Mozilla Firebird gets .8 Release, and New Name

Yage writes "Firebird, the lightweight version of Mozilla gets release 0.8 and changes its name again (remember Phoenix?) to avoid confusion with another OSS project. The new name is Firefox. There's a press release out about the name change and new version. And, as usual, download it from mozilla.org." Worth noting that ThunderBird .5 has been released as well. Update: 02/09 14:55 GMT by H : Thanks to Steve Garrity for pointing out the name change FAQ.

Comments

A question

[GonzoDave]

I use Mozilla, but there's 2 areas where IE seems to have the edge-it takes less system resources, and it has a history you can actually use. Does Firebird/fox/thingy fix these problems?

Re:Mirror

[BandwidthHog]

That comment would be much more useful to me if you'd actually linked the various mirrors, as mozilla.org is totally swamped right now.

Re:Totally brutal...

[smack_attack]

Pfft, don't piss on Opera, fanboy. It's just as standards compliant as your beloved FreeBird or whatever.

Unbelievably Dumb

[anonicon]

Firefox? Firefox? What, did they put 10 trademark-eligible names in a hat and pull this one out? It's nifty that they have a trademarked name, too bad they trademarked a name that sucks.

Thank God when I support the project by buying their merchandise here: http://snipurl.com/4drd , I'm not stuck buying something that says or displays a frigging Firefox. Is there some reason they couldn't compound their names like nearly any other business in the world? Mozilla Phoenix or Mozilla Firebird would have been a much better solution than this. Heck, cannibalizing Mozilla once the Suite is discontinued would have been better, soooo, once the suite hit 1.8 and then ceased, they could have come out with Mozilla 1.9 the browser and Mozilla Mail 1.9.

Yes, in the big picture, it's not the end of the world - no product name is, even if they'd decided to call this the Edsel. Still, if anyone asks me what I recommend for mail and browsing, I'll be forwarding them to Mozilla.

Peace,
Chuck

Err, what is *not* opaque about those?

[timothy]

Since none of these names are opaque (so I can ignore your explanations in parentheses), I'll guess what each one does:

Powerpoint -- a powerful hand-shaped icon, for when quadruple clicking isn't enough

Access - allows one to make spy-movie-style effortless break-ins to computers, buildings, locked safes ... anything, really.

Outlook - provides an 8-ball style simple fortune telling device.
.
Visual Studio - nifty painting tool

And though you didn't mention it, Word -- a dictionary application with a limited vocabulary. Watch for the sequel, coming soon, called "Words."

Also, Excel, the application that's really, really good at whatever it is that it happens to do.

My point is (and I do have one) that these program names are fine and dandy, catchy even, but in no way are the programs' functions anything more than hinted at by the name. If you *know* that Access refers to *database* Access, then great, Access may then seem awfully intuitive. If you don't already know that, "access" is a pretty ambiguous term. Access would also be a great name for a financial records application, or a password generator, or a password-keyring type application, or a tool for analyzing computer security. Likewise Word ... it's a cool name for a word processor, but in fact still pretty ambiguous. If it wasn't a word processor, maybe it would be a Bible study tool ("In the beginning was the Word"), or a scrabble player's lookup tool, or a rhyming dictionary, etc etc.

On the other hand, "Internet Explorer" and "Windows Media Player" (there is something called that, right?) seem clearer to me, even if not perfect. ("OK honey, I'm going to play some media now" would be a strange sentence, because the word "play" doesn't act cleanly on "media" ... )

On the other, other hand ... "BackOffice" is IMO a pretty good name for that suite. Not perfect, just good.

My thought: pretty much all names suck -- either they're hopelessly and boringly descriptive, or not descriptive enough -- unless they catch on, in which case people may even think of them as being intuitive :) (One frequently dragged-out fact: I liked "WriteNow" as a word processor, and as a name for a word processor.)

timothy