AOL may have fired some Netscape/Mozilla staff but they also committed 2 million dollars to help launch the Mozilla Foundation read the press release here.
The general purpose of the Mozilla Foundation:
“The Mozilla Foundation is a new non-profit organization that will serve as the home for mozilla.org. As before, mozilla.org will coordinate and encourage the development and testing of Mozilla code. The Mozilla Foundation will also promote the distribution and adoption of our flagship applications based on that code. AOL, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, and other companies will continue to support Mozilla through the Foundation.” [Mozilla Foundation]