The Mozilla Foundation will lay off about a third of its employees. The nonprofit that oversees the company that develops the Firefox web browser insists it will continue advocacy, even if its approach changes.
“The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all,” Mozilla Vice President of Communications Brandon Borrman said in a statement on Tuesday to the Register.
“That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward. We’re not sharing a specific number, but it represents about 30 percent of the current team.” However, the company listed its employee headcount as 60 as of November 2023. The Register understands that 36 jobs could be lost, as the current employee headcount is close to 120.
Read More: Meta Lays Off Employees as Part of Restructuring Goals
The Mozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit advocacy organization that includes subsidiaries Mozilla Corporation (Firefox browser and other consumer products); Mozilla Ventures (a leading technology investment fund); Mozilla.ai, an AI research and development lab; and MZLA, which manages the Thunderbird email client.
The Foundation’s advocacy efforts are guided by the Mozilla Manifesto, which calls for the Internet to remain an open, accessible, global public resource. As such, it conducts political advocacy, privacy research, and online campaigns in support of its stated mission.
This reorganization will impact the Mozilla Foundation and may limit the organization’s advocacy efforts to some extent. “We want to clarify that the restructuring has not dropped advocacy; on the contrary, advocacy is still a central tenet of Mozilla Foundation’s work and we are in the process of revisiting our approach to it,” Bormann said.
An earlier version of the statement — sent to The Register and then revised — included a broader commitment. The original wording suggested that advocacy would be part of every Mozilla Foundation activity. The adjusted wording suggests that advocacy efforts will be scaled back.
Mozilla Corporation laid off about 60 employees in February, roughly 5% of the software maker’s workforce. These cuts followed then-CEO Mitchell Baker’s decision to step down and return to his previous role as executive chair of the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla Corporation’s current CEO is Laura Chambers, who is leading the Firefox maker into a new revenue stream: advertising.
In its 2021 and 2022 consolidated financial statements [PDF], the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiaries reported financial assets of more than $1.2 billion, up from about $1.1 billion in 2021. Royalties (mainly fees from search engines) fell from nearly $530. Subscription and advertising revenues for the period reached about $76 million, down from about $57 million in 2021.
