Mozilla’s Co-founder Leaves The Company

By | September 20, 2011


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 career 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.

Comments (25)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. DWBH says:

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

    • Tiago Sá says:

      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?

      • Shane Bundy says:

        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).

        • Rafael says:

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

          • Yolaos says:

            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)?

          • Rafael says:

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

          • Yolaos says:

            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 says:

        “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”?.

  2. Guesty Guest says:

    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.

  3. Mikah says:

    “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

  4. grg says:

    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 says:

      Whatever you say stupid troll.

    • Tiago Sá says:

      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 says:

      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 says:

      “Lol yeah that crap is slow as heck .”

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

  5. Asknobody says:

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

    • Shane Bundy says:

      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.

  6. Anonymous says:

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

  7. daPhyre says:

    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