Slashdot Mirror
Firebird Name Debate Enters a New Stage
An anonymous reader writes "As many readers will know, mozilla.org was asked to change the name for their standalone browser, Phoenix as another browser had the same name. After months of discussion, the new name was announced as Mozilla Firebird. Despite the new name being approved by AOL Legal, supporters of the FirebirdSQL database were quick to object (though the name is also used by many other people). A coincidentally named supporter of FirebirdSQL, IBPhoenix, put up a slightly immature request for their readers to participate in mass posting campaign targetting mozilla.org developers' email accounts, newsgroups and even forums at independent sites such as MozillaZine and Slashdot. FirebirdSQL's official site later reiterated this message. However, IBPhoenix have now declared this shock-and-awe stage of their campaign over, heralding it a success. Their second stage calls for a more focussed email protest at just two of mozilla.org's members: Mitchell Baker (mozilla.org's leader) and Asa Dotzler (announcer of the name change). In addition, they ask their readers to move away from 'derogatory messages' and to show more 'courtesy'. Unsurprisingly, the beleaguered admins of affected sites such as MozillaZine have welcomed this change of direction. This is getting very interesting!"
The problem is not Phoenix bios, it's the Phoenix Technologies _BROWSER_ for embedded systems. Hence they are similar and could be confusing.
The same is not true of the Firebird SQL software. They are in differant spaces and in my opinion are not likely to be confused. The IBPhoenix guy also handled the situation poorly and doesn't merit a response.
According to the Phoenix (now Firebird) project page, they already went through months of legal investigation and deemed Firebird a perfectly usable and un-infringing name. There is no way they will change it now.
Also, considering the Firebird Database is an open source project, I doubt they would be able/willing to bring up a lawsuit for the name anyhow.
Yeah, a very good point. The sourceforge usage statistics for the Firebird project demonstrate this very well.
It's more complicated than that; the law you reference simply tells how to affix a copyright notice if you choose to.
Prior to the 1976 revision of U.S. copyright law, you would actually lose your copyright to a work if you published it without proper copyright notice being displayed.
After 1976, you automatically obtain copyright on your work as soon as it is fixed in a tangible format. You own the copyright whether you add the copyright notice or not. Including the copyright notice is still a good idea, however, because it makes it easier to establish that someone _knowingly_ violated your copyright; it can affect the amount of damages you receive.
All of this stuff is in the circulars which the U.S. Copyright office makes available on the web.
You have to understand the history of the Firebird DB project in the first place to understand their displeasure.
Firebird DB draws its codebase from Borland's InterBase. Borland was going to kill InterBase and let many of their developers go. Those developers decided to resurrect InterBase as an open source product. There was a lot of talk and Borland was going to release the full source code and rights to them so that this could happen. Then, the talks broke down and InterBase Corporation got screwed. InterBase became a commercial product again with substantially higher licensing fees than before.
So, they (IBC) took what source they DID have rights to and expanded the product and offer it as an OS solution. Because it essentially arose from the ashes, it was named Firebird (and the IBPhoenix support group was born).
Firebird is a very robust and powerful SQL 92 compliant database. It's adoptance by the OS community has been slow because most people remember it only as the commercial InterBase product. But, it's a very powerful, cross platform, database solution. I've used both InterBase and FireBird in my work I'm predominantly a Delphi developer..but do a fair amount of Linux work on the side). InterBase licensing costs are high. FireBird is free.
I suggest that you take a look at what Firebird (the DB) has to offer. I think you'll be pleasantly suprised. And, now that you have an understanding of where the name came from for the project, maybe you'll have a better appreciation of their fight to retain it.
RD