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, w ...

project, the

Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation (stylized as moz://a) is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...

, and the

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation (stylized as moz://a) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of ope ...

. 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 especial ...

, 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 six ...

in mathematics and computer science at Santa Clara University, 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 Univer ...

. 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 sof ...

, working for seven years on

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

and network code.. He then worked for three years at MicroUnity Systems Engineering writing

microkernel In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...

and

DSP DSP may refer to: Computing * Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal * Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing * Yamaha DSP-1, a proprietary digital signal ...

code.

Career

Netscape

Eich started work at

Netscape Communications Corporation Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

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 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 mos ...

. 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 ...

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 it was named

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. 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

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 XScre ...

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 bought Netscape in 1999. After AOL shut down the Netscape browser unit in July 2003, Eich helped spin out the

. 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

, 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 Proposition 8, known informally as Prop 8, was a California ballot proposition and a state constitutional amendment intended to ban same-sex marriage; it passed in the November 2008 California state elections and was later overturned in co ...

, 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 Thomas Miller McClintock II (; born July 10, 1956) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2009. His district stretches from the Sacramento suburbs to the outer suburbs of Fresno; it includes Yosemite National ...

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 Systems, Adobe, SAP AG, SAP, and IBM, and led Zi Corporation, a mo ...

, 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 applications ...

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. CNET 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 d ...

'', "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 OkCupid (often abbreviated as OKC, but officially OkC) is a U.S.-based, internationally operating online dating, friendship, and formerly also a social networking website and application. It features multiple-choice questions to match members. ...

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 CREDO Mobile (formerly Working Assets Wireless) is an American mobile virtual network operator headquartered in San Francisco, California. CREDO Mobile's mobile network operator is Verizon Wireless. CREDO Mobile had a five star privacy rating f ...

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 investors. In January 2016, the company released developer versions of its open-source, Chromium-based and privacy-focused Brave web browser, which blocks

ads" \n\nads.txt (Authorized Digital Sellers) is an initiative from IAB Technology Laboratory. It specifies a text file that companies can host on their web servers, listing the other companies authorized to sell their products or services. This is des ...

and trackers, and features built-in

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia Sc ...

-connected tabs. At Brave Software, Eich co-created the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a cryptocurrency 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 U ...

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