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The Mozilla Foundation has posted its financial statements and tax info for 2008, and a FAQ on the topic for those of us with short attention spans. While plowing through financial statements may not be the most exciting topic for Free and Open Source advocates, it's worth taking a look at what Mozilla has achieved as an independent project, where it's going, and how other projects might be able to emulate Mozilla's success to fund more and more FOSS development.

The good news is that, as of the end of their 2008 fiscal year, Mozilla is weathering the lousy economy pretty well. According to Mitchell Baker's post, reported revenues were up 5% from 2007, and the bulk of that revenue comes from the Firefox search functionality linking back to Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay. But Moz got dinged by the financial crisis in 2008, losing nearly $8 million of its long-term portfolio.

We've been following the beta releases of Mozilla's e-mail application Thunderbird 3 pretty closely over the last few months. It's a terrific free, cross-platform, open source alternative to the native e-mail apps that come bundled with Windows and Mac OS X. Thunderbird 3 also integrates nicely with Gmail, making it a great option for people who want to stick with their Web-based email but want the additional features of a desktop email app.

Mozilla released Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 this week, and it sports more than 200 changes over the past beta release, including new search tools, tabbed email messages, and better IMAP folder synchronization. I've been playing around with the new beta version for a couple of days now and I like what I've seen so far.

How to make Thunderbird more social. Postbox is an email client and address book app for OS X and Windows built on Mozilla Thunderbird code.

Snakebite network to allow open source developers to test projects on multiple platforms. It's a centralized server farm.

How Mozilla can save Windows Mobile. Its Fennec browser could result in? extensibility and durability on Microsoft's end.

Red Hat makes it easy to lose proprietary middleware for JBoss. The company has started offering migration tools to enable enterprises to go to JBoss.

Android moving to mobile Internet tablets, media players. A new branch--Cupcake--makes it possible. Also, Telenav GPS comes to the Android G1.

Which is the best netbook OS? Here is Ubuntu vs. XP vs. Windows 7. Also, which sites are mobile-friendly for small screens?

Red Hat's Google Web Toolkit play: The untold story of world domination.....

Sun upgrades OpenSolaris, signs OEM deal with Toshiba.....

The best Linux/FOSS podcasts of 2008.....

A leap forward--Mozilla's Thunderbird 3 E-mail beta.....

Amarok media player gets a facelift.....

In October, Mozilla witnessed a surge in Firefox 3's market share as it continued its plan to decommission Firefox 2 -- and the Gecko engine that powered it -- before the end of December.

For two weeks in October, Firefox 3 claimed 20% market share, something that web metrics company Net Applications predicted might happen within a month of the new version's June release. Stalled growth, and Chrome's appearance caused some backslide, but Firefox 3's pulse is getting stronger.

Perspectives, a Firefox extension from Carnegie Mellon, offers robust privacy features.....

Are there too many cooks in the kitchen, working on too many open source projects? Would consolidation help?.....

Open source gaming goes commercial with Wiz handheld.....

Postpath is an open source e-mail and collaboration server offering interoperability with Microsoft Exchange.....

Take a gander at Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail client.....