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Mon Jan 19 21:31:31 UTC 2009


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.  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".  Ultimately, the 
Mozilla suite was released by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, and 
Netscape also made it the basis for its own Netscape 6 version (they 
skipped Netscape 5 for marketing reasons, though the "5.0" is stuck 
apparently permanently in the user agent string, while M$IE has *its* 
user agent string stuck permanently at 4.0, because everybody's 
afraid to change it due to ignorant browser-sniffing sites... but I 
digress).

Then, later on, a side project spun off of Mozilla to create a 
"leaner, cleaner" browser without all the application-suite stuff; 
this was first called Phoenix, then Firebird, then (after name 
conflicts with both of those names) Firefox.  At some point the 
Mozilla foundation (which pre-existed Firefox) decided to make this 
the primary browser of their project, so that's the point where a 
"side project" became the "main project" for them.  But that's within 
the context of a nonprofit operation.

Still later, the Mozilla Foundation decided to launch a wholly-owned, 
for-profit Mozilla Corporation that's in charge of actually releasing 
and marketing products based on what is developed by the project, and 
trying to make money on it to fund the project.

-- 
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