this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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Mozilla Corporation is a corporation, and subsidiary to the Mozilla Foundation.
But what do they do?
Mainly develop software, like the Firefox browser.
waif can a non-profit run a for a profit??
Yesm It is weird, but it would be impossible for a foundation to develop complex software like a Web browser. Engineers cost.
i don't think konqueror, gnome's web browser, or abrowser are tied to for-profit entities, though i could be mistaken
They are skins over someone else's browser.
KDE's Konqueror uses Qt WebEngine, which is developed by the Qt Company and is based on Google:s Chromium.
GNOME's Epiphany uses WebKit, developed by Apple.
Trisquel's Abrowser is a rebranded Mozilla Firefox.
Ironically, all of these things except Abrowser are based on Konqueror’s original engine, KHTML, so Konqueror was actually the OG engine. KHTML was forked to WebKit, which was forked to Blink, which became the underpinnings of Qt WebEngine, which Konqueror now uses.
This is also why KHTML still appears in the user agent strings for all of these engines, but back in the day the Gecko engine used in Mozilla products was already a thing and KHTML was the alternative to that, hence “KHTML, like Gecko”.
KHTML was truly a milestone in Free Software history. Immense respect to KDE developers.
webkit is not developed by apple, they're just using it for safari and contributing surprisingly little to the actual project
Yes. People got to eat.
They're legit companies, but they do not operate with the goal of profit. Profit is something they may make, and in many cases it's good so they can survive losses of funding or the like.
It also means they get certain tax advantages because they are not solely focused on profit
Yup, you can run a non-profit foundation with a for-profit corporation as a subsidiary, because capitalism I guess.