Co-founder and recently appointed Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich announced his resignation today following a controversy over his support of California’s Proposition 8.
While Mozilla employees and others made personal protests on Twitter, the dating site OkCupid urged users to boycott Firefox.
Three Mozilla board members — two former CEOs among them — also stepped down this week, allegedly in response to Eich's hire. Mozilla says the timing was coincidental.
Re/Code also says that their stepping down was only tangentially related to Eich, but "none of them supported his selection as CEO."
Mozilla's Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker confirmed the news in a blog post:
Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn't live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it's because we haven't stayed true to ourselves.
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 acknowledged the backlash in a personal blog post earlier this week:
In recent interviews, Eich suggested he would not step down as CEO and refused to elaborate his views on same-sex marriage.
There were a lot of other considerations getting me to be CEO. I think I'm a good fit for it. I'm doing a great job at it. It's important to look beyond the particulars. Mozilla has always worked according to principles of inclusiveness. It may be challenging for a CEO, but everyone in our community can have different beliefs about all sorts of things that may be in conflict.