There's a difference between Mozilla.org and Mozilla.com. These designs are for Mozilla.org, home of information about what Mozilla as an organization and the Mozilla foundation are about (as well as for developer resources, which I imagine would be a little less heavy handed than the landing page, regardless of what style is chosen) -- not for Mozilla.com, the product-focused site intended to handle download requests and information about Firefox and Thunderbird.
I think that, while these designs might be a little art heavy for some, they are on the right track, as when you're talking about Mozilla as a public organization and an umbrella of properties, it makes sense to have the sites talking about their broader goals and trying to educate people about the ideas behind the group. Mozilla.com can "sell you" on Firefox and Thunderbird. Mozilla.org can do the same for the principles and resources behind the products.
I get that they want to talk more about their principles, but ever heard of "show, don't tell"? If Mozilla really is a vibrant community, then the front page should demonstrate this by being useful to that community. Links to all the things that Mozilla developers do, or mailing lists, or whatever else.
People know when they are being sold. These web page designs are trying to sell. The "product" is that Mozilla is better because of its principles and because there's a community. I admire Mozilla a lot, but... newsflash: NOBODY CARES. Users don't care. Developers sort of care but they know about Mozilla already. If they are looking for donors, perhaps some deluded people think "community" is automatically great, but I'd think it would be more effective to talk about success stories and how provably influential Mozilla is. Once the potential donor is fished in, then talk about why this happens at Mozilla and not at Microsoft.
Even as a marketing website these designs are not very fresh nor do they get to the heart of what makes open source different. It's like someone said "global community" and the designer thought "global... global... how about a globe?" and "community... community... I know, constructivist graphics reminiscent of 1920s communism!" These designs are clueless about what a real software community is like.
"Show don't tell" is an extremely valid point. I guess I was pleased enough to see that it was so apparent that they told their designers what they were excited about and that it was not the sort of thing that a professionally designed marketing-style website tries to ever communicate, that I was blinded to the fact that I was being punched in the face by a lot of telling and not a lot of showing.
I think that, while these designs might be a little art heavy for some, they are on the right track, as when you're talking about Mozilla as a public organization and an umbrella of properties, it makes sense to have the sites talking about their broader goals and trying to educate people about the ideas behind the group. Mozilla.com can "sell you" on Firefox and Thunderbird. Mozilla.org can do the same for the principles and resources behind the products.