Mozilla Foundation Gives $100,000 Grant

The makers of the open-source TV platform Democracy received the grant for their shared ideals.

In an effort to promote the principles laid out in the Mozilla Manifesto, the Mozilla Board recently gave a $100,000 grant to the Participatory Culture Foundation, the makers of a video player called Democracy. The decision was made at the board’s last meeting and announced on Tuesday on an employee blog.

“Mozilla decided to give support to PCF after the Moz board was approached by them and was asked for some level of meaningful support,” Seth Bindernagel wrote. The support was provided because of the open-source vision PCF shares, their use of Mozilla technology, and the potential impact of the project for users.

Democracy is an Internet television platform, similar to Joost, but with an open-source, non-profit slant. Users can use it watch a variety of video formats, get internet TV shows, download YouTube videos, watch free HD content, and it even works as a BitTorrent client.

“I am absolutely thrilled to announce today that we’ve received a grant from Mozilla, creators of Firefox,” Nicholas Reville wrote on the Democracy blog. “Mozilla shares our mission, almost to the letter– they are a non-profit, building open tools that defend and expand the fundamentally democratic nature of the internet.”

Democracy is currently in version 0.9.5.3 and is available as a free download for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.