Yesterday we commented the post in which the president of Mozilla Corp and the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Barker, announced the restructuring of the project to adapt to the new post-Covid reality. Shortly after the announcement, more details were known about how that restructuring would be implemented.
The restructuring of Mozilla. These are the changes
According to document, the objective sought with the changes is the following:
The changes we are making today are focused on creating an organization that is better equipped to provide products and services that fulfill our mission and aim to make Mozilla Corporation sustainable, long-term, in the COVID eras. and post-COVID. We are not just "cutting back." We are not approaching this as a stopgap solution or a way to spend the next few months. We seek what the Mozilla Corporation needs to do to be sustainable and have a long-term impact
The new course of action will be as follows:
Firefox will focus on users
Mozilla will search for the browser's share of the market grewto. To achieve this, it will try to offer differentiated user experiences. In order not to disperse efforts and resources, it will reduce them in some areas such as development tools, internal tools and the development of platform features. As for products related to privacy and security, they will be transferred to the New Products and Operations division.
Development of new products
The new products division will be independent from Firefox and will seek to develop new products faster and find new sources of revenue.. In principle, it will focus on Pocket, Hubs, VPN, Web Assembly and security and privacy products. A new Design and UX team will be created for these products and a new Applied Machine Learning team will help to include better features.
Centralization of support functions
Mozilla will centralize marketing activities to support both new products and Firefox. What's more, engineering operations will be combined with information technology operationsn and the functions of Business Development, Finance, Information Technology and Human Resources will be optimized.
Strengthen the community
It will seek to strengthen ties with those who collaborate with Mozilla and i projectsIncorporate new collaborations with involved communities in making a better Internet in areas such as law and the creation of new products.
Differences between the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation
Throughout this article we refer to both the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation. To avoid confusion it is good to clarify the differences.
Mozilla was born as a global community of people united by the goal of creating a better Internet creating free and open source products and technologies to enhance the online experience for people everywhere.
To achieve these objectives, two organizations were created; the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and its business arm, the Mozilla Corporation. In that sense, Mozilla is a hybrid organization, combining non-profit and market-based strategies to ensure that the Internet remains a shared public resource.
The Mozilla Foundation is a California-based non-profit organization and exempt from federal taxes according to the laws of the United States. The Foundation supports the existing Mozilla community and oversees its governance structure. It is also actively seeking new ways for people around the world to recognize and manage the Internet as a critical public resource.
The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and works with the community to develop software that promotes community principles. This includes the Firefox browser.
No one who calls himself a human being can say that he is happy about a decision that involves putting people out of work. I'd rather say that I'm hopeful.
Like many other communities built around open source projects, Mozilla was taken over by people who have another agenda and do not see open source as an end, he sees it as a means to achieve his own worldview. I believe that the crisis caused by the Covid and the subsequent economic crisis resulting from the quarantine, They forced those in charge of the Foundation to take a reality check and remember what the important objectives are.
Hello!! All this seems disturbing to me, we cannot allow technological corporations that are interested in free software to eat our toast, we must support Mozilla who has been with us for many years and give them the facilities they need, the technology policy is in abundance, no it looks nothing, if mozilla needs funds for the issue of covid you have to support them, mozilla free software was a pioneer in many aspects of web browsing, the network should be free and free and not censored and corporatized by corporatist people who are looking for the own benefit without taking into account our community, do not deceive us, alert !!!.
Free software is a free community, not a microsoft.
Apart from taking advantage of the Covid as an excuse to restructure, the long-term impact sounds good, and a restructuring is indicative that things are not stopped from the inside.
Now that I don't quite understand how to cut back on internal development tools, it's good for a software corporation whose latest innovation is based on re-encoding Firefox in Rust.
This is more like Google's strategy: buy and integrate.
By the way, it is not read to you in Edge, it is a pity not to be able to read when we are in Windows.
I have a question, since it is Firefox from Mozilla Corporation, the user data is no longer private?
This is confusing to my poor understanding.
No. Mozilla Corporation is a bureaucratic device so that the Mozilla Foundation can do certain things that a non-profit organization is not allowed under US law.
The data remains private.