More on Mozilla and Capitalism
Mitchell Baker responded to my previous post, and like her I’m happy to see this vital and challenging issue get a proper public airing. However, I don’t think it’s correct to portray this as a stark choice between two diametrically opposed options: red-in-tooth capitalism and peace-and-love open source. In fact, this was precisely the point of my post. Too many people see a dichotomy where there is actually a continuum.
Even capitalism is, after all, a relatively new innovation. We’ve already come a long way from the robber barons of the 19th century. And it’s well-documented that European (particularly German) companies give a lot more credence to “stakeholder” rather than “shareholder” capitalism, taking into account the interests of employees, customers and the general public as well as those who actually own stock. It is therefore unfair to boil my post down into the question of some set of people getting or not getting rich.
I do think that financial incentivization is one consideration. Mitchell points out correctly that the ethos of an open source community is also a powerful incentive for participation. My question was: to what extent can we have the best of both worlds? Access to external capital is also an important factor. This might seem irrelevant at a time when Mozilla is awash with cash, but doesn’t it bother anyone how dependent on Google the company has become? If Google were to pull out tomorrow, others would take up some of the slack, but presumably not all of it. Would the result be massive layoffs at Mozilla Corporation? A well-funded (potentially even public) Firefox Corporation would not have this problem.
But the core of my argument is actually more technical than financial. I totally agree that “we need a public benefit aspect to the Internet.” However, I contend that this role is amply filled by the Mozilla Foundation and the platform. What percentage of Firefox’s code is actually specific to Firefox? 10%? 5%? 1%? The implication is that, should my hypothetical Firefox Corporation get all evil at some point in the future, the core asset (the platform) would be available to anyone who wants to create a less evil competitor. This doesn’t seem that far-fetched considering that there are already three other prominent web browsers (Seamonkey, Camino and Flock) based on the Mozilla codebase.
In summary, I’m not questioning the sweeping societal benefit of community-driven open source in general and Mozilla in particular. I am questioning what I see as unwavering adherence to this model. There would be numerous advantages to making Firefox, which to my mind is more about brand and marketing than technology, into an independent corporation. Keeping the Foundation intact as the guardian of the core technical assets would serve to hedge the risk of unraveling the tremendous accomplishments already chalked up by Mozilla and Firefox. This isn’t about a small group of people trying to get rich. It’s about putting into place the most efficient overarching structure to achieve our common goals of choice and innovation on the internet.
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