The founder of Sweden’s largest web hosting company, Loopia, has launched a scheme to raise one million dollars for the owners of the Firefox web browser.

Based on the ‘Milliondollarhomepage.com’ format, Sam Nurmi, the company’s founder, will launch an advertising page called ‘HelpFirefox.com’ designed to sponsor the Firefox web browser. HelpFirefox.com’s one million pixels will be sold for US 1 dollar each and the funds generated passed to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, which develops Firefox. A number of companies (Active24, Crystone, Eastpoint, Ipwalk, J Sulo, Loopia, Nendea, NU Domain, Quality Unlimited, SEDO.com and Troxo) have already purchased substantial amounts of advertising on the site.

"Today, Firefox is the best browser on the market. Its developers are doing an incredible job, but for Firefox to be able to surpass Internet Explorer with its unlimited budget, external funding is necessary. We will give them that," said Nurmi. He added, "Here's the opportunity for MySQL, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and all others who want to support open source to make a difference."

Loopia relies entirely on Firefox and other open source-software and the company has a tradition of actively supporting open-source ventures. "A monopoly is a bad thing, particularly when it came about through unfair competition," said Nurmi. "Open source applications, on the other hand, are a positive and natural phenomenon, in an evolution directed towards cutting the costs of goods and services. Firefox is based on everybody's support and free exchange of ideas."