Last month on the 31st, Mozilla turned 15, marking the creation of Project Mozilla. Actually speaking, Mozilla project was created much earlier than that, but it was when the Netscape released the Navigator’s source code to public – one of the first ever move by a corporation to open source its repository.
15 years and how! Contrary to the popular belief that was held at that time, it was Mozilla which proved people that you may open source your code and still come out with something best. Not just the Firefox browser. Mozilla has Thunderbird, Bugzilla and now the latest Firefox OS to its credit. And thanks to the recent Webmaker initiative that Mozilla has brought out, which has helped millions of people learn, how fun creating stuff on the web can turn out to be.
On this occasion, Mozilla has released a list of 15 facts that it takes pride on.
- The Mozilla Project launched at Netscape on March 31, 1998, to offer choice to users and drive innovation on the Web.
- Proudly non-profit, Mozilla makes products like Firefox with a mission to keep the power of the Web in the hands of users everywhere.
- More than 10,000 contributors expressed their support for our mission by paying for a full-page ad in The New York Times on the day Firefox 1.0 launched in 2004.
- Today Mozilla has contributors on every continent, including Antartica (where Firefox is used by 80% of people).
- Firefox Add-Ons allow you to customize and take control of your Web experience. Over 3 billion of them have been downloaded by users so far.
- Mozilla is leading the way in online privacy with browser innovations like Do Not Track and Collusion that give users greater control of their personal data.
- Our global community has helped translate Firefox into 89 languages, making the browser available to more than 95% of the world’s population.
- In 2008, 8,002,530 people chose Firefox in a single day to set a Guinness World Record for “Most Downloads of a Software Application in 24 Hours.”
- The Mozilla Festival is our largest annual event, bringing together hundreds of creative minds to realize the full power and potential of the Web.
- Mozilla Webmaker works to create a more Web-literate planet, providing tools and projects to help people take greater control of their online lives.
- The Mozilla WebFWD program helps open source innovators and entrepreneurs create products and solutions that empower users to push the Web forward.
- The Mozilla Developer Network is a community-driven Web resource that provides the best documentation, tutorials and tools available to more than 2 million visitors each month.
- Mozilla works to care for and preserve the Web as a shared public resource for the benefit of everyone.
- In 2013, Mozilla is launching Firefox OS to unleash the full power of the Web on smartphones and once again offer control and choice to a new generation of people coming online.
- The work Mozilla does is made possible thanks to tens of thousands of individual donors and volunteers — people like you who believe the Web should remain open and accessible to all.
Mozilla has always put its users and web before anybody else, fighting to keep the internet a free and a safe place to live. Mozilla, we hope you continue to do so, in the many more years to come and 4Cast wishes you a very happy birthday 🙂