Mozilla, the company that operates the web browser Firefox, experienced its highest level of negative customer feedback the day after its embattled co-founder Brendan Eich resigned as CEO after gay rights activists objected to his appointment.
On Thursday, Mozilla forced Eich to resign just two weeks after hiring him. At issue was a $1,000 donation Eich gave in 2008 in support of California’s Proposition 8, a successful ballot initiative which banned gay marriage.
The decision to remove the man who invented the web scripting language JavaScipt did not sit well with many customers — many of them pelted Mozilla’s website with a surge of negative feedback.
On Friday, 94 percent of the sentiments registered on the site were “sad,” while six percent were “happy.” That translates to about 7,000 negative responses, compared to nearly 500 positive responses.
“Your abject and pathetic condemnation of an individual’s right to hold and support their own view on the world is simply unbelievable,” read one user’s feedback at the Mozilla site.
Eich’s hiring last month generated outrage from Mozilla contributors, called Mozillians, over Eich’s past support of Prop 8, which passed in California with 52 percent of the vote.
Outsiders protested Eich’s hiring as well, and likely served as the tipping point for his removal.
The matchmaking website OkCupid posted a letter which greeted Firefox users informing them about Eich’s political contribution. It urged them to find another web browser to search for dates.
Many conservatives expressed their outrage over the forced resignation. Talk radio titan Rush Limbaugh tackled the topic on his show on Friday. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer called for a “counter-boycott” of the tech company. And many conservative Twitter users urged other conservatives to remove Firefox from their computers under the hashtag #UninstallFirefox.
Mozilla declined to respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
(H/t: Conservative Intel)
