Legal/New Business Ideas

Project summary

Beyond creating technical innovations that keep users at the center of their Web experiences, we're exploring new business models and revenue initiatives that will help sustain the Mozilla project financially for years to come.

We want to approach this in ways that are consistent with our values and which make sense for users, developers, and partners. We also want to try this undertaking in an open way to get feedback early and often. This is new for most of us, and there will be some discovery along the way. But we want to give it a try.

This will create a dedicated communication channel that can be used to evaluate new revenue initiatives, their commercial and technical feasibility, and prioritization. This process would capture feedback from a range of stakeholders including the existing Mozilla community, partners, and domain experts. As ideas are proposed by members of the public and the Mozilla team, they will be measured against set criteria, including (but not limited to) user benefit and ROI.

This public undertaking might work in the following ways:

• Mozilla creates an open channel for the proposal, discussion, and analysis of novel ideas that may be worthy of investment;
• Contributors share concepts;
• These concepts are then evaluated in a structured way using consistent frameworks;
• Many will not pass the vetting process and will get discarded;
• Those that remain and which show the most promise are then prioritized.

Image credit: Emily Goligoski & Noun Project

The results should be a set of sound business ideas that satisfy our own values, have undergone community review, and that are available for implementation in products (through partners or even via WebFwd investments). It’s important to note that projects will not be realized just because they’ve gone through the process; yet potential opportunities and concerns will have been uncovered and addressed along the way. And, as always, we will look to preserve user choice and privacy.

While the format of this project is still being determined, we hope it may grow into a chance to surface — and expand upon — strong business ideas that can fuel the Mozilla mission into the future. We'll use this wiki as the project page until we determine the best tools for the project (potentially including mailing lists, forums, and/or community platforms).

Description

• Create a dedicated channel within WebFwd to capture new opportunities.
• Create public framework to capture and evaluate new business proposals.
• Provide an open channel for the proposal and analysis of novel ideas that may be worthy of investment. Outside contributors share concepts that are then discussed and vetted by members of the public as well as Mozilla employees. Ideas that are determined to be the most feasible and exciting as business opportunities then progress to be realized.

Submitting project suggestions

Please share your concepts using the following SurveyGizmo form. Please do not submit partnership or patent-restricted platform initiatives. We appreciate detailed descriptions of how the concept adheres to and promotes the Mozilla mission.

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1037117/Mozilla-Project-Suggestion