Iain Buchanan schreef: > On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 13:51 +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote: > >>It also assumes that Mozilla are making a profit from this. Being >>non-profit doesn't preclude any sort of income to cover costs. Gentoo is >>non-profit but sells CDs, mugs and t-shirts, as well as accepting >>donations. > > > The website http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html#ffox was saying that > sure, their (mozilla's) 2003 revenue of 2.3 million seems reasonable, > but their reported (from insider information) 2004 revenue of $30 > million was not acceptable. >
"Not acceptable"? The only basis on which making 27 million dollars could possibly be considered unacceptable (especially in the US) is because it would mean that they *did* in fact make a profit, and their not-for-profit status was at risk. But that doesn't mean it was "intentional", as it were.... Maybe a gazillion people bought the CD. Maybe a gazillion *companies* bought the CD. What were they supposed to do, say "oh, no, I couldn't possibly accept this payment, that would be *profit* <shudder>"? > > If the mozilla foundation really is "restructuring by spinning off the > Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit subsidiary" then time will tell. They > can't delay "Form 990" for ever. And if my theory holds water in any way, then the Mozilla Foundation really would have had no choice but to spin off a for-profit subsidiary... after all, if the money is rolling in (via perfectly legitimate and socially acceptable means), it has to go somewhere, and it can't go to the N-F-P foundation beyond a certain level. I find it unbelievable that, after all the effort Netscape and then Mozilla have expended to keep this browser alive, not to mention make it viable, much less successful, the fact that they have managed to overcome all these odds and trounce their opponents to the extent that they are able to turn a profit (when they had never expected/intended to), somehow manages to give the last stalwart detractors an audible voice. I would have thought that the cheers of celebration would have drowned them out some time ago. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
