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> If it doesn't get it from the users (like it never was) But early Mozilla was supported by its users, through donations of both code and money. Volunteers al

by whyenot 12y ago

> If it doesn't get it from the users (like it never was) But early Mozilla was supported by its users, through donations of both code and money. Volunteers also spearheaded the hugely successful "get Firefox" campaign. Thanks to Google money, Mozilla can now afford to pay top dollar for engineers and prime office space on the Embarcaderro. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I sometimes wonder if it may have made Mozilla a less focused and user-centric organization than it used to be.

makmanalp 12y ago
I don't think the donations could support mozilla today. I mean look at Wikipedia: how many people it employs, how many pageviews it gets, how drastic its donation drives are and it's not doing amazingly well financially. And "get firefox" is part of the reasons the google thing worked - it increased the userbase drastically. But it never was a viable way to make money.
zz1 12y ago
I wonder about it too, but I don't think that's the case. I mean, even their offices (like the new one, in Paris) are not just a luxury show off, but they're meant and actually used to attract new volunteers, host events to foster the web, get media attention…
wodenokoto 12y ago
No, the Mozilla Organization was kept alive by Netscape, with some other major corporation sponsoring full-time engineers. When Netscape bailed completely and the Mozilla Foundation was founded on a grant from Netscape, they started having to find their own revenue sources. And they did with Google. The Mozilla Corporation was founded in 2005 because Mozilla was generating so much cash (mainly from Google search), that they got in trouble with the IRS. That was only 2 years after the Mozilla Foundation was created! The bulk of their revenue has always been advertisement. As for code, they still very much rely on the open source model for new code.
wodenokoto 12y ago
No, the Mozilla Organization was kept alive by Netscape, with some other major corporation sponsoring full-time engineers. When Netscape bailed completely and the Mozilla Foundation was founded on a grant from Netscape, they started having to find their own revenue sources. And they did with Google. The Mozilla Corporation was founded in 2005 because Mozilla was generating so much cash (mainly from Google search), that they got in trouble with the IRS. That was only 2 years after the Mozilla Foundation was created! The bulk of their revenue has always been advertisement. As for code, they still very much rely on the open source model for new code.

by whyenot 12y ago

makmanalp 12y ago

I don't think the donations could support mozilla today. I mean look at Wikipedia: how many people it employs, how many pageviews it gets, how drastic its donation drives are and it's not doing amazingly well financially. And "get firefox" is part of the reasons the google thing worked - it increased the userbase drastically. But it never was a viable way to make money.

zz1 12y ago

I wonder about it too, but I don't think that's the case. I mean, even their offices (like the new one, in Paris) are not just a luxury show off, but they're meant and actually used to attract new volunteers, host events to foster the web, get media attention…

wodenokoto 12y ago

No, the Mozilla Organization was kept alive by Netscape, with some other major corporation sponsoring full-time engineers. When Netscape bailed completely and the Mozilla Foundation was founded on a grant from Netscape, they started having to find their own revenue sources. And they did with Google. The Mozilla Corporation was founded in 2005 because Mozilla was generating so much cash (mainly from Google search), that they got in trouble with the IRS. That was only 2 years after the Mozilla Foundation was created! The bulk of their revenue has always been advertisement. As for code, they still very much rely on the open source model for new code.

wodenokoto 12y ago