Mozilla: We're more than just Firefox, you know

Although Mozilla has never limited its stated goals to merely building an open-source browser, there's no doubt that Firefox has been the highest-profile project from the Mozilla Foundation. But now, with skyrocketing mobile connectivity and Google's shockingly fast ascent in the browser world, Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher restated yesterday what the nonprofit organization is about, where it's going, and why you should care.

Ascher noted that the first few years of the Mozilla mission have borne useful fruit. Internet Explorer may still be dominant, but it doesn't command anywhere near as much of the market as it used to. Firefox was the first to prove not only that there was widespread popular interest in an alternative, but that alternative could be accompanied by modern Web standards, safer browsing, faster site loading, and, he wrote, "zarro boogs."

But now, he says, Mozilla and the Web have reached a critical turning point because, "[t]he browser isn't the only strategic front in the struggle to promote and maintain people's sovereignty over their online lives." That's more than an allusion to the complicated and myriad ways that we get online these days, it references the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto, a guiding mission statement that the organization has used since its inception. But the organization has also seen some high-profile departures this year, and it's hard to imagine that those haven't taken an impact on the group's direction.