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Opinion split on Mozilla CEO’s exit for opposing gay marriage

SAN FRANCISCO — In Silicon Valley, where personal quirks and even antisocial personalities are tolerated as long as one is building new products and making money, a socially conservative viewpoint may be a trait one has to keep to oneself.

Mr Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla. Photo: Bloomberg

Mr Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla. Photo: Bloomberg

SAN FRANCISCO — In Silicon Valley, where personal quirks and even antisocial personalities are tolerated as long as one is building new products and making money, a socially conservative viewpoint may be a trait one has to keep to oneself.

On Thursday, Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich (picture) — who has helped develop some of the Web’s most important technologies such as Javascript — resigned under pressure as Chief Executive, only two weeks after taking the job.

At issue was Mr Eich’s US$1,000 (S$1,260) donation in 2008 in support of California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state until it was struck down last June by the Supreme Court.

Mr Eich said in a statement on Thursday that Mozilla’s mission is “bigger than any one of us and, under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader”.

His resignation came days after popular online dating site OkCupid called for a boycott of Mozilla’s Web browser Firefox in a protest against the company naming a gay marriage opponent as Chief Executive.

Mr Eich’s departure from the small but influential Mozilla raises questions about how far corporate leaders are allowed to go in expressing their personal beliefs and about the tolerance for conservative views in a technology industry that has long been dominated by progressive and libertarian voices.

While a board may need to be involved if an executive’s views cause strife among the management or affect its ability to recruit employees, it should err on the side of keeping politics and business separate and distinct, said Mr Charles Elson, Director of the John L Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

“This is troubling as one’s politics is one’s own business,” Mr Elson said. “That has been the rule in American business for a very long time.”

While gay activists applauded Mr Eich’s departure, many in the technology community and even some prominent gay-rights advocates have condemned it. Mr Eich said he had a number of gay supporters within Mozilla who did not agree with his personal beliefs, but supported him as Chief Executive.

Mr Andrew Sullivan, a prominent gay writer and an early, influential proponent of same-sex marriage, expressed outrage, saying the Mozilla chief had been “scalped by some gay activists”. “If this is the gay-rights movement today — hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else — then count me out,” Mr Sullivan wrote on his popular blog.

A number of gay-rights advocates pointed out that their organisations did not seek Mr Eich’s resignation. Mr Evan Wolfson, a leading gay-marriage advocate, said this was a case of a company deciding who best represents it and its values. “There is no monolithic gay-rights movement that called for this.”

Mr Eich’s resignation represents an about-face from his confident and sometimes defiant remarks published earlier this week.

“I don’t think it’s good for my integrity or Mozilla’s integrity to be pressured into changing a position,” Mr Eich said. “If Mozilla cannot continue to operate according to its principle of inclusiveness, where you can work on the mission no matter what your background or other beliefs, I think we’ll probably fail.”

The conflicting values between free speech and gay rights were a riddle that was hard for many Mozilla officials to solve and there is no indication that Mr Eich behaved in a biased manner at work.

In one blog post, Mr Geoffrey MacDougall, Head of Development for Mozilla, described the confusion within the organisation. “The free-speech argument is that we have no right to force anyone to think anything,” he wrote. “We have no right to prevent people from pursuing their lives based on their beliefs.” AGENCIES

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