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Mozilla Appoints Former Marketing Head Interim CEO

Posted by Unknown on from the but-chris-beard-hates-kittens dept.

itwbennett (1594911) writes "Following the contentious and ultimately failed appointment of Brendan Eich as CEO last month, the Mozilla Corporation has appointed Chris Beard to the board of directors and made him interim CEO. Beard starting working as chief marketing officer for Mozilla in 2004, and oversaw the launch of its current browser, Firefox, in 2005. Beard also managed the launches of Firefox on Android and the Firefox OS for mobile phones." See the official announcement. Quoting: "We began exploring the idea of Chris joining the Board of Directors some months ago. Chris has been a Mozillian longer than most. He’s been actively involved with Mozilla since before we shipped Firefox 1.0, he’s guided and directed many of our innovative projects, and his vision and sense of Mozilla is equal to anyone’s. I have relied on his judgement and advice for nearly a decade. This is an excellent time for Chris to bring his understanding of Mozilla to the Board."

8 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. How do you know the company is dying? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Marketing begins to run things.

    1. Re:How do you know the company is dying? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I wonder what his stance is on abortion, surely if he has an opinion on it he won't last long in that job. While I don't agree with his position on prop 8 that is his opinion and those employees had no right to bully him out of his job for it. They wouldn't go as far as quitting or to not use Javascript (him being the inventor and all) but they wanted to get rid of him while having no consequences themselves which shows they have a least possible effort approach to supporting their cause.

  2. It's not enough by sideslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Congress needs to establish a commission of inquiry to help us identify people who don't agree with gay marriage, so they can be outed and ostracized. You know the routine: "Are you, or have you ever been, a conservative/orthodox/fundamentalist Christian, Muslim, or Jew?"

    As we find these scumbags, we can work to deny them the right to start businesses in our cities like Rahm Emmanuel did in Chicago. Some of them are artisans: we can attempt to commission artistic works in conflict with their beliefs, and sue them into oblivion when they refuse. We can pressure them to resign from their jobs.

    As recent Obama voters, it's not like we're huge hypocrites or anything. Please understand that the Democratic party is about democracy -- that's why we rejoice that California's popularly-voted Proposition 8 was overturned by a few activist judges. And we're about tolerance -- that's why we're trying to drive Christians, Muslims, and Jews out of public life by destroying their ability to hold jobs or participate in commerce.

  3. Re:Fantastic Google Chrome marketing by exomondo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I and 5 others deleted Mozilla and moved to Chrome. It felt weird after all these years to not have Firefox but we voted with our feet. It's not even a gay thing, it's a "we are sick of bullies and hypocrites" thing.

    But what about the LGBT employees there? The CEO was just one of the employees (and now he's gone) so the only people you're hurting are the other Mozilla employees, why are you so against them?

  4. qualifications by fche · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One wonders whether Mr. Beard had to do a lie detector run to prove his loyalty the cause(s) du jour.

  5. Re:Fantastic Google Chrome marketing by reboot246 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, when can we expect Obama and Hillary to fall on their swords? Their position on the issue was exactly the same as Eich's at the time he gave his donation.

    Oh, that's right. They couldn't possibly be hypocrites - they're Democrats. Yeah, sure.

  6. Re:Lets organize a boycott .. by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I haven't weighed in on the Eich thing yet because I couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly was giving me an uncomfortableness about it. I support gay marriage, I'd question why anyone would be insane enough to actually want to get married, but if they want it why not.

    What burns about the whole affair is that the relevant parties had their say, the people voted, and that should be that. Instead we've got vengeance seeking from those in favour of gay marriage, making lists, hunting people down and persecuting them by whatever means are available. In other words, McCarthyism.

    Fuck that.

  7. Re:Fantastic Google Chrome marketing by roca · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We did not "stand by and watch". Many Mozilla staff made public statements supporting Brendan as CEO, including (courageously) many LGBT Mozilla staff. Many more publicly supported Brendan than publicly opposed him. The media of course focused on his opponents because "Mozilla employees call for CEO to step down" gets more clicks than "Mozilla employees support CEO".

    Maybe we could have done more. At the time the firestorm was hot enough that it was unclear whether speaking out (and what sort of speaking out) would help. Brendan's resignation came as a great surprise to almost everyone at Mozilla, including me, and up to then I honestly thought simply saying nothing and letting the controversy blow itself out was going to work and was the best course of action.

    To all the people who are shouting about "free speech" now: did you speak up to support Mozilla while we were defending Brendan as CEO? If not, why are you more enthusiastic about bashing us now than you were about supporting us back then?