Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Cloud
    • Cloud
    • IT Management

    Mozilla’s CEO Choice Stirs Up Resistance From Employees, Firefox Users

    By
    Michelle Maisto
    -
    April 1, 2014
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin
      Mozilla

      As if battling Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google’s Chrome browser weren’t enough, now Firefox browser producer Mozilla has stirred up controversy with its recent appointment of Brendan Eich as the open-source software organization’s CEO.

      News that, in 2008, Eich made a $1,000 contribution to the campaign for Proposition 8, an amendment to ban same-sex marriage in California, has made him a wildly controversial figure.

      As the Guardian recently phrased it, Mozilla positions itself as a “global community of people who believe that openness, innovation and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet … [and so] it feels counterintuitive to the organization’s aims to let such things go unchecked.”

      Mozilla’s employees and supporters have taken to Twitter to express their disapproval of Eich’s new role. (He was previously Mozilla’s CTO, in addition to being the inventor of JavaScript.) In addition, dating site OKCupid made headlines March 31 for taking the step of telling its users that it prefers they not use Mozilla’s software to access its service.

      “Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OKCupid,” the company said in a message on its site, the BBC first reported.

      After the appointment of Eich, three members of the Mozilla board resigned, The Wall Street Journal reported March 28. Two of them, Gary Kovacs and John Lilly, were former Mozilla CEOs; the third, Ellen Siminoff, is the CEO of the online education startup Shmoop.

      (According to a later report from Ars Technica, the members left for unrelated reasons. Two of them, a Mozilla spokesperson said in a statement, had been “planning to leave for some time,” while the third planned to leave after the CEO search was complete.)

      Their departures leave Mozilla with now three board members: co-founder Mitchell Baker; Katharina Borchert, CEO of German news site Spiegel Online; and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn.

      Eich tried to patch up the damage in a March 26 post on the Mozilla blog, not apologizing for his action or explaining his stance, but promising to do all he can to foster equality for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) employees at Mozilla and to make them feel welcome.

      He promised an “active commitment to equality in everything we do, from employment to events to community-building”; to work with LGBT communities and allies; to back Mozilla’s ongoing commitment to anti-discrimination policies and company guidelines and the “spirit that underlies all of these”; and his personal commitment to “work on new initiatives to reach out to those who feel excluded or who have been marginalized in ways that makes their contributing to Mozilla and to open source difficult.”

      He additionally asked for Mozilla to let him “show, not tell” his support, and expressed his “sorrow at having caused pain.”

      A petition on Credo.com demanding that Eich “reverse his anti-gay stance, resign or be replaced” now has more than 70,800 signatures toward the 100,000 it’s hoping for.

      “The people at Mozilla and their massive community of users deserve better than a leader that advocates for inequality and hate,” said the petition. “CEO Brendan Eich should make an unequivocal statement of support for marriage equality. If he cannot, he should resign. And if he will not, the board should fire him immediately.”

      Follow Michelle Maisto on Twitter.

      Avatar
      Michelle Maisto
      Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×