All because he was an opponent of gay marriage. Not even an anti gay comment
I am,A prominent Silicon Valley chief executive stepped down just days after hisappointment, amid a firestorm across the Internet that was sparked by employees who complained about his opposition to gay marriage.
Brendan Eich resigned from Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox Web browser, after intense criticism over a six-year-old, $1,000 donation he made in support of a 2008 California ballot initiative to ban gay marriage.
The record of that donation appeared on the Internet soon after Mr. Eich, who invented JavaScript and helped start Mozilla in 1998, was appointed as CEO in late March. After he was named, some Mozilla employees took to Twitter to call for his resignation. Mr. Eich then apologized for causing "pain" and made a commitment to promote equality for gay and lesbian individuals at Mozilla.
Mr. Eich's resignation spurred debate on Thursday over whether his right to his own political views was effectively squelched.
"The mob got their man," Matt Galligan, CEO of news startup Circa, wrote on Twitter. "While I disagree with his beliefs @BrendanEich gave us JavaScript and helped build Mozilla & Netscape. Just $1,000 to Prop 8 now his legacy."
Anil Dash, co-founder of the mobile app ThinkUp, posted a sharp response soon after. "The 'mob'? Seriously? Would you say that someone who tried to criminalize your marriage was fit to lead you?" Mr. Dash wrote on Twitter.
In a blog post Thursday, Mozilla's executive chairwoman, Mitchell Baker, apologized for Mr. Eich's appointment, writing, "We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public…But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community."
In a statement provided by Mozilla, Mr. Eich said: "I have decided to resign as CEO effective today, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next."
The controversy around Mr. Eich's appointment demonstrates how gay marriage has grown to be seen as a bedrock civil-rights issue by many. In Silicon Valley, many see it as a nonnegotiable issue. Failure to support it is akin to tacitly backing the old race-discrimination laws of the 1950s and 1960s.
Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, passed with more than 52% of the vote statewide. In the four most populous Silicon Valley area counties, it received just under 38% of the vote. The measure was later overturned by the courts.
"CEOs are now held to a higher standard than they used to be," said Roger Kay, president of technology research firm Endpoint Technologies. "Some of that is because of the Internet. All this information is out there and that can be shared through social media."
Mr. Eich's selection as CEO was controversial for other reasons. Three Mozilla board members resigned over the choice because they wanted an outsider with more mobile-industry experience to help the organization promote its mobile operating system with telecom companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Mozilla said the three resigned for a variety of reasons.
But the Proposition 8 controversy overwhelmed the other concerns.
In addition to employees calling for his resignation, online-dating site OkCupid asked users to stop using Firefox. Credo Mobile, a wireless company that bills itself as progressive, gathered more than 50,000 signatures calling for him to resign.
Mr. Kay said the OkCupid move signaled to Mozilla's board "that this could be more of a problem for Mozilla."
In her blog post, Ms. Baker, Mozilla's chairwoman, wrote: "While painful, the events of the last week show exactly why we need the Web. So all of us can engage freely in the tough conversations we need to make the world better."
Reputation-management advisers say it is unusual for a CEO to be forced out over political views. But Eric Dezenhall, who runs a crisis-management firm in Washington, said he has been asked to help soften the public stands of CEOs with extremely conservative political views. "There is a kind of internal censorship," he said.
Gay rights have become a particular lightning rod in some executive suites in recent years.
In 2010, gay-rights supporters threatened a boycott and demonstrated outside stores to protest Target Corp.'s $150,000 donation to a group that funded ads for an antigay candidate for governor in Minnesota.
Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel wrote a letter of apology to employees, and the company has since made big gestures of support for gays and lesbians, including an advertising campaign for its wedding registry that featured same-sex couples.
Similarly, same-sex marriage proponents tried to organize a boycott of Chick-fil-A restaurants in 2012 after Chief Operating Officer Dan Cathy said he opposed gay marriage and supported the "biblical definition of the family unit." Mr. Cathy is now the chain's CEO. Mr. Dezenhall noted that Chick-fil-A is a closely held family-owned company.
On the flip side, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein has said the bank lost at least one client because of his public support for gay marriage. The bank, like scores of other companies, says gay-friendly policies are key for attracting and keeping talent.
Mozilla grew out of Netscape, the company behind the first popular Web browser Mosaic. Comprised of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation and its taxpaying subsidiary, Mozilla Corp., the organization develops open-source, free software with its own employees and a global community of third-party developers. It is best known for its Firefox Web browser, but maintains several other products including Bugzilla, which tracks online software bugs, and Firefox OS, a mobile operating system.
Firefox is the second-most-popular browser on personal computers, behindMicrosoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer. But the nonprofit group has little presence on smartphones and tablets.
Mozilla is negotiating with Google Inc. to renew a search contract that provides most of its revenue. Google is openly supportive of gay rights, so it may have been difficult to renew such a deal with Mr. Eich at the helm, said a former Mozilla insider.
Mozilla and Google declined to comment on the negotiations.
Mozilla, which has more than 800 employees, also competes for talent in San Francisco and Silicon Valley against big technology companies that promote diversity. Last year, Facebook Inc. founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg appeared at San Francisco's annual Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride parade, along with hundreds of employees. More than 1,000 Google employees attended, and AppleInc. employees made a strong showing.
Mozilla provides the same health benefits to domestic partners as it does to married couples in the U.S., even in states where it isn't mandated.
Abdi "Let this be a message to the world" Johnson
But everything else is a fair game. 
