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Mozilla

Mozilla is a global community that believes in the power of technology to enrich people’s lives.   They are truly in business to make the internet better for everyone.   Their mission is to encourage choice, innovation, and opportunity online.   They promote the concept of an open source model that belongs to everyone. They work to better the internet for all, free of charge.

      In 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation released the source code for their web browser Netscape Communicator. They decided to release the source code in order to give programmers everywhere a chance to view the code, make changes to it, and Netscape could implement these edits later. The open source development project was named Mozilla. To encourage more users to build on the source code for the browser, Mozilla Organization was formed. The organization received feedback on the open-source and found that it was much too complicated for users to learn and actually contribute to. Therefore, Mozilla Organization rewrote the code and the new layout engine was named Gecko. The simpler design was easier to learn and this led to an increase in contributions. However, Mozilla was intended to be used simply for testing purposes to improve Netscape Navigator.   Netscape repackaged Mozilla versions into Netscape Navigator 6 and 7.

      AOL acquired Netscape and eventually ceased development of the browser causing Mozilla to break away from the company. As a result, in 2003, Mozilla Foundation was formed and AOL donated $2 million to get it started. In 2005, Mozilla Corporation was founded as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. The corporation would handle the revenue related activities and coordinate the development of the browser, while the foundation would concentrate on policy issues. The team developed and released Firefox 1.0 in 1998. The browser was met with outstanding success, receiving many positive reviews. As a testament to this success, in the first month the...