The Hard Years

It is spring 1998. Netscape's code has been released, mozilla.org is up and running, and volunteers around the world are digging into it. But it soon became clear the job was harder than expected. Code written for years under competitive pressure and commercial deadlines was not easy for an open community to understand or change.

The decision to rebuild

On 26 October 1998, according to Mozilla's official timeline, mozilla.org posted a roadmap that based the next browser release on a new engine called Gecko and a cross-platform user interface. Gecko's job was to read web pages and lay them out on screen. In plain terms, instead of patching the old code, a large part of the browser would be rebuilt.

Technically, the decision made sense: a cleaner foundation, better support for web standards and the ability to run on different operating systems. But the cost was time. In a world where the rival shipped new versions every year, years of work without an impressive product reaching users was a big risk.

Netscape is sold

During this period Netscape itself got a new owner. According to Mozilla's timeline, America Online (AOL) completed its acquisition of Netscape on 17 March 1999. The company that had started the project was no longer independent, and the browser's future was tied to the new owner's priorities.

For volunteers and staff it was a time of doubt. Would the new owner stay committed? Could open code survive without a company standing behind it?

Version 1.0 and a quiet market

Finally, on 5 June 2002, four years after the code release, Mozilla 1.0 shipped. Mozilla's history page says this version brought many improvements to the browser, email client and other parts of the suite, "but not many people were using it." By 2002, the same page notes, "well over 90%" of internet users were browsing with Internet Explorer.

From the outside, Netscape's gamble looked lost. But the same page points out something few noticed at the time: that year, Mozilla community members released the first version of a lightweight, separate browser called Phoenix. You'll read about it in the next part.

An independent home

The most important decision of this period was announced on 15 July 2003: the founding of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. According to the official announcement, AOL pledged $2 million to the foundation over two years, plus equipment, domain names, trademarks and related intellectual property. Mitchell Baker, who held the playful title "Chief Lizard Wrangler" at mozilla.org, became its president. According to Mozilla's official wiki, Mitch Kapor headed the board.

In the announcement, Baker said: "It has been a long-standing objective of the Mozilla team to create an independent organization so we can continue to lead and innovate." A project started by one company's decision had separated from that company's fate.

The turning point

The turning point of this part was the project separating from its owner. As long as Mozilla depended on one company, every change at that company threatened the project's future. An independent foundation broke that dependence, and it did so with the former owner's cooperation, not in opposition to it.

Lesson for businesses

Full rewrites are costly and risky. They may be technically right, but you have to ask whether users and the market will wait for you in the meantime.

Second, an independent legal structure can save a valuable project from ownership turmoil. If you have built something a community depends on, think about its future beyond the life of your own company.

Third, take small signals seriously. In a year when everyone was watching market numbers, the real innovation was taking shape in a small corner of the community.

Next: a small group decided to build a light, simple browser instead of a heavy suite. Its name changed several times before it finally became Firefox.

منابع / Sources

• "Timeline", MozillaWiki, n.d. — https://wiki.mozilla.org/Timeline
• "History of the Mozilla Project", Mozilla, n.d. — https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/history/details/
• "Mozilla.org announces launch of the Mozilla Foundation to lead open-source browser efforts", Mozilla Press Center, 2003-07-15 — https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2003/07/mozilla-org-announces-launch-of-the-mozilla-foundation-to-lead-open-source-browser-efforts/