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AOL laid off 50 Mozilla Hackers

AOL, mother company of Netscape, cut the remaining Netscape staffs who working on Mozilla web browser. Is this something related to the Microsoft’s settlement with AOL months ago? Then AOL suddenly found it isn’t justified to support the development of Mozilla?

The laid-off is sad for the people involved, there are still jobs out there for these smart people and some would continue the commitment towards Mozilla development. The impact would be more on the Mozilla group, because Netscape isn’t paying developers to develop Mozilla anymore. According to CNet News

The layoffs come as the loose Mozilla.org group, which had overseen the open-source development efforts of the Mozilla browser, transforms itself into a nonprofit foundation. The foundation is funded in large part by a $2 million donation from AOL and $300,000 from Lotus founder Mitch Kapor.

Mitchell Baker, who will be president of the new Mozilla Foundation, said the group would use part of its seed funding to hire “a core group of people,” which would include project managers and “key technical contributors” to the open-source project. Some of those people are expected to come from Netscape’s ranks. A broad group of independent volunteers and staffers at other companies are expected to continue working on the open-source browser effort, however.

It’s time to cut the link between Netscape and Mozilla, it’s time for some group to stand up and promote Mozilla for end user (which the role Netscape used to play).