Mozilla Hatches For-Profit Subsidiary

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation has launched Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit subsidiary to capitalize on the success of Firefox and Thunderbird.

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation, makers of open-source Internet applications including the Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird news and email client, have announced the creation of a fully-owned, for-profit subsidiary called the Mozilla Corporation. All 36 employees of the Mozilla Foundation have been transferred to the new Corporation, and Mitch Baker will take on the title of president for the new Mozilla Corp. (It’s unclear as of this writing whether the new title represents a promotion from Baker’s previous role as "chief lizard wrangler.")

While the Mozilla Corporation stresses it will not conduct itself "like a typical commercial entity," the reorganization is clearly intended to cash in on the growing popularity of the open-source Firefox Web browser, which recently celebrated having been downloaded more than 75 million times and is estimated to account for approximately 10 percent of today’s Web browser usage.

Mozilla Corporation says Firefox and Thunderbird will remain free, and that revenues raised by the corporation will be poured into the development of Mozilla open-source technologies. The non-profit Mozilla Foundation will continue to be responsible for policies, maintaining the open source project, and overall project coordination, while the Mozilla Corporation will focus on "productizing" various Mozilla technologies and raising revenue via marketing, sponsorships, and distribution.