One basic question keeps coming up when I talk to people about my job at Mozilla (be it in a social setting or even in interviews with people applying for a job at Mozilla):
"What, Mozilla makes websites? I thought all you did was Firefox."
It's usually followed by a second question: "what, your websites are open source, too?"
The basic misconception here is that Firefox is Mozilla's mission. This is not true. Mozilla's mission is outlined, in broad strokes, in the Mozilla Manifesto, and the core of Mozilla's mission is to make the Internet better for the users (which goes beyond the Web and includes technologies like email, for example). And we believe that the best Internet for the users is one that inherently supports openness and choice.
Now don't get me wrong. Firefox is important. Because the Web is the most visible thing that people like you and I are using the Internet for nowadays, Firefox is our most important tool to make the Internet better for the users. But it is not enough. The Web is not television. On the Web, the users are also the producers.
And this is why Mozilla's mission goes beyond Firefox, beyond Thunderbird, deeply into the development and privacy space. A participatory Web based on Open standards, powerful APIs, along with the inherent freedom of choice and users' control over their own personal data are what Mozilla is all about. Apart from Firefox, don't be surprised to see Mozilla write state-of-the art, open source web applications and developer tools, be involved in the development of various open standards and play an important role in many other spaces that are relevant to the Internet today.