There’s been something of an uproar over Brendan Eich’s promotion to the role of CEO of Mozilla Corporation due to the fact that many years ago, he donated money to support Proposition 8 in California. I’m not going to link to any of the blog posts, tweets, or news stories about this, since I don’t really want to give more traffic to rumormongers, especially since a lot of the stories are mostly speculation.

Since I work for Mozilla, I obviously have opinions on this. I’m going to share them, but first I’m going to be sure to point out what I’m not:

• I’ve never reported to Brendan either directly or indirectly.
• I’m not gay, so his opinions in the area don’t directly affect me.

With that out of the way, let me say this: in the more than eight years I’ve worked at Mozilla, I’ve never known Brendan to treat anyone differently based on their gender, sexual orientation, color, religion, eye color, height, weight, or anything else (sorry for being slightly flippant there; it’s how I handle this stuff).

I felt then, and feel now, that Prop 8 is a mistake, is unconstitutional, and is a moral catastrophe. Freedom to marry the consenting adult of your dreams is a core human right and should be protected as such. Now with my feelings on the matter exposed, let’s press on.

While I, too, would like him to make a statement clarifying things further, I also don’t think it’s any of my business. As long as Brendan’s feelings don’t impact his work functions, I honestly don’t care what he thinks. As far as I can tell, all he cares about is whether or not you can deliver the goods when you’re working on the project. That’s all that matters to me.

He can be cranky and dismissive at times when he thinks you’re wrong (or less right than he is), but everyone can be that way (I know I can). Whatever his personal feelings are on gay marriage (or homosexuality in general, or anything else), Brendan is a brilliant developer and manager, a great leader, and an avid supporter of open source software and of the free and open Web. In those respects, he’s the best possible person for the job of CEO of Mozilla.

Mozillians are a diverse community. Brendan knows that; he’s known that since he first helped create Mozilla a decade and a half ago. He’s never once been involved in controversy related to that diversity; becoming CEO doesn’t, I think, make him any more likely to be so.

Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, and get back to rockin’ the open Web.

http://www.bitstampede.com/2014/03/29/on-brendan-eich-as-ceo-of-mozilla/