Mozilla Labs
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| Industry | Open-source software |
|---|---|
| Founded | February 28, 1998 |
| Founder | Netscape Communications Corporation |
| Products | Mozilla Application Suite |
| Divisions | |
| Website | www |
Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free-software community created in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions. The community is supported institutionally by the Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.
Mozilla has produced many products such as the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, Firefox OS mobile operating system, Bugzilla bug tracking system, Gecko layout engine and other projects. During 2017, Mozilla acquired Pocket, a popular "read-it-later-online" service.
On January 23, 1998, Netscape made two announcements: first, that Netscape Communicator would be free; second, that the source code would also be free. One day later, Jamie Zawinski from Netscape registered mozilla.org. The project was named Mozilla after the original code name of the Netscape Navigator browser which is a portmanteau of "Mosaic and Godzilla" and used to co-ordinate the development of the Mozilla Application Suite, the open source version of Netscape's internet software, Netscape Communicator. Jamie Zawinski says he came up with the name "Mozilla" at a Netscape staff meeting. A small group of Netscape employees were tasked with coordination of the new community.
Originally, Mozilla aimed to be a technology provider for companies, such as Netscape, who would commercialize their open source code. When AOL (Netscape's parent company) greatly reduced its involvement with Mozilla in July 2003, the Mozilla Foundation was designated the legal steward of the project. Soon after, Mozilla deprecated the Mozilla Suite in favor of creating independent applications for each function, primarily the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client, and moved to supply them directly to the public.
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