Hello DocJLK, You might have read some things about this topic that aren't quite correct, because sadly the press has in general done a very poor job at fact-checking this story. Since you care deeply enough to send this message instead of silently turning your back on us, you might be interested in some attempts to clear up a lot of this misinformation:

Here is a short collection of facts about what happened: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/ and here's a longer version written by an employee in a blog post: https://medium.com/p/7645a4bf8a2

In general, Mozilla is not your classical corporation, but a diverse community spread all around the world - we hold all sorts of views but are united in a common mission for openness, innovation & opportunity on the web! In contrast to other companies our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public - even if they are critical of Mozilla.

So all these misconceptions flying around don't paint a very accurate picture of Mozilla...

I read Flanagan's article. It doesn't really answer why he had to leave Mozilla because of what he believes and said. As you know, at the time, the President had the same beliefs. One is not a bigot or "homophobe" if one believes the definition of marriage shouldn't be changed. That really isn't the point, is it. Tolerance is. And the most intolerant people are "progressives"

Brendan didn't have to leave Mozilla - we would like nothing better than to rehire Brendan. In fact, we didn't want him to leave in the first place. However it was his personal decision to resign among all this ongoing frenzy, threats and mischaracterization of him as a person and the Mozilla community coming from third-parties, in order for the constant bombardment to end and to avert any further damage to Mozilla and its mission that he helped build for so many years.

So in this sad process we have lost a co-founder and brilliant technical mind and now the "other side" of the political spectrum comes along, again quite misinformed and rushing to judgement, bashing our community and voicing calls for boycotts against our products. This is quite sad & Mozilla has not deserved to be in the middle of all of this. Our community exists to protect the Web by promoting openness, innovation and opportunity and is no battleground to fight culture-wars upon...

Thank you!

I just read Erin Kissane's blog. sounds like he actually did have to leave. At least be honest

That is a long post, if I found the correct one, but rather than discuss that may I point out this forum is intended for technical support questions by end users of Firefox and is answered almost entirely by fellow users of Firefox.

If you are trying to make a point with, or question the management of Firefox; you may find it much better to post on the governance mailing list.

• https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance

DocJLK if they did not support Brendan for his views and who he is then the board may not have promoted him from CTO to CEO in first place right. Nobody outside had a issue with Brendan being CTO as many at Mozilla knew about the 2008 support prop 8 donation since 2011 due to a article writing about this public record.

Unfortunately many are assuming he must have been fired or ousted all due to his decision to leave instead of staying in some role or back to CTO.