Contents
Mozilla History: 20+ Years And Counting
The following slides are available in this presentation:
Mozilla History: 20+ Years And Counting
An overview of origins, past, and present
Slides: https://slides.kairo.at/fosdem2021/
- Created for a presentation in the Mozilla Developer Room at FOSDEM 2021 in Brussels.
- Written in HTML 5 (with modern CSS and JS).
- Navigation via links on all slides, via access keys (e.g. "n"/Alt+Shift+N for "next") or back/forward arrow keys
- Contents
01/2021 Robert Kaiser -
"Mozilla", "Firefox" and related marks/logos are
trademarks
of Mozilla Foundation.
Robert Kaiser - KaiRo
- kairo@kairo.at / home.kairo.at
- Mozilla Rep, Tech Speaker
- Based in Vienna, Austria
- Not on most major social networks
- But on Matrix, Diaspora*, Mozilla Community, Telegram, LinkedIn, KaiRo-at at GitHub
Origin of the Name "Mozilla"
Mozilla Project Launch
- Jan 1998: Netscape announces open-sourcing of code
- NPL as a new license, written by Mitchell Baker
- Using Mozilla project name, mozilla.org
- Red dino mascot (by Shepard Fairy)
- tag line "hack - this technology could fall into the right hands"
- Target: Internet Application Suite code as base for Netscape 5+
- Open-source code launch on March 31, 1998
- Code Rush documentary
Mozilla Application Suite
- Late 1998: Start building on in-development Raptor/NGLayout/Gecko engine (HTML4+XML-compliant).
- Complete rewrite of suite based on browser tech ("XPFE")
- XUL (with CSS + JS), XBL, plus XPCOM, RDF/XML, etc.
- M3-M18 milestone releases, 0.6 as base for Netscape 6, 1.0 in June 2002
- Regular development and releases up to 1.7 in 2005
- Deprecated for Firefox and Thunderbird
- Transition to community in 2005 ("SeaMonkey")
The Rise of Firefox
- April 2002: m/b - "The idea is to design the best web browser for most people."
- Leaner, cleaner, browser-only UI based on same technologies as suite
- Name changes to Phoenix, Firebird and finally Firefox
- Firefox 1.0 released on November 9, 2004
- Web Search integration
- Rapid growth to hundreds of millions of users
- Started a whole new push of Internet innovation
Mozilla Foundation
- AOL/Netscape pulling out of Mozilla in 2003
- Mozilla Foundation ("MoFo") created with some one-time funding
- No employees, Mitchell Baker as chairwoman
- Donations, then Web Search money with Firefox 1.0
- Mozilla Corporation ("MoCo") subsidiary since 2005 for tax reasons
- After that, mission-driven, non-commercial work at MoFo
- New moz://a logo since 2017
Mozilla Mission and Manifesto
- Initially, "act as the virtual meeting place for the Mozilla code"
- First actual mission statement on website in 2003: "preserve choice and innovation on the Internet"
- Today: "ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. [...]"
- Since 2007, Principles of Mozilla Manifesto
- Pledge for human experience added to Manifesto in 2018
Other Products/Projects (Excerpt)
- MDC/MDN: developer documentation, since 2005
- XULRunner: XUL application platform, 2006-2015
- Rust: programming language, personal project since 2006, sponsored by Mozilla since 2010, creation of separate foundation in progress
- Persona/BrowserID: decentralized auth system, 2011-2016
- Servo: experimental browser engine, since 2012, cooperation with Samsung, moved to LF in 2020
- Firefox OS: web-based mobile OS, 2013-2016
- Pocket (orig. "Read It Later"): web content lists, independent since 2007, acquired by Mozilla in 2017
- Firefox Lockwise: password manager, since 2018
- Firefox Monitor: data breach checker, since 2018
- Mozilla VPN: since 2019/2020
