Mozilla Goes Independent, AOL Kicks in Big Bucks

July 15, 2003

Mozilla.org announces launch of the Mozilla Foundation. America Online Pledges $2 Million to Help Launch Independent Non-Profit; Industry Leaders Reaffirm Support for Mozilla. Good news for all concerned. This will help keep a valuable project alive, and get AOL out from under something it plainly doesn't believe in anymore. The foundation model is the key thing to note here.

Pioneered by Mitch Kapor with his Open Source Applications Foundation -- he's also putting in $300,000 for this project -- it's one of the only ways to ensure continued innovation in a stagnant desktop-applications arena, or at least the part of the arena that Microsoft has so thoroughly stifled. AOL's financial commitment is also crucial, and deserves applause. Mozilla matters, and now we have a reason to believe it'll last a while longer.

I'll be updating this post as I speak with more folks. My impression is that this is a relatively big deal. Your comments are more than welcome, of course. Thanks to John Paczkowski for the heads-up.

Comments
The Mozilla foundation sounds like a terrific idea but I wonder what will happen to the programmers currently employed by AOL who work more or less full-time on the project--will AOL still permit this? If not $2M is not much to replace that effort.

Posted by: BillSaysThis on July 15, 2003 10:42 AM

Note a couple of other precedents here - for better or worse. The GNOME Foundation (http://foundation.gnome.org/) and the KDE League (http://www.kdeleague.org/) have both attempted to create a non-profit home where corporations can contribute to the development of free software on the desktop. Success is somewhat ambiguous.

Posted by: John Fleck on July 15, 2003 10:47 AM

The change may incurr in an initial slowdown, which may sadly delay the new Firebird browser.

"(...) we have a reason to believe it'll last a while longer." A while longer? I choose to believe it will last forever! Where do I donate? Posted by: Wanderley on July 15, 2003 11:53 AM

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