www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=7085
MozillaZine Mozilla Foundation Announces Creation of Mozilla Corporation Wednesday August 3rd, 2005 The Mozilla Foundation has announced the creation of the Mozilla Corporat ion, a wholly-owned subsidiary that will continue the development, distr ibution and marketing of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. Unlike the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation will be a ta xable entity (that is, a for-profit rather than a non-profit) but the Fo undation is eager to emphasise that it will pursue the same public benef it goals as the Foundation itself and will not be driven purely by reven ue goals. The change will not affect the day-to-day development of Mozilla, with th e current system of module owners, drivers, reviewers and super-reviewer s staying in place. End-users are unlikely to notice any difference eith er, though the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation will event ually have separate websites. At the moment, only Firefox and Thunderbir d will be developed under the auspices of the Mozilla Corporation; other projects, such as Camino and SeaMonkey, will continue to be overseen by the Mozilla Foundation. Most of the Mozilla Foundation's employees will move to the Mozilla Corpo ration.
Mitchell Baker will become the Presiden t of the Mozilla Corporation, while Brendan Eich will take up the role o f Chief Technical Officer. The Mozilla Corporation will have its own Boa rd of Directors, appointed by and responsible to the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors.
Reid Hoffman (no relation to Chris Hofmann), who has been involved with many Internet companies, will also have a seat on the board of the Mozilla Corporation. By moving product development out to a new subsidiary, the Mozilla Founda tion hopes to be able to concentrate on project and policy issues.
Joi It o will take a seat on the Mozilla Foundation's Board of Directors. The creation of the Mozilla Corporation should eliminate some of the thor ny legal and tax issues that have been caused by the revenue-generating potential of Firefox and Thunderbird. The Mozilla Corporation will now h andle all relationships with commercial companies and its status should allow more flexibility in this area. It is hoped that the income from th e Mozilla Corporation will help the Mozilla project (including both the Foundation and the Corporation) to be more self-supporting, though donat ions will still be welcome. While the Mozilla Corporation will be a for-profit, the Mozilla Foundatio n is keen to stress that it is not selling out. The Mozilla Foundation w ill ultimately control the activities of the Mozilla Corporation and wil l retain its 100 percent ownership of the new subsidiary. Any profits ma de by the Mozilla Corporation will be invested back into the Mozilla pro ject. There will be no shareholders, no stock options will be issued and no dividends will be paid. The Mozilla Corporation will not be floating on the stock market and it will be impossible for any company to take o ver or buy a stake in the subsidiary. The Mozilla Foundation will contin ue to own the Mozilla trademarks and other intellectual property and wil l license them to the Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation will also cont inue to govern the source code repository and control who is allowed to check in.
Mozilla Advisory Committee, which consisted of members of the Mozill a community and figures from the open source and entrepreneurial worlds. The Mozilla Corporation was registered as a legal entity this week and several valued Mozilla contributors were informed of the changes last ni ght.
offer his perspective on the reorganisation later today. Update: It now appears that the podcast will take place tomorrow (Thursda y) at 5:00pm Pacific Daylight Time (1:00am UTC on Friday).
Reply to this message They are not so much freeware (free as in beer) as they are Free Software (free as in beer AND speech). If the Mozilla Overlords ever wanted to S EIZE control and create a non-Free version, the source code until that p oint would still be free, and the community would surely fork to support the new Free version. If you have heard of TuxRacer, look at its histor y, and note the new Planet Penguin Racer.
Reply to this message So, after reading all that, I still don't get what this is good for. I di dn't ever develop any Moz product, but I've been (beta)testing gecko for ever and I even sent some of little money to the MoFo. I kinda feel MoF o has not been quite honest with all of us, if such a thing is declared one day out of the blue without there having been a public discussion be forehand. No, open source is not democracy, but this does feel a little like those responsible for many other peoples coding and other hard work are doing strange things that have not been discussed and should not be discussed, just accepted. Doesn't feel bad, but it does feel a little not-so-good.
If you read the whole article it is simply to est ablish a corporate entity to basically pay employees, seperate tax issue s and also provide a means to add corporate support to enterprises that are looking for that. While this may look as a bad thing, it is a very g ood thing and as they said end users will hardly see a difference.
Reply to this message This is disappointing, but not for the conspiracy-theory reasons some peo ple seem to think. I think that people are suffering from the Hollywood created belief that anything 'corporate' must necessarily be evil. Corporations are just entities created for tax purposes. It sounds like the gov't or a tax auditor just go a little over-cautious about some of Mozillas revenues. The re have been case in the past where people have setup not-for-profits to shelter taxable revenue. Although Mozilla is clearly on the level, its great success appear to have drawn the IRS's attention to certain source s of revenue. The disappointing thing is that this could take cash out of the hands of developers and put it into the hands of the government.
Reply to this message I agree with pretty much everything you said but would just like to say t hat as far as I'm aware the IRS hasn't been looking into the Mozilla Fou ndation. However, I understand that the Foundation people were getting b ored of having to have a tax attorney present in every meeting involving revenue.
Reply to this message That was just a blind guess on the IRS thing. I guess its good thing they are taking preemptive action before the IRS starts sniffing around.
Reply to this message "I think that people are suffering from the Hollywood created belief that anything 'corporate' must necessarily be evil." If that's a Hollywood-created belief, then why haven't Hollywood's custom ers (ticket buyers and DVD buyers) thought of the Hollywood movie studio corporations as evil?
Reply to this message Oh, Hollywood's customers *do* think the studios are evil. They want the products, though , so they buy them anyway. Not everyone looks at every financial transaction they make as a politica l statement.
Reply to this message Well as MoFO is a foundation, and foundation are non-democratic by nature ! The most ideal organisation form if you want to avoid people to get a say in your business, but remain a "social face". With no offense to MoF o or many other foundations, but it's hard to act against their policies , as a foundation, by it's nature, prevent any "democratic" intervention . The only organisation form which would allow "membership" and "members voting" is a "Association", and most of the open source organisations o n the internet are no associations but foundations. I guess this is to d efend their identity, as an association mostly has open membership, and many associations fall into oblivion after a period of time. Foundations are normally founded by people with strong ideas, who then elect their heirs, something which can't be done in an association structure!
Reply to this message Well as MoFO is a foundation, and foundation are non-democratic by nature ! The most ideal organisation form if you want to avoid people to get a say in your business, but remain a "social face". With no offense to MoF o or many other foundations, b...
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