New Mozilla CEO resigns after OKCupid-fanned furor over gay rights

Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich is leaving the company after 10 days as CEO, following protests over his 2008 support of Prop. 8, a gay marriage ban in California.

|
Albert Gea/Reuters/File
The Firefox logo is mounted at a Mozilla stand during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 28, 2013. Mozilla Corp. is best known for its open-source Firefox browser.

Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich is stepping down as CEO and leaving the company following protests over his support of Prop. 8, a gay marriage ban in California.

The nonprofit that makes the Firefox browser infuriated many employees and users last week by naming Mr. Eich head of the Mountain View, California-based organization.

At issue was 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 last year when the US Supreme Court left in place a lower-court ruling striking down the ballot measure.

Eich's contribution had drawn negative attention in the past but took on more weight when he was named CEO on March 24. Mozilla employees and users criticized 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 should go in expressing their political views.

"CEOs often use their station to push for certain viewpoints and get some muscle for those viewpoints," said UCLA management professor Samuel Culbert. "But if you are going to play the game you have to think of both sides."

Company leaders have to be conscious of what impact their own views may have on the success of their organization, Culbert argues. While some leaders, such as Starbucks Corp. head Howard Schultz, have been outspoken in their political positions, it is often in a vein that is line with the ethos of his company. Culbert said that taking a position that is divisive can both drive away customers and hurt employee morale.

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 Corp. Chairman John Thompson, who led a five-month search that culminated in Microsoft hiring Satya Nadella as its new CEO in February.

"When you run a public company or any visible organization, what you think and what you say is always going to affect the company," said Thompson, "You have to be mindful of how things you do and say will affect your customers, your employees and your investors."

Eich said in a statement Thursday that Mozilla's mission is "bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader."

His resignation represents an about-face from his confident and sometimes defiant remarks in an interview published earlier this week by the technology news service Cnet. Insisting that he was best choice to be CEO, Eich told Cnet that it would send the wrong message if he were to resign or apologize for his support of Prop. 8.

"I don't think it's good for my integrity or Mozilla's integrity to be pressured into changing a position," 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, 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 apologized for the company's actions in an open letter online Thursday, saying that Eich is stepping down for the company's sake.

"We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act. We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We're sorry. We must do better," Baker wrote.

She said that Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech and that "figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard."

Mozilla is still discussing what is next for its leadership.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to New Mozilla CEO resigns after OKCupid-fanned furor over gay rights
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0403/New-Mozilla-CEO-resigns-after-OKCupid-fanned-furor-over-gay-rights
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe