Brendan Eich (; born July 4, 1961)
is an American computer programmer and technology executive. He created the
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming ...
and co-founded the
Mozilla
Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...
project, the
Mozilla Foundation, and the
Mozilla Corporation. He served as the Mozilla Corporation's
chief technical officer before he was appointed
chief executive officer
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...
, but resigned shortly after his appointment due to controversy over his opposition to same-sex marriage. He subsequently became the CEO of
Brave Software.
Early life
Eich grew up in Pittsburgh; Gaithersburg, Maryland; and
Palo Alto
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was es ...
,
and he attended
Ellwood P. Cubberley High School, graduating in the class of 1979. He received his
bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to si ...
in mathematics and computer science at
Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University is a private Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California. Established in 1851, Santa Clara University is the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California. The university's campus surrounds the historic Mis ...
,
and he received his
master's degree
A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. in 1985 from the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...
.
Eich is
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
* Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
* Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
.
He began his career at
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...
, working for seven years on
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
and network code.
[.] He then worked for three years at
MicroUnity Systems Engineering writing
microkernel and
DSP code.
Career
Netscape
Eich started work at
Netscape Communications Corporation in April 1995. Eich originally joined intending to put
Scheme A scheme is a systematic plan for the implementation of a certain idea.
Scheme or schemer may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''The Scheme'' (TV series), a BBC Scotland documentary series
* The Scheme (band), an English pop band
* ''The Schem ...
"in the browser",
but his Netscape superiors insisted that the language's
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituenc ...
resemble that of
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
. As a result, Eich devised a language that had much of the functionality of Scheme, the
object-orientation {{Broad-concept article
Object-oriented or object-orientation is a software engineering concept, in which concepts are represented as " objects". Object-oriented topics include:
* Object-oriented analysis and design
* Object-oriented design
* Objec ...
of
Self
The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhoo ...
, and the syntax of Java. He completed the first version in ten days in order to accommodate the
Navigator 2.0 Beta release schedule,
and was called Mocha, but renamed LiveScript in September 1995 and finally in a joint announcement with
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...
it was named
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
in December.
Simultaneously, he designed the first SpiderMonkey engine for the Netscape Navigator browser at Netscape Communications. When Mozilla inherited the Netscape base code in 1998, it included this engine, which was written in the
C programming language
''The C Programming Language'' (sometimes termed ''K&R'', after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language, as well a ...
.
It was then changed in JavaScript 1.5 to comply with the
ECMA-262 standard. Eich continued to oversee the development of
SpiderMonkey
SpiderMonkey is the first JavaScript engine, written by Brendan Eich at Netscape Communications, later released as open source and currently maintained by the Mozilla Foundation. It is used in the Firefox web browser.
History
Eich "wrote ...
, the specific implementation of JavaScript in Navigator.
Mozilla
In early 1998, Eich co-founded the free and open source software project
Mozilla
Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...
with
Jamie Zawinski
Jamie Zawinski (born November 3, 1968), commonly known as jwz, is an American computer programmer, blogger and impresario. He is best known for his role in the creation of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail, Lucid Emacs, Mozilla.org, and XSc ...
and others, creating the mozilla.org website, which was meant to manage open-source contributions to the Netscape source code. He served as Mozilla's chief
architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
.
AOL
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
bought Netscape in 1999. After AOL shut down the Netscape browser unit in July 2003, Eich helped spin out the
Mozilla Foundation.
In August 2005, after serving as a lead technologist and as a member of the board of directors of the Mozilla Foundation, Eich became
chief technical officer (CTO) of the newly founded
Mozilla Corporation, meant to be the Mozilla Foundation's for-profit arm.
Eich continued to "own" the Mozilla SpiderMonkey module, its JavaScript engine, until he passed on the ownership of it to Dave Mandolin in 2011.
Appointment to CEO and resignation
On March 24, 2014, Mozilla made the decision to appoint Eich as CEO of Mozilla Corporation.
The appointment triggered widespread criticism due to Eich's past political donations
– specifically, a 2008 donation of $1,000 to
California Proposition 8, which called for the banning of
same-sex marriage in California
Same-sex marriage in California has been legal since June 28, 2013. The U.S. state first issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples on June 16, 2008 as a result of the Supreme Court of California finding in the case of ''In re Marriage Cases ...
,
and donations in the amount of $2,100 to Proposition 8 supporter
Tom McClintock between 2008 and 2010.
''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' initially reported that, in protest against his coming appointment, half of Mozilla's board (
Gary Kovacs
Gary Kovacs (born 1963 or 1964) is a San Francisco Bay Area technologist. He was the chief executive officer of AVG Technologies. Kovacs has worked for Mozilla Corporation, Adobe, SAP, and IBM, and led Zi Corporation, a mobile text messaging ...
,
John Lilly, and
Ellen Siminoff) stepped down,
leaving
Mitchell Baker
Winifred Mitchell Baker (born 1957) is the Executive Chairwoman and CEO of the Mozilla Foundation and of Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates development of the open source Mozilla Internet applicati ...
,
Reid Hoffman
Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for prof ...
, and
Katharina Borchert
Katharina Borchert (born Bochum, 1972) is the Chief Innovation Officer at Mozilla. She is a German journalist and was previously the managing director at ''Spiegel Online''. Borchert served on the Mozilla Board of Directors from 2014 to 2015, b ...
.
CNET
''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...
later reported that of the three board members who had left, only Lilly left due to Eich's appointment.
Lilly told ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', "I left rather than appoint him", and declined to elaborate further.
On March 26, 2014, Eich expressed "sorrow for causing pain" and pledged to "work with LGBT communities and allies" at Mozilla.
Some of the activists created an online campaign against Eich, with online dating site
OkCupid automatically displaying a message to Firefox users with information about Eich's donation, and suggesting that users switch to a different browser (although giving them a link to continue with Firefox).
CREDO Mobile collected more than 50,000 signatures demanding that Eich resign.
After 11 days as CEO, Eich resigned on April 3, 2014, and left Mozilla over his opposition to same-sex marriage.
In his personal blog, he posted, "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader".
Mozilla made a press release saying that board members tried to get Eich to stay in the company in a different role, but that he had chosen to sever ties for the time being.
Brave Software
Eich is the CEO of Brave Software, an Internet browser platform company that raised $2.5 million in early funding from
angel investor
An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownersh ...
s.
In January 2016, the company released developer versions of its open-source,
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hard ...
-based and privacy-focused
Brave web browser, which blocks
ads and
trackers, and features built-in
Tor-connected tabs.
At Brave Software, Eich co-created the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a
cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...
designed for use in the Brave browser. BAT launched its
ICO
is an action-adventure game developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, released for the PlayStation 2 video game console in 2001 and 2002 in various regions. It was designed and directed by Fumito Ued ...
on May 31, 2017, and raised $35 million.
References
External links
*
Brendan Eich video interview – Lex Fridman Podcast #160
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eich, Brendan
1961 births
American chief technology officers
American computer programmers
2008 California Proposition 8
Living people
Mozilla developers
Businesspeople from Pittsburgh
Silicon Graphics people
Santa Clara University alumni
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni
Netscape people
Computer programmers
Web developers
American technology chief executives
People associated with JavaScript