Valleywag: Mitchell Baker

BusinessWeek scrapes Techmeme for its latest list

Paul Boutin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:00:00 PDT

Loic Le Meur! Gabe Rivera! Joi Ito! Don't feel bad if you've never heard of them. BusinessWeek.com's latest 25 Most Influential People on the Web is a mashup of billionaire powerbrokers with a randomized handful of those folks you run into at that same little tech conference that happens under a different name every month. I'm guessing they left out TechCrunch's Michael Arrington to create buzz. If you don't want to click through 27 pageviews on BusinessWeek's site, here's the entire list in alphabetical order:

Steve Ballmer
Mitchell Baker
Jeff Bezos
Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt
Jeff Clavier
Paul Graham
Arianna Huffington
Joi Ito
Steve Jobs
Jonathan Kaplan
Loic Le Meur
Jack Ma
Matt Mullenweg
Rupert Murdoch
Craig Newmark
Gabe Rivera
Kevin Rose
Sheryl Sandberg
Jon Stewart
Peter Thiel
Maria Thomas
Anssi Vanjoki
Jimmy Wales
Evan Williams
Jerry Yang

Mozilla's Mitchell Baker investigated over looks, not finances

Melissa Gira Grant — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:00:00 PDT

Mother Jones, the lefty politics magazine based in San Francisco, tarnishes its usually sterling reputation for tough investigative reporting with an interview with Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit behind the Firefox Web browser. The deepest "inside the Firefox's den" they venture? Exposing the arresting effects of Baker's mane of red hair on the mostly male-dominated rooms she commands. If Mother Jones were up to its usual hijinks, it would be asking Baker, instead, about rumors that Mozilla faces a $14 million back tax bill after flunking its latest audit.

Mozilla hasn't filed financials since its 2006 report, when it just squeaked by a rule that allowed it to avoid disbursing more of the money that has gushed into its coffers from a lucrative search-referral deal with Google.

Since nonprofits like Mozilla are allowed to file their finances on a downright sluggish schedule, it will be some time before we know what's really happening with the browser maker. But it has been holding onto a large chunk of change just in case it faced a challenge over its nonprofit status, and we've heard that the latest review of Mozilla's finances didn't hold good news. Wouldn't that have made for a much interesting conversation than whether Baker considers herself a geek sex symbol?

(Photo via Mother Jones)

Mitchell Baker earns her $500,000-a-year salary

Owen Thomas — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:00:00 PDT

Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich, right, watches skeptically as russet-haired Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker attempts to persuade a crowd at the browser nonprofit's 10th anniversary that it has yet to hit its peak. Leave your caption in the comments. (Photo by Randal Alan Smith)

Mozilla's 10th anniversary made Valleywag feel old

Jackson West — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:20:00 PDT

Mozilla's 10th anniversary party at 111 Minna last night felt a little like a high school reunion for the kids who didn't go to their high school reunion. The Mozilla Foundation, maker of the Firefox browser, feigned poverty by renting just half the gallery space and serving up crudités and issuing one drink ticket per guest, only later splurging by opening up the bar. There was some awkward dancing to Soft Cell's "Tainted Love," old jean jackets embroidered with the Netscape logo, a gargantuan chocolate cake and a photo booth. Many of the oldsters who were around when CSS was just a dream and Ajax was still used to scrub toilets also traded reminiscences of Burning Man, tech society's annual prom. Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker earned part of her $500,000 salary by giving a brief speech. And sign-toter Frank Chu showed up, uninvited but always welcome. But the talk of the party was the man who wasn't there.

That was Jamie Zawinski, the Netscape engineer who helped "free the lizard" by open-sourcing Mozilla, even though he apparently offered up his SoMa nightclub, DNA Lounge, for the event. Zawinski did, however, build a time capsule of the early Web — including early iterations of the Mosaic browser and website — for those of you who couldn't make the party but would like to wallow in the nostalgia. Who did show up? Dozens who RSVP'd after Valleywag's calendar listing yesterday, forcing Mozilla to open up the bar when the drink tickets ran out. Photos, including our own Owen Thomas making nice with Anglosexual Flickr engineer Cal Henderson, by Randal Alan Smith.

Early Netscape engineer admits to owning the Mozilla M5

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:40:00 PDT

Yesterday we speculated that a BMW M5 with a "Mozilla" vanity plate might belong to Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker, who could afford the $80,000 car with her $500,000-a-year salary. We were wrong. "I will admit to it being mine," Lou Montulli, one of Netscape's founding engineers, commented on the post. On his personal site, Montulli admits to more.

I'm largely to blame for several innovations on the web including, cookies, the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, proxy authentication, HTTP byte ranges, HTTPS over SSL, and encouraging the implementation of animated GIFS into the browser.

Nice little CV, but other commenters still want to know why Montulli went for an 500-horse BMW M5 instead of a Porsche. Montulli says its because the M5 is a family car. "The key feature of the M5 is the fact that it has 4 doors and seats 4 comfortably. If you look closely at the picture you may be able to see the kids car seats." So you're a family man, Lou. Fine. That excuse works around here. Just don't try it on Calacanis.

What kind of $80,000 car did your Firefox bug fix buy?

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:40:24 PDT

What kind of car does Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker drive? Not sure. But here's one possibility — a 500 horsepower BMW M5 tagged with the vanity plate "Mozilla." Sure, the car costs about $80,000, but that's plenty affordable for Baker. Remember, she earns $500,000 a year overseeing free labor.

Firefox 3.0 open for (very profitable) business

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:31:16 PST

Mozilla is looking for guinea pigs to try out the new version of its browser, Firefox 3 Beta 1. Mozilla calls itself a "foundation" and its slogan is "Good for the Web. Good for the World." But you know better than that. Mozilla topper Mitchell Baker makes $500,000-plus a year and Mozilla's for-profit wing brought in $56 million in revenues last year. In other words, no one should feel obligated by a sense of charity to download the new beta software. Baker & Co. could afford to pay for some actual QA engineers.

Mozilla chief makes $500,000-plus a year

Paul Boutin — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:45:32 PST

Mitchell Baker, who joined Netscape in 1994 and now serves as both chairwoman of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation and CEO of the for-profit Mozilla Corporation, clocks over a half million in annual salary and benefits, according to a New York Times report. That's more than the $285,000 the foundation, which holds $74 million in assets, says it gave away in grants in 2006. Baker correctly points out that $500K is less than most major Valley CEOs make. I'm pretty sure Wall Street Journal gadget reviewer Walt Mossberg pulls in more. Still, the next time one of you bright-eyed kids writes in to say I owe it to the community to blog up Mozilla and advocate open-source projects? I already gave at the office. (Photo by Jeff Carlick/Bloomberg News)