Linked by Rahul on Thu 20th Nov 2008 03:17 UTC
Thread beginning with comment 337931
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
" Mozilla are a charity, not a business.
Mozilla Corporation is a 100+ employee, $67 million per year *business* which reinvests an unspecified portion of its profits back into Mozilla Foundation. Nominally a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, it is essentially a bubble within the Foundation which can be as corporate and profit-seeking as it likes, loop-holing through the restrictions of the Foundation's nonprofit status. Many people do not realize this since Mozilla puts on its "Foundation" face when that suits its purposes, and its "Corporation" face when it doesn't. I agree that when a Webkit-based browser overtakes them their stated goals will be furthered. And I guarantee that the Mozilla Corp management team will be in an absolute tizzy when it happens. I, on the other hand, will be delighted to see true competition come to the Free web browser market for the first time. " Where does Mozilla's money go, other than back to pay its employess and re-invest in development and research?
Do you imagine they are hiding it under a matress somewhere? Or perhaps you think some individuals at the top are siphoning it off somehow ... which is a pretty serious insinuation to make really.
As for trends, well according to one source, these are the trends:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Firefox has closed to within a whisker of IE6 + IE7.
IE6 is in a long, slow decline.
IE7 increases do not make up for IE6 falls.
Chrome and Safari have about 3% each, just ahead of Opera.
Non-IE browsers between them have overtaken IE.
...
I can't really see a case to be made where Firefox & Gecko aren't by far the most serious competition for IE.
Where does Mozilla's money go, other than back to pay its employess
Pay who, and how much?
Or perhaps you think some individuals at the top are siphoning it off somehow ... which is a pretty serious insinuation to make really.
You said that, not me. I merely point out that your "Mozilla is a charity" viewpoint misses the big picture. There's $70 million flowing annually, getting divvied up, paid, allocated, spent, all sans 501c restrictions.
I do think it deserves more community scrutiny than it gets. And I do think that it could benefit from another strong FOSS competitor, as KDE and Gnome benefit from each other, and as Debian has benefited from having another strong distro appear in their camp.
Agreed on current market shares, but recommend that we revisit the issue in a year. I fully expect a less worrisome, less lopsided, and more vibrant FOSS browser market to emerge by then.
Edited 2008-11-21 01:40 UTC






Member since:
2005-07-24
Mozilla Corporation is a 100+ employee, $67 million per year *business* which reinvests an unspecified portion of its profits back into Mozilla Foundation. Nominally a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, it is essentially a bubble within the Foundation which can be as corporate and profit-seeking as it likes, loop-holing through the restrictions of the Foundation's nonprofit status. Many people do not realize this since Mozilla puts on its "Foundation" face when that suits its purposes, and its "Corporation" face when it doesn't.
I agree that when a Webkit-based browser overtakes them their stated goals will be furthered. And I guarantee that the Mozilla Corp management team will be in an absolute tizzy when it happens.
I, on the other hand, will be delighted to see true competition come to the Free web browser market for the first time.
Edited 2008-11-21 00:10 UTC