He used to be a Linux kernel hacker. In 1998, he entered the business world by founding a consulting company around his kernel porting work. His company was acquired and he continued leading related work at the new owner (Linuxcare). From there he went on to various entrepreneurial and senior management jobs at technology companies including HP and Sun.
Chris left Sun to join Mozilla almost ten years ago (October 2004), just before the release of Firefox 1.0, making him one of the first dozen or so employees. He stayed at Mozilla for nine years in a variety of roles. As CIO he founded and led Mozilla Labs, and later was the CMO until leaving last year to work in venture capital and then start another company. He returned to Mozilla as interim CEO after Brendan Eich stepped down several months ago.
[Disclosure: I've been a Mozilla employee for the past 4.5 years.]
Interesting idea. A well funded competitor could astroturf a "DDOS" outrage attack and prevent a company/org from ever choosing/having a functional CEO.
A functional CEO would remain so even in the face of an astroturfed outrage attack. Negative PR, including targeting persons rather than the company directly, isn't exactly a new feature of the business environment.
