Mozilla Hatches For-Profit Subsidiary

By Geoff Duncan August 3, 2005

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.

Editors' Recommendations

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

Firefox gets a massive design overhaul, and it’s gorgeous

Mozilla Firefox opened on a desktop.

Mozilla's Firefox web browser has gotten a new look. Now rolling out in version 89 is a massive redesign, putting simplified design, cleaner menus, and tab pages front and center.

The biggest change to Firefox in years, Mozilla believes these visual updates will "get you where you want to go even faster." That's because the core experiences of the browser have all been updated so that things are easier to use --- from the toolbar, streamlined menus, updated prompts, and a new floating tabs system.

Computing

Your digital fingerprint is tracked everywhere online. Brave wants to change that

6 important tech tasks you should get over with while social distancing chores computer privacy getty

We have more tools to secure our identity online than ever before. You can ban cookies -- the little pieces of information websites deposit in our browsers to identify us -- block invasive trackers from tailing our machines, switch to incognito mode, opt out of cross-app tracking with Apple’s latest iOS update, or even go as far as to surf the web only through highly encrypted virtual private networks.

But there’s a tracking method that can still slip past these defenses and it’s growing in popularity: Fingerprinting.
The anatomy of a fingerprint
What makes fingerprinting so elusive and difficult to defend against is the fact that the data it exploits is essential to the web’s foundational functions.

Computing

Huge demand for Nvidia RTX 3000 cards led scalpers to $15.2 million in profit

nvidia amd gpu shortage 2021 rtx 3080 07

The ongoing GPU shortage has created a gray market boom for scalpers, who have collectively raked in more than $15.2 million in profit, according to the latest analysis. By analyzing sales on eBay and StockX, data engineer Michael Driscoll estimated that scalpers have sold approximately 50,000 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000 series cards for a total of more than $61.5 million in sales.

Driscoll reported that the cards generating the most sales volume on eBay were the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 flagship and the midrange RTX 3070 -- with a combined volume of 25,750 units sold -- but the pricey $1,499 RTX 3090 wasn't too far behind at 7,775 units. Similarly, on StockX, the top card sold was the RTX 3070, followed closely by the 3080. In total, Driscoll tracked 49,680 cards that have been sold.