Mozilla
Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions.[1] The community is supported institutionally by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.[2]
This article is about the Mozilla community. For the non-profit organization, see Mozilla Foundation. For the corporation, see Mozilla Corporation. For the mascot used by Netscape and the Mozilla community, see Mozilla (mascot).Industry
March 31, 1998
Netscape Communications Corporation
Mozilla's current products include the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client (now through a subsidiary), the Bugzilla bug tracking system, the Gecko layout engine, and the Pocket "read-it-later-online" service.[3]
Venture Incubation[edit]
Mozilla Ventures[edit]
On November 2, 2022, at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal[32] and simultaneously online, Mozilla announced the early 2023 launch of Mozilla Ventures, a venture capital and product incubation facility out of Mozilla for independent start-ups, seed to Series A which qualify under the ethos of the Mozilla Manifesto, with a starting fund of $35 million. Its founding Managing Partner is Mohamed Nanabhay who told Entrepreneur India the purpose is "to create an ecosystem of entrepreneurs from across the world who are building companies that create a better internet".[33]
Mozilla Foundation President and Executive Director Mark Surman named the first 3 investment recipients in the Mozilla Ventures mode, in discussions before Mozilla Ventures was announced, as Secure AI Labs, Block Party and HeyLogin.[34]
Type of site
Controversies[edit]
Eich CEO promotion[edit]
In 2008, Brendan Eich donated US$1,000 in support of California's Proposition 8,[103] a California ballot proposition and state constitutional amendment in opposition to same-sex marriage.[104] Eich's donation eventually became public knowledge in 2012, while he was Mozilla's chief technical officer, leading to angry responses on Twitter—including the use of the hashtag "#wontworkwithbigots".[105]
Controversy later re-emerged in 2014, following the announcement of Eich's appointment as CEO of Mozilla. U.S. companies OkCupid and CREDO Mobile notably objected to his appointment, with the former asking its users to boycott the browser,[106] while Credo amassed 50,000 signatures for a petition that called for Eich's resignation.
Due to the controversy, Eich voluntarily stepped down on April 3, 2014,[107] and Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of Mozilla Corporation, posted a statement on the Mozilla blog: "We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality."[108]
Push Notifications for Mozilla Blog without user consent[edit]
In July 2020 Mozilla forced push notifications, an advertisement for its own blog post about Facebook[109] and Mozilla's #StopHateForProfit campaign. These notifications were sent without user consent[110] and faced a backlash by Firefox users.
Mozilla and Meta (Facebook) partnership[edit]
In February 2022, Mozilla and Meta partnered to propose a privacy-preserving advertising technology.[111] This faced a backlash on the internet because Mozilla partnered with the same company they were running a campaign against 2 years ago and given Meta's reputation, Mozilla was criticized for collaborating with them.[112]
Labor law violations[edit]
In December 2023, the National Labor Relations Board filed novel charges against Mozilla for refusing to hire activist and software engineer, Cher Scarlett in 2021 for protected collective action while she was an Apple, Inc. employee. Scarlett founded #AppleToo and ran a wage transparency survey.[113][114]
Looking Glass Add-on[edit]
On December 15, 2017, Mozilla installed a add-on in all Firefox Quantum browsers, titled "Looking Glass," with the description, “MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT THAN YOURS,” after a collaboration of Mozilla and the television show Mr. Robot. Mozilla received some criticism, as the add-on was installed without the user's knowledge or consent. On December 18, Mozilla issued an apology for the installation of the extension, and released the source code of the add-on.[117][118]