Mozilla has named former executive Chris Beard as its interim CEO and appointed him to its board of directors.
“Excited to step in as interim CEO to continue shaping the future of the Web for public good w/ fellow Mozillians,” Beard tweeted Monday.
Mozilla named Beard, its former chief marketing officer, as interim CEO to fill the spot vacated by Brendan Eich.
Eich, the creator of JavaScript and one of the co-founders of Mozilla, lasted just 10 days and was forced to step down over his 2008 contribution to a group fighting same-sex marriage in California.
“It’s great that they picked a CEO and are moving forward,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC. “They have a full agenda that they have set for themselves, especially around becoming a full play in mobile platforms.”
Beard was most recently Mozilla’s chief marketing officer, a position he held until June 2013, when he left for a spot as an executive in residence at venture capitalist firm Greylock Partners.
Mozilla chairwoman Mitchell Baker announced Beard’s appointment Monday on the open source organisation’s blog.
“In this time of transition there is no better person to lead us,” Baker said. “Chris has one of the clearest visions of how to take the Mozilla mission and turn it into programs and activities and product ideas that I have ever seen.
“Mozilla needs to act quickly and decisively. This is key for any leader at Mozilla, including our CEO, whether interim or otherwise. Chris’ experience and insight is highly aligned with our goals.”
Baker also said that Beard was a “strong candidate” for permanent CEO, but said that there was work still to do, including a long-term plan for the CEO’s role, fleshing out the board – which now has four members – and “continuing our efforts to actively support each Mozillian to reach his or her full potential as a leader.”
The latter was a reference to pledges that Mozilla made in the midst of the Eich controversy, including an affirmation of its support of marriage equality and various commitments to inclusivity of both employees and volunteer contributors.
Firefox’s share of active desktop browsers has slumped in the last year, and Mozilla has turned its attention to Firefox OS, the browser-based mobile operating system that it hopes will give it a foothold on smartphones, where Apple’s Safari and Google’s Android and Chrome browser dominate.
Last month, Firefox accounted for just 17.7% of the global desktop browser user share, down 2.4 percentage points in the past year, and 7.4 points off its all-time high of 25.1% in four years ago.
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