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Mozilla Foundation

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Image:Mozilla Foundation logo.png right|Mozilla Foundation logo The '''Mozilla Foundation''' is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property. It owns a tax taxable subsidiary called the Mozilla Corporation, which employs several Mozilla developers and coordinates releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. The Mozilla Foundation is based in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California Mountain View, California. The Mozilla Foundation describes itself as ''"a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet"''.

History
The Mozilla Foundation was launched on July 15, 2003 as America Online (AOL) drastically scaled back its involvement with Mozilla, laying off or reassigning most of the Netscape Communications Corporation Netscape browser developers and announcing that it would no longer finance the day-to-day running of the project. The Mozilla Foundation essentially replaces mozilla.org (also known as the Mozilla Organization), a much looser and more informal group that was established as an autonomous division of Netscape in 1998. AOL assisted in the initial creation of the Mozilla Foundation, transferring hardware and intellectual property to the organization and employing a three-person team for the first three months of its existence to help with the transition. AOL promised to donate $2 million to the foundation over two years.

Mozilla Corporation
''Main article: Mozilla Corporation On August 3, 2005, the Mozilla Foundation launched a wholly-owned subsidiary called the Mozilla Corporation to continue the development and delivery of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. The Mozilla Corporation takes responsibility for software release release planning, marketing and a range of software distribution distribution-related activities. It also handles relationships with businesses, many of which generate income. Unlike the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation is a taxable entity, which gives it much greater freedom in the revenue and business activities it can pursue.

Operations
Initially, the remit of the Mozilla Foundation grew to become much wider than that of mozilla.org, with the organization taking on many tasks that were traditionally left to Netscape and other vendors of Mozilla technology. As part of a wider move to target end-users, the foundation made deals with commercial companies to sell CDs containing Mozilla software and provide telephone support. In both cases, the group chose the same suppliers as Netscape for these services. The Mozilla Foundation also became more assertive over its intellectual property, with policies put in place for the use of Mozilla trademarks and logos. New projects such as marketing were also launched. With the formation of the Mozilla Corporation, the Mozilla Foundation delegated all their development and business-related activities to the new subsidiary. The Mozilla Foundation now focuses solely on governance and policy issues, though it also continues to oversee the projects that have not been "productized", such as Camino and SeaMonkey. The Mozilla Foundation owns the Mozilla trademarks and other intellectual property, which it licenses to the Mozilla Corporation. It also controls the Mozilla source code repository and decides who is allowed to check code in.

Funding
The Mozilla Foundation accepts donations as a source of funding. As well as AOL's initial $2 million donation, Mitch Kapor gave $300,000 to the organization at its launch. The group has tax-exempt status under IRC 501(c)3 of the US tax code, though the Mozilla Corporation subsidiary is taxable. The foundation has also stroked a deal with Google to include Google search in its Firefox browser and send to it search referrals; Google site has also been made the default home page of Firefox. The amount of money brought by this sponsoring has not been officially disclosed.

People
The Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors has five members: *Mitch Kapor (Chair) *Mitchell Baker *Brian Behlendorf *Brendan Eich *Joi Ito Joichi Ito 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 this time. The foundation also has a number of paid employees, who focus on project and policy issues: *Frank Hecker — Director of Public Policy *Gervase Markham (programmer) Gervase Markham *Zak Greant The Mozilla Corporation also has a number of employees, many of whom worked for the foundation before the establishment of the corporation. The committee that runs the Mozilla Foundation is known as mozilla.org staff and is composed of a mixture of foundation employees and volunteers.

References
*{{cite web | title=Mozilla Foundation Forms New Organization to Further the Creation of Free, Open Source Internet Software, Including the Award-Winning Mozilla Firefox Browser | work=Mozilla Press Center | url=http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2005-08-03.html | accessdate=August 3 | accessyear=2005}}

See also
*List of Mozilla Foundation products *Mozilla Corporation

External links

- Mozilla Foundation
- 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
- Trademarks and Licenses Policy
- Donate to the Mozilla Foundation
- mozilla.org Staff Members
- mozilla.org Staff Meeting Minutes Category:Mozilla Category:Free and Open Source software Foundations Category:Non-profit organizations Category:Nonprofit Technology ar:Ù…Ø¤Ø³Ø³Ø© Ù…ÙˆØ²ÙŠÙ„Ø§ cs:Mozilla Foundation de:Mozilla Foundation es:FundaciÃ³n Mozilla fr:Fondation Mozilla ko:ëª¨ì§ˆë?¼ ìž¬ë‹¨ it:Mozilla Foundation he:×§×¨×Ÿ ×ž×•×–×™×œ×” nl:Mozilla Foundation ja:Mozilla.org pl:Fundacja Mozilla pt:Mozilla Foundation sv:Mozilla Foundation th:à¸¡à¸¹à¸¥à¸™à¸´à¸˜à¸´à¸¡à¸à¸‹à¸´à¸¥à¸¥à¸²

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