2009/4/19 Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name:
From my own (admittedly limited) knowledge of the history of the Mozilla project, I don't think the above is a correct description. Netscape (presumably the "for-profit company" you're talking about here) spun off the Mozilla Foundation as a nonprofit entity way back when they first open-sourced what was originally the partly-completed Netscape 5 version of their browser.
No, they started using "mozilla.org" as a domain name, but it wasn't a nonprofit until AOL dumped it in 2003 and supplied $2m for them to form the Mozilla Foundation.
Development then proceeded as an independent open-source project with both volunteers and Netscape employees doing it as a side project, first to try to finish "Netscape 5", then to scrap that and rewrite the rendering engine as "Gecko" and make it part of a new "Mozilla suite".
No, Netscape heavily directed the development. Being a good independent developer was a good way to get hired by Netscape, too.
- d.