Web erupts with Mozilla revenue speculation

Mozilla says that money is ‘one of the last things it worries about’ as rumours about its revenue spread

The Mozilla Corporation, the commercial arm of the Mozilla Foundation, claims that despite the success of its various online applications, it is not focused on making profits but creating strong products.

Responding to online speculation around the company’s actual earnings, Christopher Blizzard, who is on the board of the Mozilla Corporation, claimed on Tuesday that money is just a “tool” that allows the organisation to direct its own development and “make a great product”.

“Money is one of the last things we worry about and people shouldn’t get hung up on the numbers, except to realise that it gives us options,” he said.

Blizzard added that an earnings figure of $72m (?Ǭ£41m) quoted on some blogs was incorrect. “I won’t comment on the dollar amount except to say that it’s [$72m] not correct, though not off by an order of magnitude. I also won’t comment on sources of that money, except to say that some of the assertions that I’ve seen in the comments are pretty far off, both in terms of numbers and sources,” he wrote in his blog.

The Mozilla Foundation exists as a Californian not-for-profit organisation and receives donations in a similar way to a charity. This makes the issue of profit controversial. There has been intense speculation recently on exactly how much the Mozilla Corporation, and the wider Foundation, makes out of its Firefox browser and how it spends the money.

Full story: ZDNet UK