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Mozilla's Joy Of Naming
An anonymous reader writes "Thought the Firebird naming conflict was over? Think again! (If you thought, "What naming conflict?", go to the back of the class and read Slashdot's, previous coverage.) MozillaZine has got an exclusive interview with Christopher Blizzard, mozilla.org staff member, Red Hat employee and author of the Mozilla branding strategy. It's one the first official statements from mozilla.org (Mitchell Baker published a letter that she sent to the Firebird database project admins a few days ago). As well as the interview, MozillaZine also takes a look at some of the more recent media coverage of the conflict, which is overwealmingly biased in favour of the Firebird database project (who still haven't adequately explained how it was different when they picked the same name as the older Firebird BBS). Compare and contrast with MozillaZine's interview of Ann Harrison of the Firebird database project."
"Sweet! FREE PUBLICITY!"
:)
I mean, not as popular as mysql, not as advanced as postgresql... they didn't have a whole lot going for them before this came up.
Such a conflict is bad for the image of the open source community. Sadly, it has reached the stage where no one can back down because of bruised egos...And hence it'll be settled (if ever) after a lot of shenanigans.
I'm sure it is greatly interesting to those involved, but to me this is rapidly approaching tabloid material...
Nothing's going to change. Nobody's going to back down. Further, it doesn't really matter.
In a shocking turn of events, Blizzard Entertainment, maker of popular game franchises Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, is charging Christoper Blizzard with trademark and DMCA violations. "Mr. Blizzard and his family were not authorized to use that last name" said a Blizzard executive who wished to remain anonymous. "We're suggesting he change his name to Christopher Snow, or Christopher Storm, something that won't confuse people."
Isn't this just going to cause confusion? Many people currently refer to the browser component of the 'Mozilla Application Suite' as the 'Mozilla browser' and changing the name of Firebird to 'Mozilla Browser' will just confuse things even worse than they already are.
w eek as a separate application.
People tend to think Mozilla='Mozilla Application Suite' and they tend to think of Phoenix/Firebird/Mozilla Browser/whatever-they're-calling-themselves-this-
I'm confused just talking about it.
as
My journal has hot
God it's disgusting how far we've devolved into this stupid little legalistic society where everybody is suing everybody else for the dumbest reasons. Oh yeah, like I'm going to confuse a Web browser with some old crappy database that nobody ever uses or an ugly-looking monstrosity Pontiac targeted at middle-aged bald men who want a car that "looks fast." Hello. It's just a name. Who cares?
You know, if people would put as much effort into technological innovation and development as they do into suing each other, who knows how far along technology might be right now? We're far too infatuated with lawsuits and lawyers and multi-million dollar settlements and not focused on actually making things work. Sad, really.
I think they should just let google decide:
Searched the web for firebird +database. Results 1 - 10 of about 35,000. Search took 0.06 seconds.
Searched the web for firebird +mozilla. Results 1 - 10 of about 9,380. Search took 0.11 seconds.
Since these name (Firebird, Thunderbird, etc.) are only codenames from what i understand, why not drop the codenames and use the names that the final product is going to go buy: Mozilla Browser project and Mozilla Email project. Its impossible to recomend anyone to use a great product if the name changes twice a month!
My 2 cents
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
Nevertheless, we do intend to change the name so that the browser now known as "Mozilla Firebird Browser" becomes the "Mozilla Browser."
Just call it 'Mozilla 2.0' and call it good.
There's no rule that says you have to add features with every release.
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
At my college, RIT, there have been changes to the names of things in the recent past. "Physical Plant," our janitorial service, became "FMS." A bunch of apartments called "Capstones" are now called "University Commons."
You know what? Everyone calls them "Physical Plant" and "Capstone."
Everyone I know still calls it "Phoenix." I still do.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
Mozilla should just use 'Firebird Trans Am' instead.
Then we would all think of Burt Reynolds when searching our favorite web pages. And, it would go well next to my Camino.
> Argh! There are so many links in that submission
It's a new load-balancing scheme on Slashdot that attempts to spread out the Slashdot effect to multiple victi^H^H^H^H^Hservers.
My general approach when looking for a name is to Google all possibilities until I find one that returns 0 hits. If it isn't in Google then it doesn't exist - so is safe to use. Until I wrote this message 'Phyerburd' would have been an example. It's also interesting in that then any time you searh for that word you can be pretty sure that most the hits in Google relate to your use of the word. An easy indicator to watch your growth by.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
First they choose the name Phoenix, which is kind of an inside joke if you know what a Phoenix is. That unexpectedly gets challenged legitimately by the Phoenix BIOS folks (as they were implimenting a BROWSER with the same name, obviously there would be confusion). So they change it to Firebird, something that is currently being used by countless other products, including those that were started before FirebirdSQL was created (e.g. FirebirdBBS). Since it is related to the Phoenix name, they choose that. Not being particularly picky as it is just the codename for the browser component, which will not even be widely used after it is integrated into the main product (as Seamonkey is not). Because the FirebirdSQL developers decided to exploit an opportunity for free publicity that is an indication that Mozilla is 'rapidly deteriorating into a farce"? I don't think I see the logic in that conclusion.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
When the Firebird database chose the name for its project, the people from the similarly named Firebird BBS did not complain or object.
When the Firebird browser project took its name, people from the Firebird database project did complain. Argue the case either way, but that is the difference. It's not rocket science.
they could always call it flamebird, which will probably be more appropriate in the end.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
yeah, it's publicity. in fact, ann -did- say it was publicity: because they figured this had happened by accident, because, as you pointed out, they're not popular ... and no-one would be careful not to name their project 'firebird'.
... i'd like to see your qualification of that. i've come across talks by (of all people) microsoft, where interbase/firebird (same thing, except firebird is open-source, free, and not stinky) is listed right along with oracle, db2, sybase, etc. (and you won't find any mention of mysql or postgresql there.)
... fifteen years? a little more? it's quite full-featured, growing constantly, and currently undergoing a C to C++ conversion so adding features will be even faster in the near future.
... but on slashdot, everyone uses a browser. and if they code ... they're quite likely to have just picked up "php and mysql" at their local bookstore, and never looked for a -real- database. (isn't it sad that, even as good as postgresql is, and -known-, people still favor mysql? geeks, of all people, should know when they see a hack-job.) so instead, from now on, with the slashdot crowd, firebird will be known as "that evil database project that tried to keep mozilla from using its name!" ...
... work on firebird now. you can thank ann and jim for the work that brought you a fully-capable database without the bloat of oracle.)
however, as to the postgresql part
interbase has been around for, what
if it hadn't been for this stink over naming, firebird would have stood a good chance of publicizing their milestone releases (1.5 and 2.0) through slashdot. in fact, there might have been a lot more people picking it up and saying "hey, cool!"
maybe interbase stands a chance (not really -- all the original coders who made interbase possible
and yes, i -am- proud to use firebird in a production environment. it's fast, it's solid, and it does everything (almost -- i've got a few feature requests in) i want it to do. check it out! (and call it whatever you like!)
Okay.
I still don't understand this.
Why is this such a big deal? There can't be a browser and a database with the same name?
Is this some sort of intellectual property argument? Doesn't this sort of go against the "spirit" of the OS community?
Condensed version of events: