Less than two weeks after his
appointment, Brendan Eich on Thursday resigned as CEO of Mozilla.
Eich's ascent to CEO prompted a
backlash over his $1,000 donation to the campaign to approve
Proposition 8, California's 2008 voter-approved constitutional
amendment restricting marriage to heterosexual couples. Proposition
8 stood until last year, when the Supreme Court left in place a lower
court ruling knocking it down.
“Brendan Eich has chosen to step down
from his role as CEO,” Mozilla said in a
blog post. “He's made this decision for Mozilla and our
community.”
Multiple employees publicly asked Eich
to resign and at least one developer said it would no longer develop
apps for the browser as long as Eich is in charge. Dating site
OkCupid on Monday called on users to dump Mozilla's popular Firefox
Web browser.
On Thursday, Mozilla apologized for not
staying true to itself: “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.”
Eich had expressed his “sorrow at
having caused pain” and pledged to reach out to the LGBT community.
But in a recent CNET.com interview he said that he would prefer not
to discuss his stance on marriage equality.
“One of the things about my
principles of inclusiveness is not just that you leave it at the
door, but that you don't require others to put targets on themselves
by labeling their beliefs, because that will present problems and
will be seen as divisive,” he said.