hydrabrowser.com

Browsing the web the other day (looking for Hydra of course, as I am still in the phase when every new page that mentions Hydra and every new user excites me…), I stumbled upon a post in Google groups where some overzealous Firefox admirer openly accused me of making false accusations against Mozilla and Firefox. Actually, the person in question quoted a line from my ‘Hydra Aid’ manifesto, which says the following:
“In the meantime, I ran across a page that lists Firefox myths. I won’t go into the quarrel and the statements listed there should be taken cum grano salis, but one thing draw my attention - I was stunned to see that Firefox is making millions of dollars per year and is - in fact - a real cash cow for its founders! How on earth do they succeed? The answer was simple - through affiliation. They’ve affiliated with Google (don’t know if there are any others companies included…), and made a real fortune out of the deal…”

Now there is no accusation at all in the above, is it? In fact, maybe it would be some if the above statement was a lie, but I did my homework and googled a bit about the subject before I wrote the above lines. My search didn’t last long, as I found a direct link to the Mozilla’s corporation (or Foundation, I’m not sure which is it, but it doesn’t matter though, as the two are in fact the same…) financial audit performed by Hood & Strong LLP - certified public accountants. The document in question can be found at Mozilla’s web, so it’s by no means a well hidden secret kept from the eyes of the public. If you read the document yourself, you’ll see plain and clear that Firefox (Mozilla) earned 75 millions USD in 2006 from royalties - i.e. from it’s search box affiliated with Google, Amazon etc. Quite amazing, isn’t it? And still there are people out there who feel offended when someone says that they’re making money from their browser, as if they shouldn’t have, and as if the fact that they’re quite profitable makes the product less worthy… Software - no matter if it’s open source or a closed proprietary system - cannot be made in the cave by a bunch of bearded-hippie-lonesome programmers and offered to the public for free. Making of the software costs money. Mozilla spent 11,000,000.00 USD in 2006 just for software development, and it’s quite a sum of money if you ask me (it would be interesting to see how much money is mighty MS investing in their browser - just wild guessing here, but I think it’s at least double…). Hosting and distributing software also costs money… Providing help and support costs money…

All in all, we have a classic win-win situation here for Mozilla and Google (and the users, so it’s actually a triple win…). Google profits from this cooperation are huge, so it’s no wonder they’re strongly pushing Firefox on the market, while at the same time hurting their greatest opponent, the mighty Microsoft. I can only imagine Firefox’s profits for 2007, since they probably tripled their user base since the time the audit was made (if they’ve tripled the profits as well, the numbers go up to the stunning sum of 225 millions USD in 2007!?) .

There’s absolutely nothing abnormal in a software such as Firefox being profitable. The only abnormal thing in this story is the reaction of that certain admirer who didn’t even bother to look for the facts himself, taking the formula ‘open source = freedom = no money’ for granted. On the other hand, I would certainly wish to see people from Mozilla taking a step forward and giving some of those profits away to charities, in the true spirit of open source philosophy, making their community really proud of being a part of something as noble and right. If I can do that as an independent and small developer, why wouldn’t they do the same?