Mozilla.org, the organization that coordinates Mozilla open source development, today announced the launch of a new foundation that will continue to promote the development, distribution and adoption of the award-winning Mozilla standards-based web applications and core technologies, including the Gecko browser layout engine. The Mozilla Foundation will continue and expand on the efforts of mozilla.org, the group managing the daily operations of the Mozilla project since its inception.
Ok, AOL announced today that their breaking off Mozilla into it's own foundation called The Mozilla Foundation. They're providing $2 million in funding over the next 2 years, but that's not really that much money (but should last them get them through 2 years if they're budget conscious.) As Robi's often stated, open source really needs financial backing in order for projects to prosper—with AOL backing out financially, will anyone else step in? If not, is this the beginning of the end for Mozilla? With Microsoft claiming their discontinuing Internet Explorer as a standalone product and this news, there hasn't been much good news in the browser market over the past 2 months.
Mozilla's a pretty strong product right now—at least it's getting better and better with each release—so I'm sure if things are handled correctly over the next 2 years it won't go away. I still am complexed on why AOL never tried to leverage this product. I always assumed they were putting money in this project to use it as the basis for their AOL Software, but that obviously isn't the direction they chose to go with it. I'm really curious as to why they never leverage Mozilla into their software.
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