Mozilla Messaging

MOZILLA KEY MESSAGES
The goal of this document is to empower people who want to tell the Mozilla story. This information is intended to help when people are asked broader questions about the Mozilla project.  Many people have told us that they aren’t comfortable creating their own answers that might be seen as speaking for the project as a whole, or that they would like some information to help them formulate a more complete answer.  

With this in mind, here are some commonly asked questions about Mozilla, accompanied by (hopefully) useful responses.  Feel free to say these in your own words, and of course to use them in ways that reflect your experience with the project.  

WHAT IS MOZILLA?
•    Mozilla is a public benefit organization dedicated to improving the Internet experience for people everywhere
•    Mozilla is a community of tens of thousands of passionate people who have joined together to create, share and improve great software
•    Mozilla believes that free and open source software is fundamental to maintaining the Internet as a global public resource

WHAT DOES MOZILLA DO?
•    Mozilla is the home of the award-winning Web browser, Firefox
•    Mozilla provides a secure Web experience users can trust
•    Mozilla makes free, open source software and nurtures a community where people around the world are encouraged to participate
•    Mozilla provides a platform that enables software developers and entrepreneurs to create new applications and businesses
 
WHAT IS THE PUBLIC BENEFIT MOZILLA PROVIDES?
•    Mozilla builds social and civic value into the Internet to complement economic value.
•    Mozilla runs a transparent business, making public information regarding its product roadmap, security issues, and community involvement.
•    Mozilla advocates for users on the Web, leading and applying pressure on other actors to do good.
•    By cultivating an open, free and participatory Internet, Mozilla:
        - Provides people with world-class, open software for browsing the Internet
        - Provides a platform for software developers to build new applications
        - Organizes a community that participates in making the Internet the best it can be
        - Invigorates industry-wide innovation

WHO IS THE MOZILLA COMMUNITY?
•    Mozilla is a community of tens of thousands of people, including both employees and volunteers.  The Mozilla community includes:
        - Entrepreneurs
        - Academics
        - Employees
        - Technologists
        - Students
•    The Mozilla community contributes time and work to:
        - Identify and help fix security bugs
        - Contribute millions of lines of code
        - Translate Mozilla products into almost 50 languages
        - Create new add-ons for Firefox and Thunderbird
        - Market and spread Firefox
•    Mozilla is one of the largest open-source software development projects in existence

HOW DOES MOZILLA PROVIDE A SECURE WEB EXPERIENCE?
•    Mozilla has an unrelenting focus on security based on open source principles, ensuring that security bugs are quickly identified and fixed
        - Mozilla has a vast community of security experts who advocate for general consumers.  These experts design, develop, review, test and deploy security features and fixes.
        - With a vast community dedicated to keeping Firefox secure, Mozilla is able to find and fix bugs faster
        - Users get patches faster: 90% of active users updated within six days
        - Mozilla has raised the bar: There was exploit code available for known, unpatched critical security flaws in Firefox for a total of only nine days in 2006, v. 284 days for IE (Washington Post)

WHAT IS THE MOZILLA PLATFORM?
•    The open source platform provided by Mozilla allows programmers and entrepreneurs to build new applications, extensions and launch businesses
•    Successful businesses that got their start with the Mozilla platform:
        - StumbleUpon – 3 million users, acquired by eBay for $75 million
        - Del.icio.us – 1 million users, acquired by Yahoo!
        - Joost – 1 million downloads, built by Skype founders

COMPANY TIMELINE
•    The Mozilla Project traces its roots to Netscape where the open source project was formed in February 1998; the source code was released on March 31, 1998
•    The Mozilla Foundation was founded as a nonprofit organization in July 2003, with approximately $3 million from a variety of sources, to guide and foster the various Mozilla project
•    On November 9, 2004, Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released
•    Firefox downloads surpassed 50 million in April 2005, downloads surpassed 400 million in September 2007
•    The Mozilla Foundation created Mozilla Corporation in August 2005 to develop, market and distribute Mozilla products including Firefox

FAST FACTS
•    Number downloads of Firefox to date: over 400 million
•    Current market share: 15% in North America , 20% worldwide
•    Number of active Firefox users: approx 120 million
•    Number of languages Firefox is currently translated into: approx 50 (IE7 launched in only 1 language)
•    Size of community: More than 1000 code contributors and tens of thousands of testers, designers, writers, and more
•    Number of full time Mozilla employees: 125 employees
•    Headquarters: Mountain View, CA
•    Offices: Paris, Tokyo, Beijing, Auckland, Toronto

FIREFOX
•    Firefox is the revolutionary, open source browser that has changed the Web by making it safer for everyone and providing a platform for mass innovation
•    Keeps you secure on the Web, protecting you from online scams
•    Allows you to personalize your browser with thousands of useful add-ons
•    Firefox stands for openness, innovation and freedom on the Internet
•    Delivers the best browsing experience to the widest set of people