Mozilla’s Co-founder Leaves The Company

By | September 20, 2011 | 25 Comments

Mozilla's Co-founder Leaves The CompanyMike Shaver, the founding member of Mozilla in 1998, has decided to leave everyone’s beloved organization.

While it comes as a surprise, it’s nothing new to Mozilla. Earlier this year, Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox has departed from the company as well, followed by John Resig, a JavaScript evangelist, who left Mozilla just few months ago.

As far as the future holds, Mike has not yet though about that, as he wrote: “I haven’t yet decided what’s next, though I have some exciting opportunities to explore. I am still truly, madly, deeply in love with Mozilla and the web it is building, and grateful for the opportunities that it’s created for me,”


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • DWBH

    I read this headline as “Mozilla’s Co-founder Leaves The Company and joined Chrome” .

    • Tiago Sá

      Why would he leave the public service non profit organization that makes the only open and free major browser and join the world’s biggest advertising company’s user spying closed source evil browser?

      • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

        Chrome’s not completely closed-source; it’s based on the open Chromium code then they add the closed-source bits like the PDF reader and Flash.

        Regarding Google spying on users I don’t disagree. They read your Gmail messages and log your search queries so they know what pr0n you’ve been looking for (and what to suggest next).

        • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

          How do you know the only closed source parts they add are PDF and Flash?

          • Yolaos

            How do them know that the closed source parts they add aren’t only PDF and Flash (but yes evil and spying code?

            How do them know that the compiled Firefox don’t have added other code (spy and evil)?

          • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

            Thanks for repeating what I said but explaining it and putting Fx?

          • Yolaos

            Sorry if I misunderstood your comment.

            I wanted to say that we can doubt and ask questions for any browser, the same confidence we can have it with anyone but usually the questions and doubts just go for some, and for others a blank cheque.

      • Yolaos

        “the public service non profit organization”

        Mozilla is a Corporation.

        “the only open and free major browser”

        “and join the world’s biggest advertising company’s user spying closed source evil browser?”

        This “evil company” funds to Mozilla as if it were his son since the Mozilla was born. Why do not reject its “help & dirty money”?.

  • Guesty Guest

    Whilst he is a very high profile person at Mozilla, no one person is bigger than the company. Was Bill Gates bigger than Microsoft? Was Steve Jobs bigger than Apple?

    He’s been with Mozilla for roughly 13 years, it’s time to move on and someone else will step up and steer the ship, keeping things moving.

    It’s not like everything will grind to a halt just because one guy leaves. The wheels will keep turning, Firefox 7 will be released a week today and then shortly after Firefox 10 will move into the Nightly builds and everything else will shuffle down a channel.

  • Mikah

    “Was Steve Jobs bigger than Apple?”
    Yes he was.
    Apple was on a downhill slide until Jobs returned to Apple in 1996
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#1998.E2.80.932005:_Return_to_profitability

  • grg

    Firefox is dead anyone who uses that browser obviously loves living in the past. Lol yeah that crap is slow as heck . No wonder why all of them leaving because there using chrome I bet.

    • Scorpion3003

      Whatever you say stupid troll.

      • grg

        You know your browser sucks when IE (the worst browser) is sending you guys food LMAO thats bad..very very BADD!

        • Scorpion3003

          Just go on and continue spewing off your B.S

        • No

          I LOLD

        • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

          LOL obvious troll is obvious.

    • Tiago Sá

      Because I like to feed the trolls.

      You obviously like living in the past, because Firefox 2.0 is slow as heck indeed. Stop using it.

      Or 3.6…

    • Olfigbdmof

      ok, its slow, its from the past, but it does the job for me:

      1. it has all the features i need trough addons
      2. its interface is customizable, unlike Chrome, or IE or whatever you use

      if Firefox is abandoned (which wont happen any time soon) i will just move to Chrome, i dont care what browser i use, as long as im using the one that best fits my needs, it just so happens that now its Firefox and on 2nd place – Chrome

      i have just two things to say to you:

      1. judging people by what browser they use is lower than pathetic, i dont really know the exact word to characterize this sever state of nerdiness/geekness

      2. arguing on the Internet is like running in the Special Olympics – even if you win, youre still retarded

    • Anonymous

      “Lol yeah that crap is slow as heck .”

      By that you mean that it’s slower than it used to be?

  • Asknobody

    Now it’s obvious to me that Mozilla is doing wonderfull

    • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

      Loving the sarcasm. ;)

      But honestly Mozilla are doing good and bad. Good because they’re making progress on their products, bad because key people are leaving and their products are losing potential.

  • Anonymous

    Must be due to the same reason the Opera dude left for. Difference in opinion

  • http://biblioteca.octabot.net daPhyre

    Is Mozilla going down? I’m starting to seriously worry about it’s future… Somehow, I feel like it is following the destiny of it’s older brother browser Netscape :S

    • Olfigbdmof

      why are you worried? how is this affecting your life?

      • http://biblioteca.octabot.net daPhyre

        I’m a web developer. Worring about browsers it’s my job :D

        (And I though Explorer was the problem :S… Wait, it still is =P… for now ._.’ )

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