

The State of Mozilla - atularora
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/annualreport/2009/index.html

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Encosia
This stood out to me in the sustainability document:

> As noted last year, the IRS has opened an audit of the Mozilla Foundation.
> We do not yet have a good feel for how long this process will take or the
> overall scope of what will be involved.

With so much flagrant fraud and evasion dangled in front of our faces every
day in the news, it's great to know this is how the IRS is allocating its
resources.

~~~
tmiller
I remember hearing that the structure they have, where a for-profit company
(Mozilla Co) is owned by a non-profit (Mozilla Foundation) is highly unusual,
which of course is going to attract scrutiny.

~~~
celticjames
I don't think that's the issue. I think it is more of a case of whether or not
the corporation and the foundation really are two separate organizations.
Until the new director of the foundation arrived (Mark Surman), the foundation
didn't really appear to do anything. To the IRS, this may have looked like the
foundation was only a tax shelter for the corporation and not a real thing.

Now there's all this Drumbeat Festival stuff, etc.. coming out the foundation.
Clearly they are trying to position themselves as a non-profit that advocates
for the open web rather than just a company that gives away a browser. Owning
a corporation that gives away a browser is just part of that cause. Hopefully
that's how the IRS sees it.

Sadly, I don't think a lot of the foundation sponsored stuff really ever links
up with anything happening on the corporate side. At least from the outside,
it still looks like the corporation wags the foundation and not the other way
around.

Edit: Yes, the foundation does own the corporation.

~~~
techno-fitness
Spot on. For added weirdness, they've split the parts of the child company
into another one called Mozilla Messaging that gives away Thunderbird.

I definitely agree that the corporation appears to wear the pants in the
relationship, but there is still a lot of link up that is organized by the
foundation, especially with the Mozilla developer network stuff.

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sudonim
Like so many people I know, I've ditched Firefox in the past few months for
Chrome. I loved Mozilla Firefox when it came out but the fast couple of
versions they seem to have lost the plot.

I looked in "A competetive landscape" for some insight on how they would seek
to be the best browser again.

[http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/annualreport/2009/a-compet...](http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/annualreport/2009/a-competitive-
world.html)

But, all I see is horn-tooting. Where's the Mozilla I fell in love with?

~~~
d0m
I think that what is so great about chrome is the lack of useless feature and
focus on the core ones (speed to name only this one). Mozilla, by contrast,
seems to say Yes to everything and by any means become really slow. On my mac,
I need to test on both browser and the speed difference between those browsers
is phenomenal. Seriously, if firebug was on chrome, I wouldn't need firefox
anymore. (I'm a bit sad about that)

~~~
paulirish
> Seriously, if firebug was on chrome, I wouldn't need firefox anymore.

I'm working with the Chrome Dev Tools team to make them even better. Would
love to hear more from you on what needs to happen. :)

~~~
buerkle
Firebug has the option to show XHRs inline with the console. Also, in chrome
console.dir prints the object collapsed. I find it annoying to have to expand
the object in the console when clearly I want to see the object's properties.

~~~
paulirish
Good call on auto-opening those objects-- I'll file that with the team. You
can right-click in the console to turn on XHR logging.

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briandon
The purple, blue and green-suited mascots in the foreground of the photo on
the linked page are neat-looking.

Photo: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/gen/4784616521/>

More photos featuring the same characters from the event:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/fjoerfoks/5142119185/>

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/fjoerfoks/5142111909/>

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/fjoerfoks/5142708312/>

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/fjoerfoks/5142103071/>

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/fjoerfoks/5142096079/>

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matthew-wegner
It's fascinating that "underdog" is such a big part of their identity. Don't
they make $80+ million a year in revenue?

~~~
mbrubeck
Let's look at the top competitors in the browser market, by revenue:

Apple: $65.2 billion/year

Microsoft: $62.5 billion/year

Google: $23.7 billion/year

Mozilla: $0.1 billion/year

Mozilla's revenue might seem high out of context, but we certainly are not
going to win any browser wars by outspending this competition.

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juddlyon
I was curious where their company pic was taken. It's Whistler, British
Columbia. Looks gorgeous.

