Brendan Eich ( ; born July 4, 1961) He subsequently became the cofounder and CEO of Brave browser.

Early life

Eich grew up in Pittsburgh; Gaithersburg, Maryland; and Palo Alto, where he attended Ellwood P. Cubberley High School, graduating in the class of 1979. He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science at Santa Clara University,

He began his career at Silicon Graphics, working for seven years on operating system and network code.

Career

Netscape

Eich started work at Netscape Communications Corporation in April 1995. He originally joined intending to put Scheme "in the browser", but his Netscape managers insisted that the language's syntax resemble that of Java. As a result, Eich devised a language that had much of the functionality of Scheme, the object-orientation of Self, and the syntax of Java. He completed the first version in ten days in order to accommodate the Navigator 2.0 Beta release schedule. At first the language was called Mocha, but it was renamed LiveScript in September 1995 and finally – in a joint announcement with Sun Microsystems – it was named JavaScript in December. Simultaneously, he designed the first SpiderMonkey engine to execute the new language in the Navigator browser.

When Mozilla inherited the Netscape base code in 1998, it included this engine, which was written in the C language. It was then changed in JavaScript 1.5 to comply with the ECMA-262 standard. Eich continued to oversee the development of SpiderMonkey, the specific implementation of JavaScript in Navigator. AOL bought Netscape in 1999. After AOL shut down the Netscape browser unit in July 2003, Eich helped spin out the Mozilla Foundation. Eich continued to "own" the Mozilla SpiderMonkey module, its JavaScript engine, until he passed the ownership of it to Dave Mandelin in 2011. 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, and donations in the amount of $2,100 to Proposition 8 supporter Tom McClintock between 2008 and 2010.<!-- NOTE: These other sources (The Verge, Ars, CNET) specifically point to WSJ as the original source for the claim board members left due to Eich's appointment --> leaving Mitchell Baker, Reid Hoffman, and Katharina Borchert. CNET later reported that of the three board members who had gone, only Lilly left due to Eich's appointment.

On March 26, 2014, Eich expressed "sorrow for causing pain" and pledged to "work with LGBT communities and allies" at Mozilla. 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 after public outrage. 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.

Brave Software

Eich is the co-founder and CEO of Brave Software, a Web browser platform company that raised $2.5 million in early funding from angel investors like Founders Fund, Foundation Capital, and Digital Currency Group. In January 2016, the company released developer versions of its open-source, Chromium-based Brave Web Browser, which blocks advertisements and trackers.

At Brave Software, Eich co-created the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a cryptocurrency designed for use in the Brave browser. BAT launched its initial coin offering on May 31, 2017, and raised $35 million.

In 2020, The New York Times reported that Eich's comments about "the policy and science related to the coronavirus" on Twitter caused a backlash within the browser's user base, commenting that this echoed the criticism that led to his resignation from Mozilla.

References

  • Brendan Eich video interview – Lex Fridman Podcast #160