In fact, the news also comes as Chrome continues to steadily gain market share in the browser space. Lilly wrote a note about his pending resignation, however, that expresses his continued dedication to Mozilla and Firefox, even as he gives up the lead position. He wrote:

I’m in no rush, and the most important thing to me is to build the strongest Mozilla we can, with the best leadership possible. So my plan is to stay through that transition — we’re starting a CEO search now, and plan to do it in as transparent a way as possible — which means I’ll continue in my CEO role as normal for several more months, at least.

I’ll have more to say on the transition as we figure things out more clearly, but for now, business as usual. We’ve got Firefox 4 to ship, and Firefox on multiple mobile platforms. We’ve got our web services like Weave to stand up and make available to millions of users.

Firefox 4: fast, powerful and empowering View more presentations from Mike Beltzner.

Lilly’s heart is in funding startups, and this is the main reason he has chosen to step down from his post, according to his letter. He says he’s "always been a startup guy at heart" and that the Mozilla gig was originally supposed to be a "quick volunteer effort". He intends to join Greylock Partners as a Venture Partner, and will work on investing in startups from there.

Lilly plans to remain on Mozilla’s Board of Directors.

Apple as the great security threat to Windows? One might think that after checking out Lilly’s post on his blog.

He noted how the Apple Software Update suggests the Safari web browser as something to update, even if the PC in question never had Safari on the system previously.

Since people tend to blithely install whatever the computer tells them to do, they are likely to install Safari along with the iTunes update. If you’ve just installed iTunes on a clean Windows machine, Apple Software Update only lists Safari.

Lilly goes as far as suggesting Apple’s listing of Safari as available software “borders on malware distribution practices.” Apple’s always-jovial legal department may find that characterization a little more interesting than Lilly intended.

The whole kerfuffle comes down to something that is Apple’s fault, in a way. When running Apple Software Update and something is available, the window reads, “New software is available from Apple” followed by “Select the items you want to update, then click Install.”

See the semantic problem? New software, items you want to update? If Apple had programmed Software Update to recognize a new install and call it that explicitly, maybe Lilly wouldn’t be so upset.

A prudent computer user probably has no problem recognizing when Apple drops something new into the Software Update screen. It’s easy to avoid installing Safari if you don’t want it on Windows.

Real malware exhibitors exist, and deserve criticism. Apple’s just not in that category. Check out Ben Edelman’s site to learn what malware distributors do.

Baker won’t be going anywhere, as she takes on the role of chairman for the Mozilla Corporation. Lilly, the company’s chief operating officer, moved up at Baker’s request.

“John has been instrumental in developing an organizational structure for MoCo that is both embedded in Mozilla and open-source DNA and which can function at the extremely high degree of effectiveness that our setting requires,” Baker said on her blog.

“Once I allowed myself to think about this I realized that John will be a better CEO for the MoCo going forward than I would be,” she continued.

“We