Mozilla Staff Urge Their CEO To Step Down Because He's Anti-Gay Marriage
Mozilla workers are upset with Eich because he supported Proposition 8 and donated to the politicians who backed it.
Prop 8 was a Californian ballot-proposition banning same-sex marriage. It was officially rejected in February 2012.
But some employees at Mozilla, such as design researcher Emily Goligoski, feel that Eich's decision to back Prop 8 goes against Mozilla's core values as a company. Goligoski posted the following on Twitter.
Kat Braybrooke, curator and co-design lead at Mozilla, had the following to say:
Mozilla's Open Badges project lead Chris McAvoy sparked the Twitter conversation with the following tweet, which was initially spotted by Ars Technica.
It's a bit surprising that Mozilla employees are speaking up about Eich now. He cofounded Mozilla in 1998, and prior to being CEO, he served as the company's chief technology officer. He also widely respected for inventing the JavaScript Web scripting language in 1995.
Eich hasn't hid from the fact that he supported anit-gay marriage legislation. Following his appointment, Eich said the following regarding the LGBT community at Mozilla on his personal blog:
At the same time, I know there are concerns about my commitment to fostering equality and welcome for LGBT individuals at Mozilla. I hope to lay those concerns to rest, first by making a set of commitments to you. More important, I want to lay them to rest by actions and results ... I know some will be skeptical about this, and that words alone will not change anything. I can only ask for your support to have the time to "show, not tell"; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain.
Mozilla has not responded to comment on the matter, but published a blog post on the importance of diversity within the company earlier this week.
We spoke with a Mozilla employee who seemed surprised by the uproar. This employee said there's been no internal craziness - "It's being made out worse than it really is" - and our source expects it to blow over.
"He's addressed it at all company meetings," our source says. "He's not changing his position. But I haven't seen it get in the way of anyone advancing at Mozilla."