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Mozilla Foundation

Summary

The Mozilla Foundation is a California nonprofit, launched on July 15, 2003, that grew out of the open-source Mozilla project Netscape started in 1998. In 2005 it formed the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly owned taxable subsidiary that makes Firefox and runs MDN Web Docs. Its audited statements show $680.4 million in revenue in 2024, most of it royalties from search partners.

Web Building Encyclopedia · Organizations · Last reviewed October 22, 2026 · 12 min read

What the Mozilla Foundation is

The Mozilla Foundation is a California not-for-profit corporation, established in July 2003, at the head of the group of organizations known as Mozilla. Its audited financial statements describe its purpose as improving and protecting the internet as a public resource, and say it qualifies as a public benefit charitable organization exempt from income taxes.1

The foundation owns several companies. Its audited statements for 2024 list four subsidiaries:1

  • Mozilla Corporation, which makes the Firefox web browser and other software and services used by hundreds of millions of people.
  • MZLA Technologies Corporation, the home of the Thunderbird email program since January 2020.2
  • Mozilla Ventures, which invests in startups.
  • MZL.AI, known publicly as Mozilla.ai, which works on open-source artificial intelligence.3

Mozilla’s leadership page says these organizations “operate with a significant degree of independence.” As of October 2026 it lists Mark Surman as President of Mozilla, Nabiha Syed as Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation and Anthony Enzor-DeMeo as chief executive of the Mozilla Corporation.34

Together the group took in $680.4 million in total revenue and support in 2024, of which $498.2 million was royalties from search partners.1 Its guiding text is the Mozilla Manifesto of 2007, which sets out 10 principles about keeping the internet open, accessible and safe.5

The Mozilla project and mozilla.org (1998 to 2003)

The foundation grew out of a software project started by Netscape. On January 22, 1998, Netscape made its browser free and said it would publish the source code of its next version, Communicator 5.0, so that thousands of programmers on the internet could contribute improvements.6 Source code is the human-readable text of a program.

“Mozilla” was the code name Netscape engineers, among them Jamie Zawinski, had given Navigator, and the name of a green dinosaur mascot. A history of the release by Netscape staff Jim Hamerly, Tom Paquin and Susan Walton says Zawinski registered the domain mozilla.org the night after the announcement. Their chapter dates the announcement January 23, the day a copy was posted to Usenet; the press release itself is dated January 22.76

On February 23, 1998, Netscape announced mozilla.org, a dedicated team and website for the free source code.8 A March 1998 press release described it as a team within Netscape that would “promote, foster and guide development” of the code,9 and the Netscape authors write that it was designed from the start as the project’s coordinator and maintainer, separate from Netscape’s product group.7

Two licenses

Netscape reviewed the GPL, LGPL and BSD licenses, found that none fit, and wrote the Netscape Public License (NPL), posting a draft on March 5, 1998 and revising it after public comment. The NPL gave Netscape extra rights, such as using the shared code in its other products, so Netscape also wrote the Mozilla Public License (MPL), identical except for those rights. The original code came out under the NPL; new code could use the MPL.7 In September 2001 the project relicensed more than 6,000 NPL files under a choice of three licenses: the MPL, the GPL and the LGPL.8

The first year

The first developer release went out through mozilla.org on March 31, 1998, for Linux, 32-bit Windows and the PowerPC Macintosh.9 On April 2, 1999, Frank Hecker described mozilla.org as the steward of the public source tree and listed outside contributions such as James Clark’s expat XML parser and a port to the OS/2 operating system.10

The project’s technical history, from the Gecko layout engine to the Mozilla 1.0 suite of 2002, which few people used while Internet Explorer dominated, is told in the Mozilla Firefox entry.11

An independent foundation (2003 to 2005)

On July 15, 2003, mozilla.org announced that its work would continue under a new independent nonprofit, the Mozilla Foundation. America Online (AOL) pledged $2 million in cash over two years, plus equipment, domain names, trademarks and staff support during the transition.12

Mitch Kapor, designer of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, became chairman and gave $300,000 of his own money. Mitchell Baker, whose mozilla.org title was Chief Lizard Wrangler, became president. Red Hat and Sun Microsystems planned to keep contributing.12

The foundation was incorporated as a California public benefit corporation in Mountain View and applied for 501(c)(3) status, the US tax category for charities. Its purpose was to promote the development, distribution and adoption of Mozilla’s standards-based applications and core technologies, such as the Gecko layout engine.12

The same day, Mozilla’s archive records, AOL cut the remaining Mozilla developers it employed.8 One detail differs between sources: the foundation’s own “who we are” page says it began with $2 million in seed funding from Netscape, while the 2003 announcement names AOL as the donor.1312

The Mozilla Corporation

On August 3, 2005, the foundation announced the Mozilla Corporation, a taxable subsidiary it wholly owns. The corporation took over the products used by the public, Firefox and Thunderbird, along with marketing, sponsorships and distribution. The foundation kept charge of the open-source project’s governance, infrastructure, source code and policy.14

The corporation would earn revenue, but only in ways consistent with the foundation’s public-benefit goals. Baker became president of the corporation and Brendan Eich its chief technical officer. The corporation’s first board was Chris Blizzard, Baker and Reid Hoffman; the foundation’s board was Kapor, Brian Behlendorf, Baker, Eich and Joichi Ito.14

Money also flows from the corporation back to the foundation. The audited statements for 2013 describe a trademark license under which the corporation paid the foundation 2% of its annual net revenues related to the use of the trademarks, less approved expenses from the prior year: $6,089,000 in 2013.15 For 2023, Mozilla reported that the foundation received $18.6 million in royalties from the corporation and other Mozilla entities.16

How Mozilla is funded

Most of Mozilla’s money has come from search engines. A browser’s search box sends queries to a default search engine, the search company earns money from the ads on its results pages, and it pays the browser maker a share. Mozilla’s audited statements say its partners’ search engines are built into Firefox, either as the default or as an option, and that it generally receives royalties as a percentage of the revenue those partners earn.1

The statements do not name the main partner. Mozilla’s Chris Beard wrote that Google was Firefox’s global default search engine from 2004 until November 2014,17 and in 2007 The Register reported that Baker had confirmed most of the search revenue came from Google.18 In 2024 the federal court in the Justice Department’s case against Google found that Google was the current default on Firefox, and that Yahoo had been the default from 2014 through 2017.19

YearTotal revenue and support (audited)RoyaltiesConcentration reported in the audited notes
2006$66.8 million$61.5 million (search)About 85% of revenue from one search engine contract20
2013$314.1 million$306.1 millionAbout 90% of royalty revenue from one contract15
2023$653.0 million$494.9 millionAbout 85% of revenue from customers with contracts came from one customer1
2024$680.4 million$498.2 millionAbout 86% of revenue from customers with contracts came from one customer1

The search contracts run for fixed terms. The 2006 statements say the contract had originally expired in November 2006 and been renewed to November 2008;20 the 2013 statements give an expiry of November 2014.15

Yahoo, then Google again

That expiry matched a change of strategy. On November 19, 2014, Beard announced that Mozilla would replace its one global default with deals by country. A five-year partnership made Yahoo the default in the United States, Yandex became the default in Russia and Baidu remained the default in China, while Google stayed in Firefox as a built-in option.17

The Yahoo deal ended early. On November 14, 2017, with the release of Firefox Quantum, Mozilla made Google the default again in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Denelle Dixon, Mozilla’s chief business and legal officer, said Mozilla had used its contractual right to end the Yahoo agreement.21

The Google antitrust case

Mozilla’s income was drawn into that case, United States v. Google. In its opinion of August 5, 2024, the court found Mozilla’s share of the desktop browser market to be about 10%, negligible on mobile, and its 2018 revenue to be $435 million.19

The court’s remedies opinion of September 2, 2025 recalled its finding that Google’s agreements with browser developers such as Apple and Mozilla were exclusive, and cited a March 2024 extension of Google’s contract with Mozilla among its evidence. It decided that Google would not be barred from paying distribution partners, reasoning that cutting off the payments almost certainly would cause substantial harm to those partners, related markets and consumers. It did bar agreements that stop a partner from also distributing other search engines, browsers or generative AI products.22

Laura Chambers, then chief executive of the Mozilla Corporation, wrote on September 8, 2025 that the court had “rejected a proposed ban on search payments to small, independent browsers like Firefox.”23

Other income

Subscriptions and advertising brought in $66.4 million in 2024. The audited notes name Pocket Premium and Mozilla VPN as the main subscriptions.1 Writing in the State of Mozilla 2024 report, chief financial officer Eric Muhlheim and chief operating officer Angela Plohman said the corporation’s revenue fell in 2023, mainly because search royalties declined after some distribution deals were not renewed.16 When it named a new chief executive on December 16, 2025, Mozilla said it planned to depend less on search over the next three years.24

MDN Web Docs

MDN Web Docs is Mozilla’s free reference for HTML, CSS, JavaScript and the programming interfaces (APIs) that browsers offer to web pages. It began in 2005 as DevMo, a community wiki on open web standards, and was renamed the Mozilla Developer Network in 2010. The Mozilla Corporation owns it, and Mozilla staff write it with volunteers and partners.25

In October 2017 Mozilla announced a Product Advisory Board with members from Microsoft, Google, Samsung and the W3C, and said Microsoft would focus its Web API documentation on MDN and redirect relevant pages from its own developer network. More than six million developers and designers then visited MDN each month.26

Open Web Docs, launched on January 25, 2021 with Coil, Google and Microsoft as founding sponsors, pays technical writers whose current priority is contributing to MDN. It describes itself as a partner of MDN, not a competitor or replacement.27

MDN moved from its wiki to a project hosted on GitHub in 2020 and added a paid tier, MDN Plus, in 2022. As of October 2026 it reports more than 15 million users and 46 million page views a month, across 45,000 pages in seven languages.25

Its written content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA), version 2.5 or later. Code samples added on or after August 20, 2010 are in the public domain under CC0, and older ones are under the MIT license; MDN says that since its platform changed on December 14, 2020 it can no longer tell which rule applies to a given sample.28 The browser support tables on MDN come from a separate open dataset, browser-compat-data, which covers more than 15,000 features and is also used by Can I Use, Visual Studio Code and TypeScript.29

The manifesto, the license and wider work

The Mozilla Manifesto

The manifesto, written in 2007, lists 10 principles. Among them: the internet is a global public resource that should remain open and accessible; security and privacy are fundamental; free and open-source software promotes the development of the internet as a public resource; and commercial involvement brings benefits, but profit should be balanced with public benefit.5

A 2017 addendum, the Pledge for a Healthy Internet, adds commitments to an internet that includes everyone, supports civil discourse, values verifiable facts and encourages collaboration.5

The Mozilla Public License

The foundation is the license steward of the MPL.30 Version 2.0 was released on January 3, 2012, after a revision of version 1.1 led largely by Luis Villa. Baker wrote that 2.0 was shorter and more compatible with other free and open-source licenses, and credited the Free Software Foundation with help on compatibility with the GPL.31

The MPL works file by file. Anyone who distributes covered files, in source or compiled form, must keep them under the MPL and make their source code available, but may combine them with other code in a larger work under terms of their own choice.30

The foundation’s programs

The foundation’s own work is far smaller in money than the corporation’s. In 2023 it spent $26 million on its programs, including $17.2 million on grants for leadership development, and took in $7.8 million from donations, foundation grants and government funding.16

Its programs include fellowships that have supported more than 200 technologists, the yearly Mozilla Festival (MozFest), Common Voice, a crowdsourcing project to make technology work in more languages, the Privacy Not Included reviews of consumer products, and the Internet Health Report.13

Projects that grew up at Mozilla

  • WHATWG. In 2004 individuals from Apple, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software founded the WHATWG. In 2017 Mozilla was one of four organizations, with Apple, Google and Microsoft, that developed its governance structure.32
  • Let’s Encrypt. The Mozilla Corporation was one of the partners named when the free certificate authority Let’s Encrypt was announced on November 18, 2014.33
  • Rust. The Rust programming language began as a Mozilla research project in 2010. When the Rust Foundation was announced on February 8, 2021, with AWS, Huawei, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla as founding members, Mozilla transferred Rust’s trademarks and infrastructure to it.34
  • Thunderbird. In January 2020 the email program moved into MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the foundation. Its team said the change would let it hire more easily and earn revenue from partnerships and non-charitable donations.2
  • Mozilla Ventures and Mozilla.ai. Mozilla Ventures was created in 2022 with a $35 million fund, and Mozilla.ai launched in March 2023 with a $30 million commitment.16

Leadership and restructuring

Mitchell Baker, president of the foundation from 2003,12 counted 25 years at Mozilla, in many roles, in February 2024.35 Mark Surman led the foundation as executive director for 15 years before becoming President of Mozilla.3 Brendan Eich’s brief term as chief executive in 2014 is covered in his own entry.

DateChange
April 8, 2020Baker is named chief executive of the Mozilla Corporation, having served as interim chief executive since Chris Beard left in December 201936
August 11, 2020Baker announces a cut of about 250 jobs, saying the pandemic had hurt revenue and that Mozilla needed to restructure to build new products37
February 8, 2024Baker moves back to executive chairwoman, and board member Laura Chambers becomes chief executive of the corporation for the rest of 202435
May 15, 2024The foundation names Nabiha Syed, former chief executive of the news site The Markup, as executive director38
February 19, 2025Baker leaves the foundation and corporation boards, and a new Mozilla Leadership Council, chaired by Surman, brings together the head of each Mozilla organization39
December 16, 2025Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, previously general manager of Firefox, is named chief executive of the Mozilla Corporation, succeeding Chambers, who had led the corporation on a temporary basis24

Titles vary by page: as of October 2026, mozilla.org lists Syed as Executive Director, while the foundation’s “who we are” page calls her its chief executive.313

Timeline

  1. Anthony Enzor-DeMeo is named chief executive of the Mozilla Corporation24
  2. Court in United States v. Google declines to bar Google's payments to partners such as Mozilla22
  3. Nabiha Syed is named executive director of the Mozilla Foundation38
  4. Mitchell Baker steps back from chief executive; Laura Chambers takes over the corporation35
  5. The Rust Foundation is announced, and Mozilla transfers Rust's trademarks and infrastructure to it34
  6. Mozilla announces about 250 job cuts and a restructuring37
  7. Thunderbird moves to MZLA Technologies Corporation, a foundation subsidiary2
  8. Mozilla ends its Yahoo deal and makes Google the default in the US and Canada again21
  9. Microsoft, Google, Samsung and the W3C join an advisory board for MDN26
  10. Yahoo becomes Firefox's default search engine in the US under a five-year deal17
  11. Mozilla Public License 2.0 is released31
  12. The foundation forms the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly owned taxable subsidiary14
  13. The Mozilla Foundation is launched with a $2 million pledge from AOL12
  14. First developer release of Netscape's source code through mozilla.org9
  15. Netscape announces mozilla.org8

What it means for your website

The Mozilla Foundation does not host or build websites, but its organizations publish tools and rules that small sites use every day.

  • Use MDN to check claims. When a designer, developer or plugin vendor says a feature works in every browser, MDN’s compatibility tables show which browsers support it. The same data feeds Can I Use and Visual Studio Code.29 Our guide to how a website works explains where HTML, CSS and JavaScript fit.
  • Copy MDN code, not MDN text. Newer MDN code samples are public domain under CC0 and older ones are under the MIT license, which asks for a credit; since MDN says it can no longer tell which applies, keeping a short credit is the cautious choice. MDN’s written explanations are under CC-BY-SA, which requires credit and the same license if you republish them on your site.28 Our page on who owns your website covers copyright more broadly.
  • Ask about MPL code at handover. If your developer uses a library under the MPL 2.0 and changes its files, those files must stay under the MPL and their source must be made available when the software is distributed. The rest of your code can stay under your own terms.30 Ask for a list of the open-source licenses in your project.
  • Test in Firefox. Mozilla describes Firefox’s Gecko engine as “the only independent browser engine left.”23 A page tested only in Chrome may still break in Firefox. The Mozilla Firefox entry covers its current share and privacy defaults.
  • Use a free certificate. Let’s Encrypt, which Mozilla helped launch, issues free certificates for HTTPS.33 If your host does not include one, see our glossary entry on the SSL certificate.

See also

References

  1. Mozilla Foundation and Subsidiaries: Consolidated Financial Statements, December 31, 2024 and 2023 (audited). Mozilla Foundation. 2025-09-26. accessed October 22, 2026.
  2. Thunderbird's New Home. The Thunderbird Blog. 2020-01. accessed October 22, 2026.
  3. Mozilla leadership. Mozilla. accessed October 22, 2026.
  4. Mozilla Corporation leadership. Mozilla. accessed October 22, 2026.
  5. The Mozilla Manifesto. Mozilla. accessed October 22, 2026.
  6. Netscape Announces Free Browsers, Source Code Available (Netscape press release, comp.os.os2.announce archive). Netscape Communications, via MIT. 1998-01-22. accessed October 22, 2026.
  7. Freeing the Source: The Story of Mozilla (Jim Hamerly, Tom Paquin and Susan Walton), in Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. O'Reilly Media. 1999-01. accessed October 22, 2026.
  8. History of the Mozilla Project (archived mozilla.org history). mozilla.org, archived copy. accessed October 22, 2026.
  9. Netscape Accelerates Communicator Evolution with First Release of Next-Generation Communicator Source Code (press release). Netscape Communications, via Cover Pages. 1998-03-31. accessed October 22, 2026.
  10. Mozilla at One: A Look Back and Ahead (Frank Hecker). mozilla.org, archived copy. 1999-04-02. accessed October 22, 2026.
  11. History of the Mozilla Project. Mozilla. accessed October 22, 2026.
  12. America Online Pledges $2 Million to Help Launch Independent Non-Profit (Mozilla Foundation launch). mozilla.org. 2003-07-15. accessed October 22, 2026.
  13. Who we are. Mozilla Foundation. accessed October 22, 2026.
  14. Mozilla Foundation Forms New Organization to Further the Creation of Free, Open Source Internet Software, Including the Award-Winning Mozilla Firefox Browser. Mozilla press center. 2005-08-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  15. Mozilla Foundation and Subsidiary: Consolidated Financial Statements, December 31, 2013 and 2012 (audited), trial exhibit UPX2080 in United States v. Google LLC. U.S. Department of Justice. 2014-09-24. accessed October 22, 2026.
  16. Financing an Open Internet: Mozilla's path forward (Eric Muhlheim and Angela Plohman), State of Mozilla 2024. Mozilla. accessed October 22, 2026.
  17. New Search Strategy for Firefox: Promoting Choice and Innovation (Chris Beard). The Mozilla Blog. 2014-11-19. accessed October 22, 2026.
  18. Mozilla releases 2006 financial statement. The Register. 2007-10-25. accessed October 22, 2026.
  19. United States v. Google LLC, No. 1:20-cv-03010-APM, Memorandum Opinion (ECF No. 1033). U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, via CourtListener. 2024-08-05. accessed October 22, 2026.
  20. Mozilla Foundation and Subsidiary: Consolidated Financial Statements, December 31, 2006 and 2005 (audited). Mozilla Foundation, archived copy. 2007-09-28. accessed October 22, 2026.
  21. Mozilla terminates its deal with Yahoo and makes Google the default in Firefox again (Frederic Lardinois). TechCrunch. 2017-11-14. accessed October 22, 2026.
  22. United States v. Google LLC, No. 1:20-cv-03010-APM, Memorandum Opinion on remedies (ECF No. 1436). U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, via CourtListener. 2025-09-02. accessed October 22, 2026.
  23. Defending an open web: What the Google search ruling means for the future (Laura Chambers). The Mozilla Blog. 2025-09-08. accessed October 22, 2026.
  24. Mozilla Appoints Anthony Enzor-DeMeo as CEO to Lead the Next Era of User-First, Trusted Technology. Mozilla, via PR Newswire. 2025-12-16. accessed October 22, 2026.
  25. About MDN. MDN Web Docs, Mozilla. accessed October 22, 2026.
  26. Mozilla brings Microsoft, Google, the W3C, Samsung together to create cross-browser documentation on MDN (Ali Spivak). The Mozilla Blog. 2017-10-18. accessed October 22, 2026.
  27. Introducing Open Web Docs (Robert Nyman). Open Web Docs, Open Collective. 2021-01-25. accessed October 22, 2026.
  28. Attributions and copyright licensing. MDN Web Docs, Mozilla. accessed October 22, 2026.
  29. mdn/browser-compat-data. MDN, GitHub. accessed October 22, 2026.
  30. Mozilla Public License, version 2.0. Mozilla Foundation. accessed October 22, 2026.
  31. Mozilla Public License Version 2.0 Released (Mitchell Baker). mitchellbaker.net. 2012-01-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  32. FAQ. WHATWG. accessed October 22, 2026.
  33. Let's Encrypt: Delivering SSL/TLS Everywhere (Josh Aas). Let's Encrypt. 2014-11-18. accessed October 22, 2026.
  34. Hello World. Rust Foundation. 2021-02-08. accessed October 22, 2026.
  35. A new chapter for Mozilla: Focused execution and an expanded role in charting the internet's future (Mitchell Baker). The Mozilla Blog. 2024-02-08. accessed October 22, 2026.
  36. Mozilla names long-time chairwoman Mitchell Baker as CEO. TechCrunch. 2020-04-08. accessed October 22, 2026.
  37. Changing World, Changing Mozilla (Mitchell Baker). The Mozilla Blog. 2020-08-11. accessed October 22, 2026.
  38. Mozilla Foundation welcomes Nabiha Syed as executive director. The Mozilla Blog. 2024-05-15. accessed October 22, 2026.
  39. Mozilla leadership, growth and planning updates (Mark Surman). The Mozilla Blog. 2025-02-19. accessed October 22, 2026.

Web Building Encyclopedia. First published October 22, 2026. Last reviewed October 22, 2026. Every fact on this page is linked to a source we opened. Spotted an error? Write to [email protected].