From the ‘Mozilla’s Leadership Collapse Continues’ files:
Andreas Gal, the CTO of Mozilla announced today that he is leaving Mozilla. Gal was named CTO in April of 2014, after Brendan Eich left the position to become CEO of Mozilla (albeit temporarily).
Mozilla’s PR cordon have not let me speak with Gal in several years, the last time I had the opportunity to speak with him was in January of 2013 as part of a FirefoxOS consumer push.
Gal is the ‘brains’ behind Boot2Gecko, the effort that eventually became FirefoxOS.
FirefoxOS doesn’t appear to be headed in quite the direction that the Mozilla management wants, so it’s not all that surprising to see Gal head for the exits now. Gal is a gifted engineer and in the dislocated mess that is the modern Mozilla organization, I suspect his talents were not being fully optimized.
Then again, while mobile operating systems are interesting, there is no area hotter in tech today than the Internet of Thing (IoT) and that’s where Gal is goies.
“I am departing Mozilla to create a new venture in the Internet of Things space, an open field that presents many of the types of challenges and opportunities that drive our passion for the Web,” Gal stated.
Best of luck to you Andreas – and to you Mozilla too (you need it).
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist