Baker was trained as a lawyer. She coordinates business and policy issues and sits on both the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors and the Mozilla Corporation Board of Directors. In 2005, Time included her in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.[4][5]
In November 1994, Baker was hired as one of the first employees of the legal department of Netscape Communications Corporation.[9] Reporting directly to CEOJim Barksdale, she jointly set up the initial department. She was responsible for intellectual property protection and legal issues relating to product development, reporting to the General Counsel. She also created and managed the Technology Group of the Legal Department. She was involved with the Mozilla project from the outset, writing both the Netscape Public License and the Mozilla Public License. In February 1999, Baker became the general manager of mozilla.org, the division of Netscape that coordinated the Mozilla open source project. In 2001, she was fired during a round of layoffs at America Online, by then the parent of Netscape.[10] Despite this, she continued to serve as general manager of mozilla.org on a volunteer basis.[11]
In November 2002, Baker was employed by the Open Source Applications Foundation, helping to guide the group's community relations and taking a seat on OSAF's Board of Directors.[12]
Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation
[edit]Baker in 2008Baker telling the story of Mozilla's founding in 2012
Baker was instrumental in the creation of the Mozilla Foundation, an independent non-profit that was launched on July 15, 2003, as America Online shut down the Netscape browser division and drastically scaled back its involvement with the Mozilla project. Baker became the President of the Mozilla Foundation and was appointed to the five-person Board of Directors.[4]
When the Mozilla Corporation was launched as a taxable subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation on August 3, 2005, Baker was named the CEO of the new entity. In addition, she joined the Mozilla Corporation's Board of Directors, though she also kept her seat on the Mozilla Foundation's board, as well as her role as Chairperson.
On January 8, 2008, Mozilla announced that Baker, while retaining her role as Chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation, would no longer serve as CEO of the Corporation, and that MoCo's Chief Operating Officer John Lilly would take over this role.[13] The reasons cited for this change was Mozilla's rapid growth, which made it difficult for executives to continue to take on many different roles.[14] In April 2020 she was named CEO of Mozilla Corporation again.[15]
On February 8, 2024, Mozilla announced that Baker would be stepping down as CEO to "focus on AI and internet safety"[16] as chair of the Mozilla Foundation.
In 2018, Baker received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, a 400% payrise since 2008.[17] Over the same period, Firefox market share was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."[18]
In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, Baker's salary rose to in excess of $3 million. In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5 million,[19] and again to nearly $7 million in 2022[20]). In August 2020 the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues, after previously laying off roughly 70 in January (prior to the pandemic). Baker blamed this on the COVID-19 pandemic, despite revenue rising to record highs in 2019, and market share shrinking.[21]
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Quotations from Wikiquote
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