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What about FirebirdSQL. In my opinoin, one of the best databases out there, albeit not as well known.

and get all the features they are wanting in a database: Firebird

You won't get any argument from me about Oracle, it is an excellent database. But I would pick firebird, it is open source and free. If you are open to an open source operating system, then why not an open source database? Also, Interbase (the initial commercial source drop) has been used in many commercial applications. It's just another option.

Heh, nope!

Mozilla isn't the database, Firebird is.

No, wait.. that's the wrong URL -- this is the right one.

Things are FINALLY MOVING FORWARD so please, give it a rest and let them get on with it - the last thing they need is a ton of ill-informed Slashdot zealots trying to fan the flames back up and keep this unfortunate incident going.

By moving forward, do you mean "threatening with litigation?"

(6. "...Trademark ownership thus means nothing if you are not prepared to send lawyers after any violator. It provides a legal framework for resolution in the event that the owner resorts to legal action, but nothing more. In reality, it provides a mechanism to scare the violator into mending his ways; and to provide for monetary compensation for damages and costs.")

IBPhoenix, an affliate of the Firebird Database have sent an official apology to mozilla.org over their mailbombing and spamming campaign. Finally, some maturity!

Now if only they'd apologise to non-mozilla.org sites affected like MozillaZine and Slashdot.

Regardless of how the Mozilla team have or haven't behaved, there is no call for asking for the sort of mass mailing you did in the way you did at this point.

Im assuming the "you" and "your website" mean the IBP people.

Like most opensource projects, we (firebird people) are a loosly connected group of individuals.

I don't have any control over the IBP website, not what they post, and that's true for most of us in the Firebird project. Our statment is on our web page, and our users comments thoughout both our public and private forumns. The IBP people are responsible for their own actions.

Personally, I think they made a mistake, for IBP, to publisihing the email addresses the way they did, but not a huge one (email campaigns are fairly popular). But they were right to ask for firebird users to contact Moz and indicate they were displeased with both their choice and the way they did it.

I'd never heard of firebird before

apparently it's a browser :-/.

If you'd organised a petition amongst your users, published that, got publicity of it, mailed the petition to mozilla

A bit slow considering the speed they are moving on rebranding at Moz.

If the Mozilla team were that aware of your product (I can easily believe they weren't) and its name,

they were Asa, has admitted that.

then they do seem to have not thought through the potential problems due to name conflict.

Yes, that's the interesting question, why deliberately do this?

Asa's post on mozillazine which you quote on your front page was made on the 5th of December last year. The way you quote it seems to give the impression that's a recent response to you guys saying "we think there could be some confusion".

That doesn't quite sound right, but when mozilline comes back up I'll check, first I've (or anyone else in firebird) has heard or seen any of this stuff was a few days ago starting on slashdot.

People aren't going to get to the point where they have a browser in front of them and are going to be going "Hmm... this is a funny looking database...".

its more all the supporting things. 'Oh your from "that" firebird project', and the branding stuff.having someone with a lawyer talking [tm] is enough to scare most programmers - certainly we don't have the finances, legal or visibility to compete with whatever Moz wants to do.

Did you enter into much of a dialogue with the mozilla team before calling for the en-mass mailing of the mozilla team? In other words is it an action of last resort?

I didn't make the call, or become involved till later, that was IBP people, Asa's early attitude and responses in slashdot, and on the mozilline sounded fairly non negotiatory. I belive the IBP people had some more of a dialog (or with others in Moz, I only started my own conversations direct with Moz people recently) - but even that is limited to whoever is willing to reply. But with Asa in the early days, but he wan't moving. But last I saw (earlier today) Asa was still there pushing his point of view pretty hard, on mozilline ( I exchanged a few posts).

Or were you so irritated that you wanted to lash out?

First I heard of it, this was a "done deal", as posted on slashdot. Asa's comments at mozilline, ( currently giving mysql errors) - but along the lines of, 'it's checked by AOL legal, it's done'

So Yes, as a fb admin, and as member of the ff committee, I felt justified and angry enough to post (my own message) to those identified as the project leaders and appropriate forumns of Moz. But hey, I just kept it fairly polite. and Moz people seem to give as good as they get. And for what and the way they did it, I think they need to expect to receive a bit of pith and vineger.

Mark

Regardless of how the Mozilla team have or haven't behaved, there is no call for asking for the sort of mass mailing you did in the way you did at this point.

Im assuming the "you" and "your website" mean the IBP people.

Like most opensource projects, we (firebird people) are a loosly connected group of individuals.

I don't have any control over the IBP website, not what they post, and that's true for most of us in the Firebird project. Our statment is on our web page, and our users comments thoughout both our public and private forumns. The IBP people are responsible for their own actions.

Personally, I think they made a mistake, for IBP, to publisihing the email addresses the way they did, but not a huge one (email campaigns are fairly popular). But they were right to ask for firebird users to contact Moz and indicate they were displeased with both their choice and the way they did it.

I'd never heard of firebird before

apparently it's a browser :-/.

If you'd organised a petition amongst your users, published that, got publicity of it, mailed the petition to mozilla

A bit slow considering the speed they are moving on rebranding at Moz.

If the Mozilla team were that aware of your product (I can easily believe they weren't) and its name,

they were Asa, has admitted that.

then they do seem to have not thought through the potential problems due to name conflict.

Yes, that's the interesting question, why deliberately do this?

Asa's post on mozillazine which you quote on your front page was made on the 5th of December last year. The way you quote it seems to give the impression that's a recent response to you guys saying "we think there could be some confusion".

That doesn't quite sound right, but when mozilline comes back up I'll check, first I've (or anyone else in firebird) has heard or seen any of this stuff was a few days ago starting on slashdot.

People aren't going to get to the point where they have a browser in front of them and are going to be going "Hmm... this is a funny looking database...".

its more all the supporting things. 'Oh your from "that" firebird project', and the branding stuff.having someone with a lawyer talking [tm] is enough to scare most programmers - certainly we don't have the finances, legal or visibility to compete with whatever Moz wants to do.

Did you enter into much of a dialogue with the mozilla team before calling for the en-mass mailing of the mozilla team? In other words is it an action of last resort?

I didn't make the call, or become involved till later, that was IBP people, Asa's early attitude and responses in slashdot, and on the mozilline sounded fairly non negotiatory. I belive the IBP people had some more of a dialog (or with others in Moz, I only started my own conversations direct with Moz people recently) - but even that is limited to whoever is willing to reply. But with Asa in the early days, but he wan't moving. But last I saw (earlier today) Asa was still there pushing his point of view pretty hard, on mozilline ( I exchanged a few posts).

Or were you so irritated that you wanted to lash out?

First I heard of it, this was a "done deal", as posted on slashdot. Asa's comments at mozilline, ( currently giving mysql errors) - but along the lines of, 'it's checked by AOL legal, it's done'

So Yes, as a fb admin, and as member of the ff committee, I felt justified and angry enough to post (my own message) to those identified as the project leaders and appropriate forumns of Moz. But hey, I just kept it fairly polite. and Moz people seem to give as good as they get. And for what and the way they did it, I think they need to expect to receive a bit of pith and vineger.

Mark

Regardless of how the Mozilla team have or haven't behaved, there is no call for asking for the sort of mass mailing you did in the way you did at this point.

Im assuming the "you" and "your website" mean the IBP people.

Like most opensource projects, we (firebird people) are a loosly connected group of individuals.

I don't have any control over the IBP website, not what they post, and that's true for most of us in the Firebird project. Our statment is on our web page, and our users comments thoughout both our public and private forumns. The IBP people are responsible for their own actions.

Personally, I think they made a mistake, for IBP, to publisihing the email addresses the way they did, but not a huge one (email campaigns are fairly popular). But they were right to ask for firebird users to contact Moz and indicate they were displeased with both their choice and the way they did it.

I'd never heard of firebird before

apparently it's a browser :-/.

If you'd organised a petition amongst your users, published that, got publicity of it, mailed the petition to mozilla

A bit slow considering the speed they are moving on rebranding at Moz.

If the Mozilla team were that aware of your product (I can easily believe they weren't) and its name,

they were Asa, has admitted that.

then they do seem to have not thought through the potential problems due to name conflict.

Yes, that's the interesting question, why deliberately do this?

Asa's post on mozillazine which you quote on your front page was made on the 5th of December last year. The way you quote it seems to give the impression that's a recent response to you guys saying "we think there could be some confusion".

That doesn't quite sound right, but when mozilline comes back up I'll check, first I've (or anyone else in firebird) has heard or seen any of this stuff was a few days ago starting on slashdot.

People aren't going to get to the point where they have a browser in front of them and are going to be going "Hmm... this is a funny looking database...".

its more all the supporting things. 'Oh your from "that" firebird project', and the branding stuff.having someone with a lawyer talking [tm] is enough to scare most programmers - certainly we don't have the finances, legal or visibility to compete with whatever Moz wants to do.

Did you enter into much of a dialogue with the mozilla team before calling for the en-mass mailing of the mozilla team? In other words is it an action of last resort?

I didn't make the call, or become involved till later, that was IBP people, Asa's early attitude and responses in slashdot, and on the mozilline sounded fairly non negotiatory. I belive the IBP people had some more of a dialog (or with others in Moz, I only started my own conversations direct with Moz people recently) - but even that is limited to whoever is willing to reply. But with Asa in the early days, but he wan't moving. But last I saw (earlier today) Asa was still there pushing his point of view pretty hard, on mozilline ( I exchanged a few posts).

Or were you so irritated that you wanted to lash out?

First I heard of it, this was a "done deal", as posted on slashdot. Asa's comments at mozilline, ( currently giving mysql errors) - but along the lines of, 'it's checked by AOL legal, it's done'

So Yes, as a fb admin, and as member of the ff committee, I felt justified and angry enough to post (my own message) to those identified as the project leaders and appropriate forumns of Moz. But hey, I just kept it fairly polite. and Moz people seem to give as good as they get. And for what and the way they did it, I think they need to expect to receive a bit of pith and vineger.

Mark

The Firebird project (at sourceforge) was not created by IBP, in fact I created it, it's hard to call it owned by anyone since it's a fairly loose association of people who are working on the code, including some from IBP. From several discussions evolved the usage of FirebirdSQL for some of the web and packaging.

In the last year the nonprofit association FirebirdSQL Foundation was created, (through about 12 founding members) to direct donated and membership funds, and probably a holding place for "firebird community property". Possibly, if there was to be an owner of the FirebirdSQL (or Firebird?) brand that is likely to be where we would like to see it directed (although at this stage IBP would be fine too).

My small experience with "brands" also gave me the understanding that both being in the software business was close enough to "create confusion" in a brand, so I was very supprised to find Moz claiming fb as thier own.

Our lack of prior claim to Firebird or FirebirdSQL (other than through usage) is due to the fact we are your average opensource project, not cashed up , and full of coders not lawyers.

Currently we (all fb people) are still stunned, by Moz's actions to use the firebird name, of which we had no prior knowledge or warning. Our first meeting with big brother opensource, from a smaller project, has not been a pleasant one.

Unfortunately, due to their actions we will obviously need to now spend effort in carefully review our own legal situation, and the effect that Moz firebird(tm) will have on our usage of Firebird and FirebirdSQL. Things that as with most opensource projects, will need to be done by donated work, and volunteer time, we were hoping to skimp on, and rely on general good will. So any advice appreciated :-).

IBPhoenix was named as a twist on the InterBase, word. I'll let Ann fill you in on that when she replies to you.

But a sobering thought to finish on. Our name was just the top one on the list, apparently we only got 5% or 37 votes. So if your name is on this list you were X votes away from getting the same treatment.

Mark

Yeah you're right, my bad. FirebirdSQL is from InterBase. And SAP DB is from...SAP!

You know, I really hate to bring myself down to such a petty and immature level, but in this case, I'll make an exception. Mozilla is a perfectly good, respected open source solutions provider. As such, its products lend a certain amount of credibility to open source in general (hey Linux people, this means you). Credibility is the key to widescale adoption within large companies and the like. You can have the best products on Earth, but if your credibility is zilch, no major business will touch it. In the spirit of showing others that this type of bahavior yields more pain than rewards, and without further adu:

I say let the fuckers have it. Hit these assholes first, then these pricks. Fill their message boards, newsletters, email boxes, and everything else you can find that'll take your submission with the following message:

"DoSing Open Source is not fun * "

Paste it into anything that'll let you 3, 4, 5 times a day. Calling Linux fanboys - this is your chance to troll while actually doing something good for a change. Hit them as often as you possibly can (or make (and post) a script to do it automatically all day long) and continue doing it until you see the story posted on slashdot saying that BOTH of them have apologized and will never do it again.

Don't post a reply if you're going ahead with it, just do it. If they're allowed to do this and get away with it, it will legitimize it in a way we never want to see. Unfortunatly, I see no alternative to dealing with this issue other than giving these people a taste of their own medicine.

Firebird should do what you want. It came from interbase so although Firebird 1.5 is still in beta it was allready a fully featured RDMS at the start. Big advantages for me are that it is completely free (beer&speech) and also supports windows as a server platform (which some of my clients prefer)