Mozilla Corporation CEO steps down

Mozilla has announced that later this year, Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla Corporation, will step down from the post he has held since October 2010. He will be taking a seat on the board of directors. The organisation will begin searching for a replacement immediately and, in the interim, Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation's Chairperson, has expanded her role to become Executive Chair and will take more control of the day-to-day activities of Mozilla Corporation. Baker was CEO of Mozilla Corporation between 2005 and 2008 and reflects on that in her blog post on the management changes.

Kovacs told AllThingsD that "After three years of a lot of change to move the organization faster forward, I wanted to move back to something more commercial", but that his work had changed the company – "It is really a different Mozilla".

Mozilla says that it brought Kovacs on in 2010 to lead a "pivot to mobile" for the organisation, which wanted to focus its efforts on where people would be interacting with the open web most in the future – on phones and tablets. During his tenure, Firefox OS, HTML5 applications and Firefox for Android have been launched and have driven "mobile DNA deep into the organisation". The company's announcement says that this continued development of the desktop browser and services, combined with taking a position as a trusted consumer advocate in public policy debates, has created a "solid foundation" and that the non-profit foundation and corporation is moving into a new phase of development as it launches mobile devices with partners around the world.

Kovacs stepping down has also triggered some other personnel changes. Jay Sullivan, who has been SVP of Products, now becomes Mozilla's Chief Operating Officer. A new role of SVP Business and Legal Affairs has been created, with Harvey Anderson, formerly Mozilla's first in-house counsel, filling that position. Mozilla's focus on mobile devices will now be driven by Li Gong who has been appointed SVP of Mobile Devices. Brendan Eich remains CTO of Mozilla and SVP of Engineering.

(djwm)