Mozilla Foundation, the organization behind the browser Firefox, is letting nearly 30 percent of its staff leave. This round of layoffs follows earlier cuts within the Firefox team.
Mozilla Foundation is cutting its staff considerably. The nonprofit, whose best-known product is the Firefox browser, confirmed to The Register that about 30 percent of its workforce will have to leave.
The Mozilla group consists of several divisions. Mozilla Corporation is the branch that runs the Firefox browser. You also have Mozilla Ventures, Mozilla.ai, a research lab, and MZLA, which runs the e-mail client Thunderbird. All subsidiaries are run from the nonprofit parent organization.
Not for profit, but still a little
Although Mozilla is far from the first tech company to have people leave by 2024, things have been rumbling within the organization for some time. In February, the Firefox branch let some 60 people leave and the CEO stepped aside. The group’s slogan reads “Internet for people, not for profit,” but the company still needs more revenue to achieve that mission.
The new CEO has the difficult task of bringing in a bigger share of the advertising cake without renouncing that philosophy. A new system Firefox rolled out over the summer to replace cookies is not as privacy-friendly as Mozilla is selling it, according to activists.
Mozilla confirms that the layoffs will have no impact on the organization’s principles and way of working. It continues to pursue its mission to strive for an open Internet, a spokesperson stressed to The Register.