Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich resigns under fire for supporting Prop. 8

Just days after taking the job, Brendan Eich has resigned as chief executive of Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, after coming under fire for his 2008 support of Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment that disallowed the marriage of same-sex couples in the state.

Mozilla announced Eich’s resignation Thursday afternoon in a blog post, saying that his hiring did not reflect the organization’s beliefs.

“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,” Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker said in a statement. “We need to put our focus back on protecting that Web. And doing so in a way that will make you proud to support Mozilla.”

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The organization named Eich CEO last week after operating under an interim CEO for more than a year. Eich had worked at Mozilla for years and was known as the founder of JavaScript, a popular programming language.

But Eich came under sharp criticism for donating $1,000 to a campaign that supported Poropisition 8, Several Mozilla board members resigned to protest his appointment.

Numerous Mozilla staffers also took to Twitter to call for his resignation. One popular online dating site OKCupid displayed a message on its website asking Firefox users to access the Web using a different browser.

“We took the stand because it seemed like the right thing to do,” a spokesman for OKCupid said.

Mozilla said it is still discussing what comes next for its leadership.

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