New chief executive for Mozilla

Mozilla has kicked off the new year by appointing a new chief executive.

Former boss Mitchell Baker has stepped down - although will continue as chairman - and will be replaced by John Lilly, who served as the company's chief operating officer until yesterday.

To complement Lilly's new areas of responsibility, Baker's attention will be turned to focus on wider internet development issues such as data treatment, interoperability and standards.

"Our accomplishments are remarkable; the opportunity in front of us is enormous. To meet this opportunity we need to execute really, really well. And we need to make the best use of our resources, most notably people," Baker said in a blog post announcing the changes.

Baker added: "...I realised that John will be a better chief executive for the MoCo going forward than I would be. I'm sure that I was the right person for this role during the first years of MoCo; I'm equally sure that John is the best person for this role in the future.

"As a result I've asked John to take on the role of chief executive of the Mozilla Corporation, and John has agreed. In reality John and I have been unconsciously moving towards this change for some time, as John has been providing more and more organisational leadership. It is very Mozilla-like to acknowledge the scope of someone's role after he or she has been doing it for a while, and this is a good part of what is happening here. I expect this transition to continue to be very smooth."

In his own blog, Lilly added: "...As is the norm for Mozilla, the number and variety of projects that we can be involved in and make a difference for is astounding - and I'm optimistic that we'll be able to continue to improve the participatory web in 2008 and beyond.

"I feel both very excited and very fortunate to find myself in this spot, and am looking forward to doing what I can to help Mozilla continue to make the web a better place."