Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich urged to step down over donation to anti-gay marriage campaign

Employees have taken to social media to call for Eich to step down a week after he was appointed

Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich (Mozilla)

Staff at tech company Mozilla are calling for CEO Brendan Eich to resign a week after he took the job, after it emerged that he gave donations to an anti-LGBT campaign.

Eich contributed $1,000 (£601.11) in support of California’ Proposition 8 in 2008, an initiative which opposed same-sex marriage.

His controversial donation was discovered on a public database, with Mozilla named as his employer, in 2012, the Telegraph reported.

Eich was made CEO of Mozilla, which is behind the Firefox web browser, in late March after his predecessor Gary Kovacs announced his resignation in April last year.

He was previously the organisation’s chief technology officer, and has been associated with Mozilla in its various guises since the 1990s.

According to Mozilla, Eich invented JavaScript, the Internet’s most widely used programming language.

Since his appointment, his colleagues, who regard his anti-LBGT stance as against the company's ethos, have taken to Twitter to post the message: “I'm an employee of @mozilla and cannot reconcile having @BrendanEich as CEO."

Among the users to tweet against Eich was Chris McAvoy, the head of Mozilla's Open Badges project.

In a post on his blog entitled Incluseiveness at Mozilla, Eich responded to the criticism and said: “I express my sorrow at having caused pain” and promised an “active commitment to equality” at the firm.

“I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion,” he wrote.