The Mozilla Foundation announced today that it has created a for-profit subsidiary to develop the potential of its increasingly popular Firefox browser, the New York Times reports. Foundation executives say gaining more users for Firefox will require offering service and support at a fee - and that is beyond the scope of the nonprofit organization. Mitchell Baker, a former Netscape lawyer who has led the Foundation, will be chief executive of the new entity, the Mozilla Corporation, which will not consider a public stock offering, she told the Times.

According to some estimates, Firefox is now used by as much as 10 percent of surfers, and Mozilla says more than 75 million copies have been downloaded.

Most of the 40 or so employees of the Foundation will shift to the corporation, but the operations of the Mozilla project, which develops Firefox, will be unchanged. "One issue the new structure may raise is whether it will alienate Firefox loyalists and volunteers who helped create the software," writes the Times.