On 15 July 2003 the Mozilla Foundation was created. It’s a non-profit organization that aims to support the development of the Mozilla project. It’s basically the successor of the Mozilla Organization, founded in 1998 to develop the Mozilla Application Suite, a product of Netscape Communications Corporation formed by the web browser Navigator, the e-mail / newsgroup client Communicator and the software for the development of web pages Composer.

The Netscape Navigator browser was a victim of the war by Microsoft, which started developing its Internet Explorer and a client for e-mail and newsgroups that over the years has had several names. In January 1998, the Netscape Communicator 4.0 source code was released as open source and a month later the Mozilla Organization was created.

In March 1999, AOL completed the acquisition of Netscape Communications and for a few years supported the Mozilla project. However, when AOL decided to significantly reduce its funding, the Mozilla Organization was replaced by the Mozilla Foundation. This new organization was initially funded by donations and later by a commercial deal with Google, which pays to be the default search engine in Mozilla’s browser.

The Mozilla Foundation continued the development of the existing projects focusing on the browser Firefox and on the client and e-mail / newsgroup Thunderbird. The old Mozilla Application Suite gave way to SeaMonkey.

In 2005, a subsidiary was created, the Mozilla Corporation, which has the task of dealing with the development and the commercial activities, leaving the Mozilla Foundation with the decisions regarding governance and policy in the development and the control of the sources of its software.

Over the years Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird have had great success. Various antitrust cases that hit Microsoft have eliminated barriers to the diffusion of those Mozilla Foundation programs, in many ways better than the equivalent Microsoft.

Recently, the Mozilla Foundation started new projects, always keeping in mind that being open is one of the bases of its existence. A few months it launched Firefox OS, an open source operating system for mobile devices. The organization has gone beyond the world of software opening Mozilla Science Labs, an initiative that aims to help researchers around the world to use the web in an open manner in order to spread scientific knowledge and determine the future of science.

In a time when we’re hearing stories of controls on the communications even of ordinary people carried out also with the collaboration of companies that have given the governments access to closed software, it’s more important than ever to have open programs. The Mozilla Foundation promotes this kind of openness therefore its existence is important for democracy as well.

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