Mozilla Foundation was founded by the Netscape-affiliated Mozilla Organization. The organization is currently based in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, California, United States. The Mozilla Foundation describes itself as "a non-profit organization that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet". The Mozilla Foundation is guided by the Mozilla Manifesto, which lists 10 principles which Mozilla believes "are critical for the Internet to continue to benefit the public good as well as commercial aspects of life".

History

On February 23, 1998, Netscape created the Mozilla Organization to co-ordinate the development of the Mozilla Application Suite. When AOL (Netscape's parent) drastically scaled back its involvement with Mozilla Organization, the Mozilla Foundation was launched on July 15, 2003, to ensure Mozilla could survive without Netscape. AOL assisted in the initial creation of the Mozilla Foundation, transferring hardware and intellectual property to the organization, employed a three-person team for the first three months of its existence to help with the transition, and donated $2 million to the foundation over two years. In September 2019, the Mozilla Foundation, Creative Commons, and Coil Technologies announced Grant for the Web, a $100 million fund designed to support the development of technologies, content, and ideas utilizing the Interledger Protocol. Management of this fund was transferred to the Interledger Foundation in 2021. On November 4, 2024, The Mozilla Foundation announced via email they had laid off 30% of its employees as the organization says it faces a "relentless onslaught of change."

Subsidiaries

Mozilla Corporation

On August 3, 2005, the Mozilla Foundation announced the creation of Mozilla Corporation, described as "a taxable subsidiary that serves the non-profit, public benefit goals of its parent, the Mozilla Foundation, and that will be responsible for product development, marketing and distribution of Mozilla products." It also handles relationships with businesses, many of which generate income. Unlike the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation is a tax-paying entity, giving it much greater freedom in its revenue and business activities. From 2004 to 2014, most revenue came from a deal with Google, the default search engine in the Firefox web browser. In November 2014, Mozilla signed a five-year partnership with Yahoo, making Yahoo! Search the default search engine for Firefox in the US. Yandex Search is the default for Firefox in Russia and Baidu continues its role as the default in China.

In November 2017, Mozilla terminated its agreement with Yahoo two years earlier than planned. While numerous factors were attributed to the decision to terminate the agreement, including some mention that Mozilla saw declining revenues related to the switch, likely the impetus was related to the recent acquisition of Yahoo by Verizon and Oath. Per Mozilla Chief Business and Legal Officer Denelle Dixon, "We exercised our contractual right to terminate our agreement with Yahoo! based on a number of factors including doing what's best for our brand, our effort to provide quality web search, and the broader content experience for our users. We believe there are opportunities to work with Oath and Verizon outside of search."

Mozilla China

Beijing Mozilla Online Ltd (Chinese: 北京谋智网络技术有限公司), a.k.a. Mozilla China, was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla China was headquartered in Beijing.

MZLA Technologies Corporation On January 28, 2020, the Mozilla Foundation announced that the Thunderbird project would henceforth be operating from a new wholly owned subsidiary, MZLA Technologies Corporation, in order to explore offering products and services that were not previously possible and to collect revenue through partnerships and non-charitable donations.

Mozilla Ventures On November 2, 2022, Mozilla announced the establishment of Mozilla Ventures, an impact investing venture capital fund which "supports early-stage startups whose products or technologies advance the values in the Mozilla Manifesto." It was established with an initial US$35 million, and followed over a decade of prior investments by Mozilla into startups.

Financing

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