Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan
Eich has stepped down, the company said on Thursday, after an online
dating service urged a
The software company came under fire for appointing Eich as CEO last
month. In 2008, he gave money to oppose the legalization of gay marriage
in California, a hot-button issue especially at a company that boasts
about its policy of inclusiveness and diversity.
"We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act," wrote Mozilla
Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker in a blog post. "We didn't move fast
enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We're
sorry."
The next step for Mozilla's leadership "is still being discussed," she added, with more information to come next week.
While gay activists applauded the move, many in the technology
community lamented the departure of Eich, who invented the programming
language Javascript and co-founded Mozilla.
"Brendan Eich is a good friend
of 20 years, and has made a profound contribution to the Web and to the
entire world," venture capitalist Marc Andreessen tweeted.
Eich donated $1,000 in 2008 in support of California's Proposition 8,
which banned gay marriage in the state until it was struck down by the
Supreme Court in June.
His
resignation came days after OkCupid.com, the popular online dating site,
called for a boycott of Mozilla Firefox to protest the world's No. 2
Web browser naming a gay marriage opponent as chief executive.
On Monday, OkCupid sent a message to visitors who accessed the website
through Firefox, suggesting they use browsers such as Microsoft Corp's
Internet Explorer or Google Inc's Chrome.
"Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for
gay couples," the message said. "We would therefore prefer that our
users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid."
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