It has been a wild first decade for Mozilla. Despite having had a staff of fewer than 100 for most of its existence, the grassroots organization managed to break Microsoft’s lock on the Web browser market. If not for Mozilla’s popular Firefox browser, Microsoft’s software might have come to dominate the Internet the way it does computers. It’s an achievement that demonstrates how an open-standards software project guided by an unusual mix of social and business principles can have a huge impact on the technology industry.

Over the past four years, Firefox has steadily chomped away at Microsoft’s commanding share of the market. When Firefox was launched in late 2004, about 95 percent of the world’s Web surfers were using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer [IE]. As of May, Firefox’s worldwide market share was 18.4 percent, while Internet Explorer’s stood at 73.8 percent, with Apple’s Safari browser accounting for most of the rest, according to Web metrics company Net Applications.

While Microsoft’s lead remains quite wide, Mozilla’s gains have leveled the playing field. The growing strength of Firefox as an alternative to IE has convinced most Web site owners to use open Internet software standards adopted by international bodies rather than Microsoft’s proprietary technologies. “They broke the monopoly. They were the provocateur, the disrupter,” says Lisa Gansky, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and former head of Ofoto, a photography Web site now owned by Kodak.

Branching Way Out

As it gains ground on Microsoft in browsers, Mozilla is also branching out into other markets. The company expects to deliver a version of Firefox for mobile phones before the end of the year. And earlier this year, it created a separate unit named Mozilla Messaging to focus on e-mail products.

In spite of the company’s success, it takes nothing for granted. The immense popularity of Adobe’s Flash…