Mozilla Foundation

The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that was created to support and give leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operate important things that keep Mozilla working and controls trademarks and other intellectual property. It owns a taxable for-profit subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation, which employs several Mozilla developers and sets releases of the Mozilla Firefox. The Mozilla Foundation is based in Mountain View, California, USA.

The Mozilla Foundation describes itself as "a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet". Mozilla Japan and Mozilla China are non-profit organizations whose mission is to help promote and deploy Mozilla products and projects. 

History
On February 23, 1998, Netscape created the Mozilla Organization to help the development of the Mozilla Application Suite. It made-up of mostly Netscape employees but was not part of Netscape. 

When America Online (AOL) (Netscape's owner) stopped its involvement with the Mozilla Organization, the Mozilla Foundation was created on July 15, 2003 to make sure Mozilla could survive without Netscape. AOL helped during the start of the creation of the Mozilla Foundation, moving hardware and intellectual property to the organization and employing a three-person team for the first three months to help with the move. AOL promised to donate $2 million to the foundation over two years.

People
The Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors has eight members: 

Nicole Wong (Chair)
Brian Behlendorf
Zain Habboo
Amy Keating
Edwin Macharia
Alondra Nelson
Mark Surman
Helen Turvey

Originally Christopher Blizzard had a seat on the board but he moved to the Mozilla Corporation Board of Directors when it was established; Joichi Ito joined the Mozilla Foundation board at that time. Bob Lisbonne and Carl Malamud were elected to the board in October 2006.

The foundation also has a number of paid staff members, organized into teams and programs such as Strategic Operations, Global Programs, and Global Advocacy, who focus on project, policy, and movement‑building issues.

The Mozilla Corporation also has a number of employees, many of whom worked for the foundation before the establishment of the corporation.

The Mozilla project has traditionally been overseen by a committee known as mozilla.org staff; the individuals on that committee later became foundation or corporation board members or staff members.

Related pages
Mozilla Firefox — Mozilla's web browser
Mozilla Thunderbird — Mozilla's e-mail client

References

Notes

Other websites
About the Mozilla Foundation
2005 presentation about the Mozilla Foundation
Press release about the creation of the Mozilla Foundation
Details about the reorganization caused by the formation of the Mozilla Corporation
mozilla.org Staff Members and Meeting Minutes


Category:Mountain View, California
Category:2003 establishments in California