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Mozilla Branding Strategy Clarified
scottfi writes "Christopher Blizzard has published to mozilla.org an article entitled Mozilla Branding Strategy, which clarifies the position of mozilla.org on naming of the application suite and the separate applications in milestone 1.4 and beyond. The Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird names are simply codenames, and the resulting products will be referred to as 'Mozilla Browser' and 'Mozilla Mail'." This makes the whole name debate seem kind of moot. Luckily Futurama has yet to contact us for using their character names as our development codenames.
Talk about some petty squabbles. Sorry, but that's really what it is. Mozilla is a solid browser that's free. The codename thing makes sense to me, as one who uses Debian on a regular.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
"Luckily Futurama has yet to contact us for using their character names as our development codenames."
Well if they do, you could always say "Bite my shiny metal ass"
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
couldn't they have said that a bit earlier, or did they just find the flame wars funny?
From a marketing stand point it would be a large step backwards to remove "mozilla" from the naming scheme. I am glad this is not the case, but now wonder why they made such a big deal of the code names in their newest roadmap? And why not just develop the projects under the decidedly less h4x0r names "mozilla mail" and "mozilla browser"?
The Surgeon General says sigs are bad for me.
Use those "codenames" for another 5 years until it
reaches 2.0!
I had my credit card ready. :(
What a disappointment.
This is good news, in my opinion. Pointless fights over a product name don't help the cause...call it Mozilla B for all I care, it's still going to be the browser I use.
"What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." -Juliet
Microsoft's Palladium, now renamed "Next Generation Secure Computing Services" .Not Server is Windows Server System 2003
Opera's Bork edition targeting MSN
Mozilla Firebird, Thunderbird chaos...
Banias codename - Centrino branding by Intel
Windows
and
Trustworthy Computing Platform Alliance is now Trustworthy Computing Group.
Should be interesting to see actual market share/ market penetration vs. Confusion. Methinks Mozilla would be lucky to have as many downloads as posts on Slashdot, more so the database chaps.
Good fun all, while it lasted.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Well, if you prefer the old blue lizard icons, they're awaiting in an old Mozilla build. Go fetch! []
How about naming their product "Bob", I'm sure no-one would mind that...
I have nothing to do with firebird, the database, but I can understand their concerns. And while this document seems to try to remedy much problems, I expect that not to work in the real world.
The biggest problem for firebird the db is IMO namespace pollution on search engines. Not from the dull marketing standpoint, but from the developer standpoint, because it makes it harder to find archived mailing list/news messages which might cover a problem a developer might face.
This document won't change that, I fear.
PS: I'm no legal expert, but if they wanted to use the names as codenames, why did they have to involve the legal team before?
This makes the whole name debate seem kind of moot.
This suddenly puts me in mind of the controversy several years back about one of the Mac OS releases. The internal codename for the release was "Carl Sagan." Mr. Sagan objected (for what reason I don't know) and they changed the name of the project to "BHA." Then Sagan found out that BHA was short for "Butt Head Astronomer" and sued for defamation or some such BS.
(He lost.)
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
This is definitely a Good Thing. /me guesses that it wasn't the original intention, though. If it weren't for the Firebird Database uproar the final name for these products probably would have been Firebird and Pinto (what, that's a firebird, or is it fireball, too, right?).
Ah, the joys of Open Source politics. I'm sure the exact same nonsense goes on in Microsoft, just that we never hear about it.
I build phoenix from source (for XFT support) every week or so. I have some questions:
.mozconfig to build Firebird? Will I just stop defining MOZ_PHOENIX and then moz will build like phoenix?
(1) What changes will I have to make to
(2) What additional (cough bloat) features will Phoenix acquire when it becomes the main branch? I don't want Firebird to bloat up at all! If anything, it should go *more* in the faster/smaller direction, not the other way!
If they name it "Bob", they'll have the evil empire itself on their case. Shiver.
Good, now the three people using the Firebird database should be satisfied.
http://www.talknerdy.org
Whatever the final name, make it simple and more `layman', for the sake of the less technical consumers. I find open source software has names that look foreign and cryptic to these people. Eg, Ark vs Winzip, Kppp vs dialup networking, noatun or xine vs media player or realplayer. They usually can't remember such names, and make them difficult to communicate with their peers (such as those newbies who, like them, could have just started to experiment OSS, non-windows, non-mac from the windows world) regarding such softwares & their use.
So if FireBird/Mozilla/TheBestDamnedBrowser is going to be the default Mozilla Browser (a Good Thing(tm)), is the Mozilla we all know and sorta like going to go away? :)
In other words, will FB take over Mozilla-Vanilla's role in the Mozilla.exe/tar.gz that most people download? SeaMonkey or whatever it's codename is
So this is really a face saving way of retracting the name change. This should definitely put an end to the heat from firebird database fans, without making mozilla.org or AOL legal look like jackasses. Diplomacy at its finest!
So, the *bird names will be used only by developers during a one-month period to refer to the codebase not the product. After that it will be called mozilla browser and mozilla mail. Which is GREAT, because there was NEVER a need to use these pseudo-catchy names instead of just Mozilla/ComponentName building on the brand value and recognition.
Current nightly snapshot of Phoenix is called phoenix-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz, the executable is called phoenix, however, the title bar has "Mozilla Firebird". It's not like they are using that name internally - it's exposed to the end users.
: sir the OSS people managed to contain there differences no body is suing...I'm afraid things are back to normal :Foiled again.... But I will be back...muhaaa haa</insane evil voice>
<insane evil voice>
This whole naming argument is a good example of the lack of thought people put into naming their products. The firebird database people should have distiguished their name e.g. FirebirdDB or what ever just as Mozilla should have been firebirdbrowser firebirdweb or whatever.
If you use a really generalised term to name your project/product there are bound to be clashes and cross branding. This is only going to happen more often until people give more thought to their naming schemes.
The stupidity of who has more right to the name is bollocks paticuarly if the name is ripped straight out of a dictionary and not individualised.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
Mozilla is a lot more original than Firebird. Also, the Mozilla name dates back to the early days of Netscape so it's not that easy to give up.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Remember, true geeks say it GNU/Linux.
er... Mozilla Firebird
er... Mozilla Browser
Get Firefox!
They're still saying "Download Mozilla" on their home instead of "Mozilla App Suite".
Does anybody know what will happen with the other components from the Mozilla Suite? I haven't seen them mentioned.
Venkman (JavaScript Debugger) will propably be an extension to Firebird Browser, but what about the remaining components like Composer, ChatZilla etc?
I doubt that Composer will be an addon to Firebird or Thunderbird. That wouln't make any sense.
No-one is going to talk about Mozilla Browser, except maybe on the Mozilla mailing list. It will get shortened to Mozilla, which now apparently means at least 2 different programs that do two entirely different jobs. It's going to be like dropping the second word of "MS Word" and "MS Outlook" and then wondering why everyone gets confused.
Can't we have short if arcane Linux-like contractions such as moznav and mozmail? At least then we would know what we are talking about.
Virtually serving coffee
Question (2) is a very good point.
Personally, I'm pretty annoyed by all this. I've been using Phoenix (or Firebird, whatever I should call it) since the 0.2 release. I think it's a great alternative to big, bloated Mozilla. But now the default Mozilla browser will become Phoenix!!!??? Give it a few years and I bet it'll be just as bloated as Mozilla is now. Even the name "Mozilla" has a bad karma.
...All browsers are named after cars.
Microsoft/Ford Explorer
Apple/GMC Safari
Netscape/Lincoln Navigator
Omni Group/DodgeOmni[web]
iCab... not even going to bother. I'm hoping you'll see the connection.
My point?
The Mozilla group is making a Big Mistake with the upcoming changes.
Point one: not naming their browser after a car. People want to see their browsers named after cars. If Microsoft does it, it HAS to have been researched on the market.
Two: People want to see monolithic browsers using up resources like there's no tomorrow. With every major browser out there named after either an SUV, a minivan or a sporty pickup-type-car, gas guzzling is a must-have feature in a browser.
Therefore, I proclaim Mozilla's 1.5 efforts flawed, and doomed, like BSD.
If the Firebird name is only for internal use etc, why was there a need to change?
They changed from Phoenix because that was already taken, why is it diffrent with Firebird?
A Branding strategy that need to be clarified, isn't a branding strategy at all!
IMO the first thing the Mozilla team needs to do is get rid of ALL similarities with Netscape.
I don't care whether Netscape 6/7/whatever is a good browser, the way they completely FUCKED up the 4.x series had made me lose their trust forever. And I know I'm not alone. I did a summer this year which involved some HTML, and we still had to make sure it worked on NS4 because it was still used by something like 1% of their users. Yay. Forget about using CSS, let's stick to tables because that's the only way of guaranteeing your elements don't fly around the page in NS4.
So when Phoenix/Mozilla has a classic theme that says it 'recreates the familiar look of the classic Netscape 4.x series', it's actually saying that it 'makes this cool browser look like antiquated crap that everyone hates'.
For everyone except Un*x users, Netscape died when IE5 was released as it turned out that IE didn't have completely b0rked support for basic HTML features such as CSS and DHTML. They still view Netscape as the really crappy browser that does everything wrong.
So for everyone except those 5-and-a-half people who never stopped using Netscape 4.x because it was 'so much better than IE', please don't call it 'Mozilla Navigator'. The Navigator name is tied to the crap called Netscape and should die along with it. Seriously, has Netscape done anything remotely interesting ever since NS4? NS6/7 is just a branded version of Mozilla. I personally couldn't care less if a huge asteroid obliterated Netscape headquarters today.
Besides, brand recognition and naming depends on your users. Look at how Apple's Safari has become a household name in a couple of months, but how Mozilla is still squabbling over details like this. Maybe we should stop letting the geeks choose names and get some marketing droids to do it instead?
There's a lot to be said for consumer friendly names. Look at the marketing for cars. They usually use some abstract concept (e.g. emotion) to market cars due to the difficulty in differentiating between one car from another. They all have the same features. They all take you from A to B.
The same can be said for browers. All browsers are essentially the same. Maybe a few extra features here or there, but that's about it. What is becoming important (if it hasn't already become so) is how the web browser makes you feel. Just imagine: your friend asks you what web brower do you use. Which would sound more impressive/cooler/better? "Mozilla Web Browser"? Or "Mozilla Firebird"?
A shame they decided to not use the name.
-- Kircle
This was the best they could have done under present circumstances. Bravo for finally fixing this screwup in an acceptable way.
Losing the "Mozilla" brand would've been a bad marketing move even if it didn't involve "stealing" the Firebird name from an existing open source project.
--the monster island reference always cracked me up and seemed like a good idea. They shoulda stuck with that. Or if they aren't, they need to abandon what "mindshare" that mozilla has now while it still is sorta only known about by geeks, just drop any mozilla references entirely. I mean, when you can't even agree on names, no one is going to take your project seriously in the mainstream. I already have a hard enough time trying to encourage people to try "this new browser, mozilla, try it, you'll like it". Now I got to say "hey, try...whatever, you'll like it!"
Just not as snappy as a "name". It's like the browser formely known as 948575757, no, I mean prince, no it's....
In an even further direction, why not just combine it back into "official" netscape and cut out all the cruft and crap? Netscape is a known quantity, there's little reason (that I can see) to have them separate other than inertia.
Anyone remember Apple and the 'Butt Head Astronomer' back in '97 or so?
This legal opinion may clarify the reasons behind the backdown.
> I don't want Firebird to bloat up at all! If anything, it should go *more* in the faster/smaller direction, not the other way!
Simple. Firebird/Phoenix will become as bloated as Mozilla, which will leave the ex-Phoenix developers scratching their heads and wondering what happened. They will then develop a new branch that fits their needs (and mine too) just as they did with Phoenix. Too bad we lost Phoenix, though, as it had a lot of development and bug testing behind it. A new branch will need to start over in that area, but I'm in no rush as long as Pheonix .5 is working on my machines :)
If you don't think this will happen, then why were there two project to begin with? There are clearly two different ideas about how the browser should be implemented. What makes anyone think this philosophy will change with the new acquisition? "Oh, you were right, your code was better than ours all along! We'll just throw ours away and use yours."
Opera's DOM engine is largely slower than both Mozilla and IE's.
See http://www.greymagic.com/dagon/results.html for details.
There are plenty of reports that demonstrate that Gecko's support is better. But since you asked, here.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
They could have said that these were codenames and not product names right off the bat. I think they're just backpedaling because of all the controversy. If Phoenix was just a codename as well why were they feeling so pressured to change it?
Using the word mozilla in the names of the applications is really going to be a burden marketing-wise. I dont know how to pronounce "mozilla" in English, but pronouncing it in my own language (Swedish) makes it sound so riddiculous that people does not take it seriously. Netscape and explorer are fine names, opera and phoenix area borderline cases, but mozilla is just plain stupid.
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.
K.I.S.S.
Why is the database named Firebird when there are at least five older projects with the same name (do a google search)?
Firebird is just another name for InterBase. There was no reason to come up with a new name that "infringed" on the others. Okay, you don't want to distinguish between the free and proprietary versions of InterBase, you could do what the StarOffice group did, call it OpenBase or OpenInterBase.
Why Firebird instead OpenInterBase? Because it sounds cool and Firebird is a generic term like Windows. "Firebird" the car is never advertised as "Firebird", it's advertised as "Pontiac Firebird". (Note that Firebird development takes place on IBPhoenix.com, i.e. InterBase Phoenix/Firebird).
Why Firebird instead Mozilla Browser or Mozilla NextGen or Slim Mozilla? Because it sounds cool and Firebird is a generic term like Windows.
If Mozilla is guilty then the Interbase is just as guilty, but neither Mozilla nor Interbase are.
I liked my names better, but "Dumb and Dumber" are already copywrited.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Mozilla Murano. I think that sounds nice.
imho, the world's gone to hell in a handbasket when an open source project worries about its brand identity. Stick to writing solid, standards-compliant code and let the community take care of promotion, imho.
Quibbling about whether to call it Phoenix, Mozilla Phoenix or Mozilla is a waste of everyone's time, and when you compose documents like this, you usually find yourself on the receiving end of a large flame attack.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Jodie Foster and the email client Winona Ryder...
How's that?
We could also "alias" the names to anything the user wants - that could be an installation option - pick the name you want to call the browser and email client.
Stand up for freedom! Why let some company or collection of geeks choose the name of your tools?
Down with marketing! Name everything "anonymous"!
If it works for poetry and prose, it can work for software...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I just noticed this. They were good enough to mention that they tested only on pages without DOCTYPE headers, because they think that's a bad idea. Bully for them. But it throws IE 6 and Moz into "quirks mode" where strange and less than wonderful things may happen. For example, IE6/Win has the famous IE box-model size bug in quirks mode but not in standards mode. I don't know whether Opera has a distinction between "standards compliance mode" and "tag-soup mode".
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
It can be compared to law clarifications. While good in some aspects, the more you add to a law, the more freedoms are stripped away.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny