In
an expected move, America Online yesterday laid off the last remaining
Netscape employees paid to contribute to Mozilla. Although AOL sacked
or reassigned most of the Netscape browser division back in July, they
agreed to continue employing Asa Dotzler, Brendan Eich and David Baron
for a couple of months as part of a transition team to keep things
running smoothly as mozilla.org reduces its dependence on AOL. This
transition has involved moves such as setting up the non-profit Mozilla
Foundation and migrating mozilla.org servers from Netscape hosting to
services provided by meer.net.
AOL has not completely
ended its involvement with the Mozilla project yet — the transition is
not entirely complete and the online giant has promised to give the
Mozilla Foundation $1 million in addition to the $1 million donated so
far. All the members of the transition team are expected to be hired by
the Mozilla Foundation in the next few weeks.
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