Dating site targets CEO on gay marriage

The appointment of a new CEO by the company that makes the Firefox Web browser has prompted board members to quit, a Twitter frenzy and pushback from a leading dating website because he supported California's onetime gay marriage ban.

Mozilla, the nonprofit maker of the Firefox browser, infuriated many employees and users last week by hiring co-founder Brendan Eich to lead the Silicon Valley company. In 2008, Eich gave $1,000 to a campaign supporting Proposition 8, a California ballot measure on a constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriages, which passed; in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court left in place a lower-court ruling striking it down.

Eich's contribution was publicly reported and drew some negative attention two years ago, when he was Mozilla's chief technology officer. But when Eich became CEO last week, his support of the ban received more attention.

Three of the Mozilla Foundation's six board members have quit, according to a Wall Street Journal blog, and employees and community members weighed in on Twitter over the weekend.

On Monday the dating service OkCupid.com replaced its usual home page for users logging in with Firefox with a message: 

Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience. Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.

If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8 percent of the relationships we've worked so hard to bring about would be illegal.

OkCupid President Christian Rudder said he and the firm's three other co-founders decided to post the message after discussing Eich's appointment over the weekend.

"We don't think this was the right thing for people to donate money to, and this is someone we do business with, so we decided to take action," Rudder said. He added that 12 percent of OkCupid's approximately 3 billion monthly page views arrive through Firefox and 8 percent of the site's users are gay or lesbian.

Mozilla, which is promoted with the slogan "Doing good is part of our code," responded Monday with an emailed statement saying the company supports equality for all, including marriage equality for gay couples.

"No matter who you are or who you love, everyone deserves the same rights and to be treated equally," said the statement. "OkCupid never reached out to us to let us know of their intentions, nor to confirm facts."

Mozilla says about half a billion people around the world use Firefox, which has free, open software written in part by volunteers. Firefox has been losing market share to Google's Chrome browser in recent years.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press