Mozilla Open Source Innovation

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ICMR Center for Management Research

Open Source Innovation at Mozilla Corporation

This case was written by V. Namratha Prasad, under the direction of Vivek Gupta, ICMR Center for Management Research

(ICMR). It was compiled from published sources, and is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion rather than to

illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation.

2010, ICMR. All rights reserved.

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“…Firefox is only a part of what’s necessary for the Internet to remain open and participatory. Firefox needs to remain strong enough and innovative enough that we’re able to continue to show

the industry that you can give people control or choice in an elegant manner and still be a

professional vendor and that there are revenue opportunities in this.”1

- Mitchell Baker, Chairman and Chief Lizard Wrangler of Mozilla Corporation, in

January 2008.

“Baker and Mozilla are wrestling with new questions about the boundaries between communitiesand the corporation. She’s creating a new management model based on engaging a businessecosystem.”

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- Siobhan O’ Mahony, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School, in February2007.

INTRODUCTION

On January 21, 2010, Mozilla Corporation (Mozilla) launched the latest version of its popular Web browser – Firefox 3.6. According to the company, when compared to the previous versions, thenew version had several novel features and was faster and more responsive, apart from being re-tooled to work on small devices Over the years, Mozilla had won several awards for itsinnovations including ‘Browser of the Year’ from the Linux community in 2009, AmericanBusiness Award’s ‘Most Innovative Company’ in 2008, and InfoWorld’s ‘Best of Open SourceSoftware’ Award in 2008.

Founded in 2005, the US-based Mozilla was the for-profit subsidiary of the non-profit organization – Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla was considered to be a major force in the field of open sourceinnovation. The company provided the source code of its software and invited developercommunities consisting of both individuals and large companies to develop new functionalitiesand software products. It also recruited the services of the developer community to test its

products, detect bugs, and offer areas of improvement.

Analysts credited Mitchell Baker (Baker), the Chairman of Mozilla, with laying the ground rules

for a complex organization like Mozilla, wherein most of the projects were extensively dependenton the outsiders. Baker helped define a functional model that took into account the diverse ideas,needs, and opinions of the community, before making strategic decisions and afterward inexecuting projects. In addition, she designed process frameworks and maintained the financialviability of the projects.

Over the years, Mozilla launched several software products. The Firefox browser, which was firstlaunched in late 2004, emerged as its most successful product. Through Firefox, the companyintroduced several innovative features in browsing, like the ability to accept add-oncustomizations, tabbed browsing, pop-up ad blocking, etc. Most analysts observed that when

1 Lenny T. Mendonca and Robert Sutton, “Succeeding at Open-Source Innovation: An Interview withMozilla’s Mitchell Baker,” www.ciozone.com, 2008.

2 David H. Freedman, “Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox,” www.inc.com, February 01, 2007.


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compared to the dominant Web browser – Microsoft Corporation’s (Microsoft)3 Internet Explorer(IE) – Firefox offered higher security against spyware, malware, and hacking. David Michaux,CEO of ScanIT4, said, “…around 98% of the Internet Explorer users were exposed to onlinethreats during 2004; 200 days out of the whole 2004 (54% of last year) was dominated by

activities specific to this worm or virus which exploited browser’s vulnerabilities. As acomparison, Firefox was only left unprotected to known vulnerabilities for 56 days last year; theopen-source online browsing solution seems to rule.”

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Instead of traditional advertising, Mozilla used the community to promote and market the software products it developed. Its marketing initiatives included asking community members to identify blogs and websites that would be ready to carry the ‘Download Firefox’ button, inviting Firefoxusers to submit videos that talked about the features of Firefox that Mozilla later used to promotethe browser, and using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. to create a buzz aboutFirefox.

As of early 2010, Firefox usage was growing rapidly and it was the second most used browser inthe world. However, the company was expected to face major challenges in increasing its browser

usage because of the competition it faced from a slew of new browsers like Chrome from GoogleInc. (Google)6 and Safari from Apple Inc. (Apple)7. Mozilla was looking for opportunities to createnew revenue streams by including third-party plug-ins to the browser and by adapting Firefox formobile phones. Moreover, Mozilla planned to continue introducing other innovations using opensource software.

BACKGROUND NOTE

The Netscape Navigator Internet browser, introduced in 1994 by Netscape Communications(Netscape)8, was the most widely used browser between 1995 and 1998. However, by the late1990s, it lost its position to Microsoft’s IE. Analysts opined that the major reason for IE’s

popularity was that it came bundled with the Windows Operating System. This particular action of

Microsoft was later deemed by the US Justice Department as an illegal monopolistic business practice.

In 1998, in a bid to salvage its falling market position and compete against Microsoft, Netscapemade the Communicator – a suite of e-mail and other programs that also contained an embedded

Navigator browser – an ‘open-source’ product, wherein the programming code was accessible to

3 Microsoft founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen is one of the largest multinational companies thatdeveloped, manufactured, licensed and supported a wide range of software products for computingdevices. The IE was introduced by the company in 1995 and by 2010; it had launched eight versions ofthe popular web browser.

4 ScanIT is a US-based IT consultancy company that offers specialized services in network security.Through a range of penetration tests, vulnerability assessments and web application audits, it measures thevulnerability of a company’s IT security systems.

5 “FireFox Better than IE?” http://news.softpedia.com, March 23, 2005.6 Google, founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was the world’s largest Internet search company

as of 2010. It hosted and offered a number of Internet-based services and products.7 Apple, founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, is a US-based multinational

company that designs and manufactures consumer electronics, computer software, and commercialservers.

8 The flagship product of Netscape, founded in 1994 in the US, was the Navigator web browser that had ausage share of 90% in the mid-1990s. The prominent technologies developed by the company were theSecure Sockets Layer Protocol (SSL) for securing online communication and JavaScript, a language forclient-side scripting of web pages.


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all. In February 1998, Netscape created the Mozilla9 Organization (Mozilla Org) – an independententity made up of a few Netscape employees – to control the open source code and ensure that the

products created were outside the control of the company. The entire interaction of Mozilla Orgwith the developer community happened through the website, Mozilla.org.

Baker, a lawyer, who joined Netscape in 1994, was given the task of developing a software licensefor Mozilla Org that would allow people to make changes to the source code, without giving themthe authority to claim it as a proprietary product. Over a period of time, Baker’s ability to handlethe highly complex open source community and skill at finding a common ideology among theconflicting software development needs, earned her the position of head of Mozilla Org.

In 1999, Netscape was acquired by AOL Inc.10 (AOL) for US$ 4.2 billion. With the intention ofcutting down on the expenses in Mozilla Org, AOL laid off Baker. However, Baker, who had bythen become a well-known person in the open-source community, chose to remain as an unpaidvolunteer at Mozilla Org. After a year, a non-profit organization called Open Source ApplicationsFoundation11 – in a bid to support Baker’s contribution to Mozilla Org – restored a part of herformer salary.

In 2002, Mozilla Org released its first product called Mozilla 1.0 – a set of Internet applicationswith programs for e-mail, online chat, bulletin boards, etc. and an embedded Web browser.However, Mozilla 1.0 failed to make an impact and analysts observed that this was because it didnot offer any new functionality. They pointed out that users did not feel any need for Mozilla 1.0,as IE was the dominant browser and there were several other simple programs for email, etc.

However, Mozilla Org soon realized that not everything was right with IE and users had severalissues with the browser’s security. It discovered that Microsoft’s desire to make the IE work with avariety of Web applications had led to its providing the IE with ActiveX controls or VB script thatallowed certain software to be downloaded and installed onto a user’s system without theirknowledge. This meant that while using IE, a user’s software was vulnerable to attacks fromhackers, spammers, and others causing them to encounter viruses, continual pop-up windows,

malware, and spyware. Baker believed that by developing and offering a product that would provide users with a safe browsing experience, Mozilla Org would be able to break IE’shegemony.

At that time, two software developers – Blake Ross and David Hyatt – had started work ondeveloping a stand-alone browser, independent of the Mozilla 1.0’s suite of applications.Impressed with their work, Mozilla Org decided to concentrate its efforts on developing anindependent browser. In late 2002, it released a browser called Phoenix, which, it said, was simplerand more secure than IE. Phoenix had a central program that only had a few basic features forviewing a website. However, the programmers could write in “extensions” that extended thefunctionality of the Web browser, while users had the option of choosing the features they desiredin the browser. By early 2003, Phoenix began to gain popularity among the tech community.

In May 2003, Mozilla Org faced a major setback when AOL signed a deal with Microsoft to makeIE its default browser for a period of seven years and then laid off all the Netscape programmersworking at Mozilla Org. Baker then began drawing the attention of the computer industry leadersto the pitfalls associated with Microsoft’s domination of Web browsing technology. She pointed

9 The name Mozilla was derived from the term “Mosaic-killer”, wherein ‘Mosaic’ was the first popular web browser that was developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), US.

10 AOL, founded in 1983 as Quantum Computer Services, is a US-based Internet services and mediacompany. It merged with entertainment conglomerate Time Warner in 2001, but was later spun-off as aseparate company in 2009.

11 Open Source Applications Foundation, a non-profit organization, was founded in 2002 by Mitch Kapor,founder of Lotus Software. The mission of the foundation included the creation and adoption of opensource software products.


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out that if IE became the sole Internet browser, Microsoft would be able to determine the technicalstandards for websites, thereby making the Internet inaccessible for users of Linux and other non-Microsoft software.

Baker’s efforts paid off when Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Software12, provided US$ 300,000 to

Mozilla Org, while software companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc., and Red Hat Inc.offered the services of their programmers. In July 2003, goaded by Baker, AOL decided to lessenits involvement with Mozilla Org and consequently set up a non-profit organization called theMozilla Foundation (MF) that was open to donations from all, to aid the development of opensource software products. AOL itself contributed US$ two million to the Foundation, over a two-year period and also provided it with hardware and other intellectual property.

In November 2004, the MF released Firefox 1.0, an advanced version of the Phoenix browser. Dueto trademark and copyright infringement issues13, the Phoenix was renamed as Firebird and thenlater as Firefox (See Exhibit I for various logos used during the development of Firefox). Mostanalysts opined that the Firefox offered quite a large number of add-ons14 and a lower number ofvulnerabilities, when compared to IE.

CHANGE IN FUNCTIONING

In 2005, the MF entered into a deal with Google, after which it installed a Google search box inthe Firefox browser. The search giant agreed to provide the MF with a portion of the ad revenueobtained when a user clicked on a sponsored link that came up with the search results, when usingthe Google search box. Later, the MF signed a similar deal with Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo)15.

While the MF made US$ six million in 2004, the revenue in 2005 was US$ 53 million. It furtherincreased to US$ 70 million in fiscal 2006, which was three times more than the expenses itincurred. The payments from Google accounted for about 85% of the organization’s revenue infiscal 2006. However, some analysts questioned the influence that money would have on the non-

profit objective of the MF.The profit-earning potential of the software products also raised several legal and tax related issuesfor the organization. Several analysts observed that negotiating large deals with multinationalcorporations meant that a particular entity had to have a certain authority and maintain discretion,which was not possible for a non-profit organization. Moreover, in order to gain a favorable taxstatus, non-profits had high public disclosure requirements and limitations on indulging in money-making activities and that placed restrictions on the way organizations like the MF conducted

business.

Therefore, in a bid to conserve the business interests, the MF established a for-profit subsidiarycalled Mozilla Corporation in August 2005. This was expected to make it easier for the new firm,which was a taxable entity, to enter into transactions and maintain secrecy. Consequently, it would

12 Lotus was founded in 1982 by Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs. Its most popular product was the Lotus1-2-3 spreadsheet application. It was purchased by IBM in 1995 for US$ 3.5 billion.

13 The name Phoenix was changed to Firebird because of copyright issues that arose with another computersoftware company, Phoenix Technologies Limited. Later, the name Firebird faced a controversy, when itcame to light that Firebird was the name of an open source relational database management system thatran on GNU/Linux, Windows, and a variety of UNIX platforms.

14 As of March 10, 2010, according to softpedia.com, there were 11,637 Firefox add-ons that includedextensions, themes, language packs, and plug-ins. Mozilla claimed that it had the most number of add-onsamong all browsers. Some of the extensions of the Firefox were ChatZilla (for chatting), SimilarWeb(offered similar sites), and FoxyTunes (controlled external media players).

15 Yahoo, founded in 1995 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, provided a range of Internet services that includedsearch engine, mail, and web portal.


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be in a better position to handle project and policy issues. Baker and her management team weremade a part of Mozilla’s Board of Directors that was responsible to the MF’s Board of Directors.They were asked to manage the development, distribution, sponsorship, and marketing of MozillaFirefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, while the MF continued to manage some projects such as

Camino and SeaMonkey. The MF’s role included the supervision of projects, distributing sourcecode, and forging of relationships between the contributors. While three employees remained withthe MF, the rest of the employees, numbering about 40, were transferred to Mozilla.

According to industry experts, the establishment of a subsidiary was expected to further the MF’sobjective of maintaining choice and innovation on the Internet. According to the website,Mozillazine.com, which reported on Mozilla, “Any profits made by the Mozilla Corporation will

be invested back into the Mozilla project. There will be no shareholders, no stock options will beissued, and no dividends will be paid. The Mozilla Corporation will not be floating on the stockmarket and it will be impossible for any company to take over or buy a stake in the subsidiary. TheMozilla Foundation will continue to own the Mozilla trademarks and other intellectual propertyand will license them to the Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation will also continue to govern thesource code repository and control who is allowed to check in.”16

However, the establishment of a private company by the MF caused some discomfort among a partof the community, who felt the organization was “selling out” to the needs of the mainstream and

business users and that it went against the community principles on which Mozilla was built.Speaking on this issue, Tristan Nitot, a Spokesman for Mozilla in Europe, said, “It’s not the casethat someone is taking Firefox and making a lot of money. The revenue we have made is almostaccidental, it was not initially expected but it happened, so we needed to evolve the legal structureand fiscal structure to reflect this.”

17 Mozilla assured volunteers and the community that they

would not be able to discern any change in the development process at Mozilla.

Over a period of time, Mozilla continued to release new versions of the Firefox (See Table I forversions and release dates of Firefox). The major innovations in browsing introduced through the

Firefox included an embedded pop-up ad blocker, the tabbed browsing option using which userscould open more than one window at a time, an integrated spell-checker, a word finder with noseparate dialog box, and a search function that offered to find a word as it was typed.

Table I

Versions and Release Dates of Firefox

VERSION RELEASE DATE

Firefox 1.5 November 29, 2005

Firefox 2.0 October 24, 2006

Firefox 3.0 June 17, 2008

Firefox 3.5 June 30, 2009

Firefox 3.6 January 21, 2010

Compiled from various sources.

16 “Mozilla Foundation Announces Creation of Mozilla Corporation,” http://web.archive.org, August 03,2005.

17 James Niccolai, “Mozilla Goes Corporate,” www.pcworld.com, August 03, 2005.


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OPEN SOURCE INNOVATION

Analysts opined that one of the major reasons for constant innovation at Mozilla was that it used

open source software and invited community co-operation in developing new products. They

added that as Mozilla developed consumer-oriented products targeted at the mass market – unlike

other entities that worked with open source software – it had to be more market-oriented and bring

products to the market faster.

Mozilla was a complex organization that included paid and volunteer staff members, people from

other companies who were paid to work on the company’s products, and thousands of volunteers.

As of 2009, it had about 250 employees who were geographically dispersed over the world in

places like Toronto, Tokyo, and Paris. However, the major portion of the software product

development at Mozilla was done by over 200,000 (as of 2007) volunteer community members.

Baker said, “I’d say we need both to be successful. If you took away our employees, we’d be a

good open-source project but nothing like a force on the Internet. If you took away the volunteers

and everyone else, we would die.”18

According to Baker, there were certain people with the requisite expertise and specialization,

whom Mozilla was not in a position to hire but they contributed to the software development

process at the company, as it had open source projects. Through the website Mozilla.org, the

company invited volunteers to work on its various projects and it mentioned the capacity in which

they could contribute the requisite expertise and the time required to be devoted (See Exhibit II to

know more about the way volunteers can participate at Mozilla).

Baker said that about 40% of the Firefox code had been developed by the volunteers, apart from

the thousands of add-ons that were regularly submitted for approval to Mozilla. There were also

other applications including MathML, the IRC client ‘Chatzilla,’ the XML parser, the Active X

component, Linux plug-in support, plain-text processing, Java integration, bi-directional languagesupport, and XML-RPC, wherein the volunteers had developed and contributed new features.

Mozilla also had a community of “bug reporters” – volunteers who tested the software products by

downloading the latest prototype, identifying bugs, and giving suggestions on certain aspects that

needed improvement. Mozilla volunteers even offered customer support to the users by writing

support articles for Firefox and by providing support through Web, telephone, IM, and e-mail.

In addition, Mozilla had several spin-off projects and allowed some companies to use Mozilla

technology to develop new software products. Sherman Dickman, Product Management Director

of Mozilla, provided an idea about these interactions that created Mozilla’s value network through

a diagram (See Figure I for more information about Mozilla’s value network ).



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Figure I

Information about Mozilla’s Value Network

Source: “ Firefox Open Innovation Model,” http://quilombo.wordpress.com, March 20, 2008.

Analysts opined that community-driven organizations like Mozilla needed a superior kind ofleadership to provide guidance and motivation to the diverse band of volunteers, to make themwork as a team. They believed that volunteers were not like employees and would not tolerateincompetent and unjust managers and would instead choose to walk away from the project. Theyalso pointed out that the lack of rules and regulations meant that it was difficult to direct the workof the volunteers. Hence, leaders in such organizations needed to adopt a combination of

persuasion and inspiration to get the work done by the volunteers.

Analysts pointed out that Baker, despite not having any programming experience, had skill andexpertise at managing large communities to work cohesively and had proved to be a capable leaderwho had achieved results and maintained financial viability. Commending the way Baker hadmanaged the disparate group of volunteers, Sandeep Krishnamurthy, Associate Professor, BusinessAdministration Program, University of Washington, said, “Just because it’s open source doesn'tmean it’s open door. To get anywhere, you have to win the respect of an elite group of people whodevelop code.”19

19 “A Look at Would-Be Microsoft Killer,” www.rediff.com, March 5, 2007.

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supports

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buildsFire

fox

extends

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support

Web ContentAuthors

ApplicationDevelopers

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promotes FirefoxUsers

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promotes Friends,Family,

Co-workers

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Baker believed that the community deserved to be associated with everything that Mozilla did, as

they did a better job in developing strategy than a group of managers. All the weekly meetings at

Mozilla were open to all, with the date, time, agenda and chat co-ordinates published online. For

the most part, the community decided the direction of a particular project and also determined who

would be given a particular assignment. Mozilla claimed to follow meritocracy, wherein a personwho proved his/her talent and diligence was given the crucial job and was gradually elevated to

leadership position in a project (See Exhibit III to know more about the roles and leadership at

Mozilla).

THE CHALLENGES FACED

However, the participatory model of functioning raised several tricky management issues, like a

long winded decision-making process and a lack of secrecy. Baker pointed out to two major

problems with developing open source software – “stop energy” and “loners”. Stop energy was a

condition in group decision making wherein good ideas failed to materialize, thereby bringing to a

halt the innovation process. On the other hand, loners were a part of the developer community,who forged ahead with their ideas without concern for others, thereby delaying progress and

creating antipathy and divisiveness in the developer community.

In order to overcome these problems, Baker adopted an approach called “layers of the onion.” In

this process, small and specialized groups containing highly motivated members of the developer

community screened ideas and gathered information about promising ones. Afterward, the best

ideas from these groups were refined by comparatively larger groups. Finally, the most promising

ideas were introduced for discussion to the entire community. This approach resulted in a hybrid

organization at Mozilla, where the decision making process was dispersed and transparent. In

addition, it provided a certain level of secrecy and also an opportunity to make quick decisions in

certain scenarios.

Similarly, frameworks were formulated so that people could work on software development

projects in a decentralized manner. For developing the source code of Firefox, an intensely

disciplined development process was designed. A more relaxed process was designed for

experimentation and for developing an extension, localizing the product, or building a new product

(See Exhibit IV to know more about the project development process of a Mozilla Project –

SeaMonkey).

Baker facilitated the continuity of the innovation process by taking measures to minimize

troublesome behavior in the community, giving freedom to programmers to undertake certain

activities, and providing encouragement, whenever needed. She thought that people who were

comfortable with living “life in the fishbowl” and were open to constructive criticism would suit

Mozilla’s particular organizational model. Speaking about the ideal person to work for Mozilla,

she said, “Typically, people whose motivations line up very strongly with either our mission or our

technical vision. Also, people who can handle large amounts of their work being public. People

here are following the bugs; they’re watching each other, watching their progress. They know how

quickly you’re working, and they know if you’re stuck on something. So you have to be able to

live not just your social life in public but your work life as well.”20



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THE MARKETING STRATEGIES

While the management of open source innovation was a crucial issue for Mozilla, marketing the

products developed also proved to be a significant challenge. The entire marketing effort of

Mozilla focused on using the sense of ownership, inherent in the Firefox developer community to

make them undertake measures to promote Firefox.

In late 2004, Asa Dotzler (Dotzler) who served as a liaison between the “bug reporters” and the

programmers at Mozilla, came up with the idea of using the non-technical community to promote

Firefox 1.0. He helped create a website called Spreadfirefox.com that invited membership from

people who were keen to promote Firefox 1.0. Dotzler gave the Spread Firefox members the task

of generating a million Firefox 1.0 downloads within 10 days of its launch. To do this, they were

asked to spot blogs and websites that might be eager to encourage the adoption of Firefox 1.0.

That the initiative had succeeded was evident from the fact that within a short period of time,

thousands of sites and blogs began carrying the “Download Firefox” button. Firefox 1.0 attained

one million downloads in four days and 10 million downloads within a month. In December 2004,

a group of 10,000 Mozilla marketing volunteers, each contributing US$ 30, took out a two-page ad

in the New York Times21 for Firefox that also listed the names of the contributors. Mozilla said that

within a year, the number of marketer volunteers for Mozilla touched 100,000, while Firefox was

downloaded, on an average, 250,000 times each day.

Over a period of time, the Spread Firefox website emerged as the epicenter of all Firefox related

marketing activities and a meeting place for the Firefox development community. The three main

aspects of the Spread Firefox community were that Firefox users could join the community to

contribute to the ongoing development projects; interact with other users through message boards;

and contribute to the “spread” of Firefox by posting buttons and getting others to join the Firefox

affiliate program. In 2006, Mozilla asked users to submit 30-second videos that depicted thevarious features of the browser to Firefoxflicks.com. The company used these videos to attract

users and get them to download Firefox.

Mozilla also took steps to encourage user participation in the Firefox community, beyond the usual

coding and distribution. It formed a website called Mozillalabs.com, wherein users were provided

with the opportunity to view and provide feedback on new features being introduced in the

browser. The company also set up another website called communitystore.mozilla.org, where users

could create and sell the t-shirts designed by them, apart from buying t-shirts of their choice from

the 124 designs on offer. Mozilla also created a “Campus Reps” program to reach out and attract

college students to Firefox, thereby encouraging word-of-mouth marketing. In July 2008, Mozilla

set a new Guinness World Record with its Firefox 3 browser, when it attained the largest number

of software downloads — about 8,002,530 in 24 hours.

In 2009, in order to promote Firefox 3.5, Mozilla again solicited user-made videos at

FastestFirefox.com. Mozilla also used social networks to advertise Firefox, invited user

participation in guerilla marketing efforts, and provided tools and materials for users to host their

own events that promoted the browser. Most analysts were of the opinion that Mozilla’s marketing

initiatives had set new standards for software marketing and exhibited the finest example of

grassroots marketing.

21 New York Times, founded in 1851, is published in New York. As of 2010, it was the third largestcirculated daily in the US.


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THE ROAD AHEAD

As of early 2010, Mozilla continued to draw an increasing number of volunteers both for itsdevelopment, as well as marketing initiatives. Apart from Mozilla.org that continued to serve as

the epicenter of all Mozilla related developer activity, several different sites, forums, blogs, andnewsgroups in different places came up and began to track different parts of a particular Mozilla

project (See Exhibit V to know more about some of the projects of Mozilla). Mozillamaintained that it had no intention of changing its method of functioning and would not go in foran initial public offering (IPO) anytime soon in the future.

According to web analytics firm, Net Applications22 , as of February 2010, Firefox had a 24.23%market share in global usage, while IE had a share of 61.58% (See Exhibit VI to know moreabout the global usage share of various browsers). Even though IE remained the most dominantWeb browser, Firefox continued to grow rapidly, thereby proving to be a tough competitor. Thehigher rate of adoption meant that most website developers, including Microsoft, ensured that theirWeb pages worked with the browser. Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s Vice President of Engineering, said,

“When we got to Firefox, in some ways it was overnight success. Our initial growth was more thanwe’d ever hoped for. From where we started this undertaking – the strategic context within

Netscape – to being the single biggest force behind the rebirth of the browser as an interestingsoftware category...It’s a pretty amazing end point.”23

According to industry experts, Mozilla opined that its future growth depended on making theFirefox appealing to the mainstream users and maintaining the loyalty of the tech savvy earlyadopters. John Lilly (Lilly), CEO of Mozilla, said, “We have to do both. We have to be a better

browser for your standard everyday user of the Web who uses IE now, but I think we have toredouble our efforts to be good for Web developers.”

24

Some analysts expected Mozilla to face tough challenges in the future as it was competing againstsoftware giants Microsoft, Google, and Apple (its Web browser Safari was the fourth most used

browser as of 2010). Speaking about the competition, Lilly said, “That’s not the business modelyou are going to pick. It is a daunting space to compete with the three giants of the era.”

25

Earlier, in September 2008, Google had launched its Web browser, the Google Chrome. This madeanalysts question the future of Mozilla’s arrangement with Google, the termination of which wasexpected to adversely affect Mozilla’s future revenues. Ray Valdes, Research Director atTechnology Research firm, Gartner, Inc., said, “Firefox needs Google more than Google needsFirefox, and that situation will only become more pronounced as Chrome gains new users.”26

Baker herself expressed doubts on Google renewing its contract with the company in 2011. Shesaid that Mozilla was considering other alternatives to generate revenue and was on the lookout fornew partners. In early 2010, Mozilla came out with a version of the Firefox for mobile phonescalled Fennec using the same engine as the desktop Firefox 3.6 and with similar features. As of

2010, Fennec was available on certain Nokia phones and analysts expected it to become asignificant source of revenue in the future.

22 Net Applications, founded in 1999, is a US-based company that provides usage share statistics for web browsers and operating systems. The statistics are provided on a month to month basis for free and on anhourly basis as a paid service.

23 Stephen Shankland, “After 5 Years, Firefox Faces New Challenges,” http://news.cnet.com, November 09,2009.

24 “Firefox’s Crossroads: Cutting-Edge or Mainstream?” www.global-creations.com, November 07, 2009.25 Ina Fried, “Mozilla Executives Address Firefox’s Challenges,” www.zdnetasia.com, May 29, 2009.26 Douglas MacMillan, “Mozilla Contemplates a Future without Google,” www.businessweek.com, March

12, 2009.


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Some analysts thought that Mozilla would tie up with other companies to provide some of theirservices through plug-ins with the browser, thereby earning additional revenues. Baker said, “It’snot hard to monetize the browser. There have been more opportunities for money than peoplethink. There are probably other search engines that would pay us more money.”27 However, she

felt that Google would also lose significantly if it cut off ties with Mozilla, as the search giantwould be letting go off the most worthy contender to IE.

Some analysts opined that the absence of the Google search box and the provision of anothersearch box in its place could turn some users off the browser. John Battelle, an Internetentrepreneur and author, said, “It’s possible that Firefox’s adoption rate could decline if Firefoxusers felt they were getting Microsoft or Yahoo shoved down their throat.”

28 Mozilla dismissed

such misgivings and said that it had always provided users with the option of changing their searchengine and would continue to do so.

Mozilla said that the launch of Google’s Chrome provided it with the necessary impetus toimprove Firefox’s performance and clarified a few of its priorities. It said that it was movingtoward a faster release cycle, improving user-perceptible performance metrics (time to start-up,

time to open a new tab, etc), enhancing responsiveness, and striving to increase the space for Webcontent in its browser.

As of March 2010, Mozilla had plans to continue with its innovations using its open sourcesoftware. In addition, it planned to support new Web standards and endeavored to improveHypertext Markup Language (HTML), thereby making it more capable for programming anddisplay. Lilly said, “There are still a lot people who think the Web is done – there’s this bigmission accomplished banner. It’s not true. There are many proprietary technologies, many walledgardens with respect to video and offline technology. There is still is a lot of the Open Web fight tofight.”29

27 George Norman, “No Google Love or Firefox 3.5 Final on the Horizon,” www.findmysoft.com, March 17,2009.

28 Douglas MacMillan, “Mozilla Contemplates a Future without Google,” www.businessweek.com, March12, 2009.

29 “Firefox’s Crossroads: Cutting-Edge or Mainstream?” www.global-creations.com, November 07, 2009.


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Exhibit I

Various Logos Used During the Development of Firefox

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mozilla_Firefox_logo_history.png

Exhibit II

Methods of Participation at Mozilla

Web BrowserChoice

Mozilla asked users about the importance of having a choiceof browser and asked them to help spread the word about theoptions provided by Mozilla.

User Support It offered them a chance to provide support for Firefox,Thunderbird, and other Mozilla projects.

Localization It invited users to make Mozilla projects like Firefox,Thunderbird, etc. available in the language of the user. Italso asked them to translate content on its websites.

Testing andQuality

Assurance

The company said that it was the easiest way for a person toget involved with Mozilla projects. It invited users to help ithunt down bugs in Firefox, Thunderbird, and other projectsor to test Mozilla websites to make sure that they were

providing the best possible experience for people online.

Marketing andEvangelism

It provided opportunities to promote Mozilla to users,developers, and students.

Add-ons It invited users to learn how to build an add-on which

involved making small tweaks or major additions. Forexperienced developers, it offered the opportunity to becomean AMO editor.

Coding It invited users to hack its websites and offered them accessto code repositories, processes, and tools, in an endeavor toimprove the product.

Visual Design It invited artists to come up with designs inspired by Mozillato be used in t-shirts and other creative ventures.

AREA OF

INTEREST

InterfaceDesign and

It invited participation in a Test Pilot to try out the newestand coolest user-interface ideas and in a Design Challenge to

inspire future design directions for Firefox, the Mozilla


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Usability project, and the Web as a whole. It also invited discussionon usability issues.

DeveloperDocumentation

It invited users to make its documentation better by writingnew content, correcting existing material, or translating

content into new languages.

A Few Minutes It invited users to participate in Firefox support forums byanswering queries, spreading the word about Firefox,Thunderbird, and Mozilla by adding a button to their blog,Facebook page, or website, help to make its projects better

by submitting a crash report if an application unexpectedlyquit and make a donation to the Mozilla Foundation.

A Few Hours It invited users to read through its localization pages to findout how to start a new localization or join an existing team,

perform an Internet Health Check for friends and families tomake sure they enjoyed a safe experience on the Web, stop

by on a test day to find, reproduce, and resolve bugs, and pick a topic from the documentation wish list and make theMozilla Developer Center even better.

TIME

AVAILABLE

A Few WeeksOr More

It invited users to spend a semester learning about opensource collaboration and contributing to the community as

part of Mozilla Education, create an add-on to add a coolnew feature to Firefox, Thunderbird, or other Mozillaapplication, take part in a Mozilla Labs Design Challenge,and inspire future directions for Firefox, the Mozilla project,and the Web as a whole and to get access to its coderepositories by contributing patches and becoming familiar

with its review process.

Source: http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/#

Exhibit III

Roles and Leadership at Mozilla

ROLE PARTICULARS

ModuleOwners

and Peers

Module owners were in charge of managing the development of a module of codeor a community activity. This role involved the execution of tasks like approving

patches to be checked into the module or diffusing clashes among communitymembers.

Super-Reviewers

Super-reviewers were a select group of powerful hackers who reviewed code, soas to determine its effects on the development process and also ensured itsadherence to Mozilla coding guidelines. The super-review process followed thecode review by the module owner. In order to check in code, the approval of asuper-reviewer was required.

ReleaseDrivers

Release drivers provided project management for milestone releases. They gaveguidance to developers about the bugs to be fixed to achieve a particular releaseand also made quiet a few management decisions.

BugzillaComponent

Bugzilla component owners were the default recipient of bugs filed against a particular component. Component owners were expected to review bug reports

frequently, relocate bugs to correct owners, guarantee that test cases existed, track


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Owners the progress toward resolving important fixes, and otherwise manage the bugs inthe component. Sometimes the Bugzilla component owner and the related moduleowner were the same person.

Benevolent

Dictators

Benevolent dictators were trusted members of the community who had the final

say in the case of disputes. Unlike other open source projects that had only one person in this role, Mozilla had two people. While Brendan Eich had the final sayin technical disputes, Baker had the final say in non-technical disputes.

Source: http://www.mozilla.org/about/roles.html.

Exhibit IV

Project Development Process of the Seamonkey

The SeaMonkey project was undertaken to develop an “all-in-one internet application suite”, based on the code of the previous Mozilla 1.0 Application Suite. While SeaMonkey 1.0 was

released in January 2006, SeaMonkey 1.1 was released in January 2007, and then SeaMonkey2.0 was released in October 2009.

A group of active SeaMonkey developers constituted the ‘SeaMonkey Council’ that could becontacted via the email address [email protected], which was responsible for

project and release management. It decided when to cut releases, what code to include in arelease (the release engineer of the Council was responsible for actually doing the release) andwas also the final authority for taking decisions about features when developers disagreed. Italso decided on legal issues concerning the SeaMonkey project in conjunction with MF.

Its most important responsibility was the management of the various project areas in which thelarger developer community contributed on a regular basis. Each of these areas had one ownerand several peers – people who knew the code well enough to review it. Only the owner of anarea had the authority to change code for that area.

Area Name Description BugZilla

Component

Owner Peer

User Interface Neil

(“UI tsar”)

UI design andreview

Achievingconsistencythroughout the

product both

internally andexternally

UI design Neil jag, timeless

Themes Classic, Modern,general theme issues

Themes MReimer Neil, KaiRo

Suite Applications

Browser

Navigator UI and parts of the suite that aremainly used by the browser (some may beshared with Mail or Composer to a certainextent though)


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Browsing tools [UI for] Tools thathelp with browserfunctionality(Bookmarks,

History, location bar, page info, viewsource,autocomplete etc.)

Browsingtools:Bookmarks

Browsing

tools: PageInfo

Browsingtools:ViewSource

Browsingtools:Autocomplete

db48x(Page Info)

db48x(Bookmarks,ViewSource,Autocomplete)

Download & FileHandling

Download Manager,helper apps,

open/save files

Download &File Handling

biesi

Privacy, Passwords& Permissions

UI for Passwords,PopUp/Image

blocking, Cookies;Wallet (Backendcode for most ofthose is shared)

Privacy,Passwords &Permissions

IanN Dveditz

Sidebar & Search Sidebar (includinginternal panels), websearch features

Sidebar &Search

Mnyromyr

MailNewsAddress Book &Contacts

Address book,VCard support,Address booksidebar etc.

MailNews:Address Book& Contacts

Standard8

AccountManagement &Configuration

AccountManager/Wizard,Preferences panels,etc.

MailNews:AccountManagement&Configuration

IanN

Composition Compose window,etc.

MailNews:Composition

IanN

Backend Watch backendclosely, make uswork with it, helpimproving it;includes:Transmission(receiving, sending,receipts), offline,(junk) filters, storage

bugs, etc.

MailNews:Backend

Bienvenu


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Message Display Main window;display of mails,news, maybe RSS;search; notifications;

drag'n'drop; etc.

MailNews:MessageDisplay

IanN

Composer Composer Timeless, Neil

Integration of

external apps

Integration ofchatzilla, inspector,venkman, calendar,etc

Project

Organization

not real suite code, but all the stuffaround it

SeaMonkeyCouncil

Project Management someone needs to

drive those thingsand feel responsiblefor gettingSeaMonkey Councildecisions

SeaMonkey

Council;KaiRo

ReleaseManagement

get releases out thedoor, write uprelease notes

KaiRo

MoFo liaison keep an open linewith MoFo folks andtake care of stuff we

need of them or theyneed of us

KaiRo

Quality Assurance(QA)

Testing, bugtriaging, smoketests,

bug triaging,testing...

General (forthings thatneed triaging)

Ajschult Sgautherie

Community, UserRelations, Support

Self

Marketing/Press/PR,web pages,

spokesman

KaiRo

Source: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/dev/project-areas.


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Exhibit V

Some Featured Projects of Mozilla

PROJECT APPLICATION PARTICULARS

Bugzilla It is a bug tracking system to help teams manage softwaredevelopment. Organizations use this tool to get organizedand communicate effectively.

Camino It is a Web browser optimized for Mac OS X with a Cocoauser interface, and powerful Gecko layout engine.

Fennec It is the code name for the project to build a browser formobile phones and smaller non-PC devices. It provides thefull Web experience of Firefox on the desktop on smallerdevices.

Firefox It is an award-winning Web browser.

Lightning andSunbird

Lightning is a popular calendaring, scheduling, and taskmanagement extension. Sunbird is a cross-platformapplication that brings Mozilla-style ease-of-use to thecalendar.

SeaMonkey It is the all-in-one application formerly known as the“Mozilla Application Suite”, containing a Web browser, amail and newsgroups client, an HTML editor, Webdevelopment tools, and an IRC chat client.

Mozilla

Applications

Thunderbird It is Mozilla’s next generation e-mail client.

Eudora It is a new, open source email client that joins the Eudorauser experience with Thunderbird’s powerful and flexibleframework.

Mozilla-

Based

Applications

GlobalMojo It is a new Web browser that helps generate money for theuser’s favorite causes, simply by browsing the Internet.

Jetpack It is a newly formed experiment in using open Webtechnologies to enhance the browser, with the goal ofallowing anyone who can build a website to participate inmaking the Web a better place to work, communicate, and

play.

Mozilla Labs

Experiments

Raindrop Its mission: To make it enjoyable to participate in

conversations from people you care about, whether theconversations are in email, on Twitter, a friend’s blog, oras part of a social networking site.

Gecko Gecko is the layout engine that reads Web content, such asHTML, CSS, XUL, and JavaScript and renders it on auser’s screen. In XUL-based applications Gecko is used torender the application’s user interface as well.

Mozilla

Technologies

XULRunner XULRunner provides an environment for developers to build XUL-based applications such as Firefox andThunderbird. It provides mechanisms for installing,upgrading, and uninstalling applications.


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Mozilla

Specifications

XUL The XML User Interface Language (XUL) is used to buildfeature-rich cross platform applications and add-ons thatextend the functionality of existing Mozilla-based

programs. Web developers will learn XUL quickly and can

start building applications right away.Add-ons Add-ons Site It helps find the latest and greatest extensions, themes, and

plug-ins for Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, andSunbird.

Source: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/

Exhibit VI

The Global Usage Share of Various Browsers

Source: http://marketshare.hitslink.com.


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References and Suggested Readings:

1.

Paul Festa, “Phoenix Rises from Mozilla’s Ashes,”

http://news.cnet.com, April 02, 2003.

2. Josh McHugh, “The Firefox Explosion,” www.wired.com, February 2005.

3.

Jena Wuu, “The Open-Source Business?” www.inc.com, August 10, 2005.4. “Firefox Crosses 100 Million Download Milestone,” www.itnewsonline.com, October 21,

2005.

5.

Ingrid Marson, “Firefox Plans Mass Marketing Drive,” http://news.cnet.com, November26, 2005.

6.

Richard MacManus, “How Firefox 2.0 Will Be Marketed,” www.readwriteweb.com,October 19, 2006.

7.

“The Inside Track on Firefox Development,” http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben, 2003-2007.

8.

Nancy Gohring, “Safari for Windows: All about the Money?” http://abcnews.go.com,June 15, 2007.

9.

Deepti Dhaval, “Mozilla Offers New Version of Firefox to Developers,”http://news.ebrandz.com, November 26, 2007.

10. Henry Blodget, “The Mozilla-Firefox IPO Debate, Part 2: Mozilla Responds,”www.businessinsider.com, January 3, 2008.

11.

Henry Blodget, “The Mozilla / Firefox IPO*” www.businessinsider.com, January 3, 2008.

12. “The Mozilla Model of Participatory Innovation,” www.euractiv.com, February 7, 2008.

13.

John Markoff, “When High-Tech Meets Social Mission,” http://articles.sfgate.com, April20, 2008.

14. John Letzing, “Firefox Heats up New Browser War against Microsoft,”www.popmatters.com, June 26, 2008.

15.

Jennifer Leggio, “Firefox 3 and Community -- How Mozilla Used Social Networking toSet a World Record,” http://blogs.zdnet.com, July 8, 2008.

16.

Gregg Keizer, “Mozilla Pushes Firefox 3.0 Auto-Update,” www.pcworld.com, August 20,2008.

17. Jason Kincaid, “Mozilla Extends Lucrative Deal with Google for 3 Years,”http://techcrunch.com, August 28, 2008.

18.

Ina Fried, “Mozilla Executives Address Firefox’s Challenges,” http://news.cnet.com, May28, 2009.

19.

Nitasha Tiku, “Battle of the Browsers; Stick a Fork in Joost,” www.inc.com, July 01,2009.

20. Om Malik, “On Mobile Phones, Firefox’s Big Bet Is Nokia & Android,”http://gigaom.com, October 19, 2009.

21.

Stephen Shankland, “Firefox’s Crossroads: Cutting-edge or Mainstream?”

http://news.cnet.com, October 21, 2009.

22. Stephen Shankland, “Mozilla Reveals 2008 Revenue: $79 Million,” http://news.cnet.com, November 19, 2009.

23. “Why is Mozilla Firefox So Popular?” http://hubpages.com, accessed on March 5, 2010.

24.

www.mozilla.com.

25.

www.mozilla.org.

26.

https://mozillalabs.com.

27. www.mozillamessaging.com/thunderbird/

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