Brendan Eich ( / ˈ aɪ k / EYEK ; born July 4, 1961) is an American computer programmer and technology leader. He developed the JavaScript programming language and helped start the Mozilla project, the Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla Corporation. He worked as the chief technical officer of the Mozilla Corporation before becoming its chief executive officer. However, he resigned soon after starting this role because of pressure from others related to his views on same-sex marriage. Later, he became the co-founder and chief executive officer of the Brave browser.

Early life

Eich was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Palo Alto. He attended Ellwood P. Cubberley High School and graduated in 1979. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science from Santa Clara University. Later, in 1985, he received a master's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Eich is Roman Catholic and has Irish-German heritage.

He started his professional career at Silicon Graphics, where he worked for seven years on software related to operating systems and computer networks.

Career

Brendan Eich began working at Netscape Communications Corporation in April 1995. He wanted to use a programming language called Scheme in web browsers, but his managers at Netscape asked him to make the language’s structure similar to Java. Eich created a new language that included features from Scheme, object-oriented ideas from another language called Self, and Java’s structure. He finished the first version in ten days to meet the release schedule for Navigator 2.0. At first, the language was named Mocha, but it was later called LiveScript in September 1995. In December, it was renamed JavaScript in a joint announcement with Sun Microsystems. Eich also designed the first SpiderMonkey engine to run the new language in the Navigator browser.

When Mozilla took over Netscape’s code in 1998, it included the SpiderMonkey engine, which was written in the C programming language. The engine was updated in JavaScript 1.5 to match the ECMA-262 standard. Eich continued to manage the development of SpiderMonkey, the version of JavaScript used in Navigator.

In early 1998, Eich helped start the Mozilla project with Jamie Zawinski and others. They created the mozilla.org website to manage contributions to Netscape’s code. Eich was the chief architect of Mozilla. In 1999, AOL bought Netscape. After AOL closed the Netscape browser unit in July 2003, Eich helped create the Mozilla Foundation.

In August 2005, after working with the Mozilla Foundation, Eich became the chief technical officer (CTO) of Mozilla Corporation, which was formed to manage the foundation’s for-profit activities. Eich was responsible for the SpiderMonkey module, the JavaScript engine, until he handed it to Dave Mandelin in 2011.

On March 24, 2014, Mozilla chose Eich to be CEO of Mozilla Corporation. This decision caused controversy because of Eich’s past donations to political causes. In 2008, he donated $1,000 to California Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, and $2,100 to a supporter of the same proposition. Some board members of Mozilla resigned in protest, but later reports said only one member left because of Eich’s appointment. Eich apologized for causing pain and said he would work with the LGBT community. An online campaign against him led to more than 50,000 people asking him to resign.

After 11 days as CEO, Eich resigned on April 3, 2014, due to public criticism. He wrote on his blog that he could not be an effective leader under the current situation. Mozilla said the board tried to keep him in a different role, but he chose to leave.

Eich is the co-founder and CEO of Brave Software, a company that makes a web browser. Brave raised $2.5 million from investors like Founders Fund and Digital Currency Group. In January 2016, the company released a version of its open-source, Chromium-based browser that blocks advertisements and trackers.

At Brave Software, Eich helped create the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a cryptocurrency used in the Brave browser. BAT’s initial offering raised $35 million in 2017.

In 2020, The New York Times reported that Eich’s comments about the coronavirus on Twitter caused backlash from users of his browser, similar to the criticism that led to his resignation from Mozilla.