Mozilla is a global, non-profit community dedicated to the mission of building an Internet that is “knowable,” interoperable and open to everyone. When the Internet is knowable it is transparent, we can see it and understand it; we can know more. When the Internet is interoperable we have more opportunity to try new things; we can do more. When it is open to everyone it becomes “ours,” and we can build things that support the full range of human life, from economic to social to public to individual; we can do better.
When we use the word “open” we mean all of these things. We expect these traits in all aspects of online life. We work to represent these traits in how we organize and operate as Mozilla. We are organized as a non-profit so we can put these elements first, always. We seek to influence the Web as a whole towards user-control, towards the openness that builds accountability and trustworthiness, and individual choice and empowerment.
We build products, such as Firefox and Firefox OS, to make our values concrete and part of daily online life. We empower global communities, so more of the people who share our mission have the knowledge and experience and credibility to move the mission forward. We do this by deepening our volunteer engagement in our core products, and by encouraging them to develop their own projects. We teach and learn, both through our product development and through dedicated teaching and learning programs such as Webmaker. Ultimately we aim to shape environments, from the consumer Internet experience to public policy to learning environments.
Mozilla’s direction and decisions are based on our mission of making the Internet understandable, interoperable and open to all, while moving the Web forward as a platform for creation and consumption. We recently released our State of Mozilla and audited financial statements for 2012. That generally sparks comments on our finances, which of course makes sense. The finances are important, they are what allows us to support our work at the scale at which we need to operate and to advocate for the Web and the billions of people online. For us, however, financial return is not our main organizing principle. Our stakeholders are our global communities, the people who use our projects and ultimately all those interested in the health and openness of the Internet. The key return on investment for these stakeholders is the degree to which we move Internet life towards being knowable, interoperable and open to everyone.