It’s been a rough week for Mozilla.
Seven days after naming its new CEO, the Mountain View-based corporation best known for developing the popular web browser Firefox has yet to put out the fires it developed for placing Brendan Eich at the company’s helm.
Though Eich’s professional background could color anyone impressed (he created JavaScript, one of the most popular programming languages on the Web, and co-founded mozilla.org), his personal background has one, glaring, black mark for a company committed to the principle of equality: Six years ago, Eich donated $1,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8, California’s now-defunct ban on same-sex marriage.
The donation itself isn’t breaking news; it first became public in 2012 when Eich was still the company’s chief technology officer, and one year before the U.S. Supreme Court hammered the final nail in Prop 8’s coffin. But his elevation to the top job at Mozilla last Monday sparked a renewed backlash, one with public condemnations from employees and resignations from half the company’s board.
“As a gay couple who were unable to get married in California until recently, we morally cannot support a foundation that would not only leave someone with hateful views in power, but will give them a promotion and put them in charge of the entire organization,” wrote Hampton Catlin, CTO of Moovweb and CEO of Rarebit, which he co-founded with his husband, Michael Catlin. The couple pulled their software company’s apps from the Firefox Marketplace in protest of Eich’s appointment.
Adding to the company’s PR nightmare, three of Mozilla’s six board members — including two former CEOs — resigned in the wake of Eich’s hiring. According to The Wall Street Journal, the board members did not step down over political views, but because they wanted to see an outside candidate with experience in the mobile industry take over the chief executive slot.
Many Mozillians took to Twitter to voice their disapproval.
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