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Phoenix and Minotaur Get New Names

Posted by timothy on from the but-not-new-icons dept.

blazerw11 writes "Phoenix and Minotaur have been officially renamed to Firebird for the browser and Thunderbird for the mail client. Interestingly, they're both named after cars I often see in my neighbors' lawns. At least these cars were pretty fast before they were put up on cinder blocks. Personally, I like the names and the browser is great. I'm writing this with one of the last Phoenix Nightlies."

9 of 485 comments (clear)

  1. a great compact browser by eenglish_ca · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Pheonix is a great browser for me cause I am stuck using P2 233 with winnt in my comp sci class with no ie installed. The only issue is that I have to store pheonix on my personal drive which is a max of 48 megs. The pheonix I use is 12 megs which is 1/4 of the space. Conclusion: Pheonix is a great light browser performance wise but it has to be more compressed in terms of size still.

    --
    Checking out my form of escapism.
  2. Request. by numbski · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I love the Mozilla herd, but please do me a favor...

    Quit renaming all the browsers! Every time I recommend them to a friend or coworker, the name changes and they get confused. :(

    --

    Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

    1. Re:Request. by Fnkmaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Okay, howzabout you ask everybody with a vaguely related product to stop threatening the Mozilla project with lawsuits, then they'll stop renaming their browsers.

  3. Firebird, as in... by frostman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...the Database?

    Honestly, as much as I admire the work these folks do, I have to wonder how one medium-to-high-profile open-source project can decide to use the name of another.

    It's not like there aren't other good poetic variations on the Phoenix theme.

    --

    This Like That - fun with words!

    1. Re:Firebird, as in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Mozilla's Firebird browser is not going to be confused with a relational database. Without customer confusion, there isn't a trademark problem.

      Ok, what's with you boneheads who keep bringing up trademarks??? Did the original poster mention anything about trademarks? What about a modicum of respect? What about when (Linux or BSD) distributions have to choose a unique package name for installed software? Who gets "firebird"?

      Seriously, what would you think if MySQL renamed itself to Mozilla? Huh? Would you just shrug it off and say "well, no trademark is violated, so no big deal"? Or would you feel a little bit insulted?

  4. Re:Umm... by Monkey-Man2000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, what's up with that. Did they not do a google search in their investigations? Or are they not concerned about conflicting names with another OS project? It even beats out the car on a search.

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    This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
  5. (It would help with branding + IE war) Re:Request by otisg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, I agree.
    Not only would your friends know what you are talking about, but so would mine and everyone elses. When you say Internet Explorer, everyone knows what you are talking about, right?
    I think people behind Mozilla should learn and adopt this simple 'trick' from Microsoft if they want Mozilla/Phoenix/Firebird to become more popular.

    I would love to see the percentage of visitors using Mozilla go up in my access_log, and the percentage of IE go down. Both Mozilla and Pheonix deserve it.

    --
    Simpy
  6. Re:Why not Volvo XC90 or something? by zurab · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Volvos are more classy than Thunderbirds

    Maybe, in the past, but new Thunderbird looks very nice, and is very classy. I'd take that over most Volvos.

  7. A plea for (phoenix|firebird)-i586 binaries by Boiotos · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Phoenix is a lightweight and fast browser, so it's ideal for boxes built around the last generation of processors, like K2s, Pentium Pros, etc. (Or is that the generation before last?)

    The bummer is that both milestone and daily builds are -i686 binaries. Someone else filed a bugzilla ticket on this in December. I guess we can just vote for it and hope that the mozilla.org folks find the time to do a -i586 build, too.