Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich is stepping down as CEO and leaving the company following protests over his support of a gay marriage ban in California.
At issue was Mr. Eich’s $1,000 donation in 2008 to the
campaign to pass California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment
that outlawed same-sex marriages. The ban was overturned in 2013 when
the U.S. Supreme Court left in place a lower-court ruling striking down
the ballot measure.
Brendan Eich’s contribution had
drawn negative attention in the past but took on more weight when he was
named CEO. Mozilla employees and users criticised the move on Twitter
and elsewhere online. Earlier this week, dating website OKCupid replaced
its usual homepage for users logging in with Firefox with a note
suggesting they not use Mozilla’s software to access the site.
The departure raises questions about how far corporate leaders are allowed to go in expressing their political views.
The onus is also on the corporation and its board to assess whether
anything that a candidate has done or said in the past will adversely
affect the company’s reputation, said Microsoft chairman John Thompson,
who led a five-month search that culminated in Microsoft hiring Satya
Nadella as its new CEO in Feb 2014
Brendan Eich said in a statement on Thursday April 03,2014 that Mozilla’s
mission is “bigger than any one of us, and under the present
circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader.”
“I
don’t think it’s good for my integrity or Mozilla’s integrity to be
pressured into changing a position,” Mr. Brendan Eich said. “If Mozilla became
more exclusive and required more litmus tests, I think that would be a
mistake that would lead to a much smaller Mozilla, a much more
fragmented Mozilla.”
At another point, Brendan Eich said
that attacks on his beliefs represented a threat to Mozilla’s survival.
“If Mozilla cannot continue to operate according to its principles of
inclusiveness, where you can work on the mission no matter what your
background or other beliefs, I think we’ll probably fail,” he said.
Mozilla chairwoman Mitchell Baker apologised for the company’s actions in an open letter online on Thursday, saying that Brendan Eich is stepping down for the company’s sake
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