Boy talk about picking a real flamebait post to start a thread at slashdot.
The spin CaptKirk puts on the post, misses most of the points Ann makes anyway, best to go and have a read for youeself.
You've got to wonder how many people are on the sideline cheering and putting up this stuff, not becuase they want to solve the problem, but just because they like to see a fight.
There's a reason the Firebird relational database is called FirebirdSQL most of the time, to help give it some context. Somebody on that team realized that Firebird all by itself wouldn't necessarily mean anything to anyone, until or unless it was built into a big name with tons of publicity.
Yes, exactly the point why we chose FirebirdSQL. for our "formal" branding, web site etc - and it only took us a year to figure it out.
Usually visibility is determined by industry, in ours (and Mozilla's case) the usual call is "the software industry". Asa is the first time I've heard advice dividing software into seperate markets "database market" and "intenet browser market" - but Im not a lawyer.
So if you search the web, with software related terms, say "download" you'll get our web pages.
If you search the web with "kitty" you (may) get your pets home page. Same if I go to a software conference or a pet show, Im not going to get confused. I know you need to register greyhounds or racehorses with unique names, but perhaps with cats they are not so fussy:-).
If you want to avoid confusion, then continue using 'FirebirdSQL' (as I almost always see it) and the Mozilla project can use 'Firebird Web' or 'Mozilla Firebird'.
Formally, I think, we really prefer FirebirdSQL, it we get a trademark or something it's likely to be FirebirdSQL,
but on the ground, it's still refferred as firebird, our newsgroups are firebird etc. Now Moz's own firebird project is doing the same thing, now they have started - their groups are called Firebird-Bugs, Firebird-Checkins, very similar to our own lists.
We don't want to own the Firebird name, it belongs to a car. But within "the software industry" we don't want to avoid our firebird project clashing namespaces with Mozilla.sponsored projects.
Well, it doesn't look like there are other software projects titled "Pheonix."
Within the Firebird project, we're not interested in Phoenix or such like, only Firebird. If it came to trademark things, we would probably go for something like FirebirdSQL. But still to avoid confusion because we are both software products, and it will cause us confusion, we would appreciate it if Moz chose a name that didn't conflict with an existing (our) project.
The reason the Trademark office exists is to avoid situations like this. But failing to secure the trademark, you made it inevitable that eventually, someone would use the name.
I think most opensource projects live a little on trust, and good nature, and bad press to keep the legal wolves from the doors.
One complication is that most of us don't live in the states, for me Australian law is applicable, nor are we lawyers and yes Moz were aware we existed.
However, you totally obscured the real question : why in the world did the FirebirdSQL team started an email flood campaign ?
The real question for me is for the firebird project not to clash namespaces with Mozilla.
The flood thing, is a distraction, (asked for by a stong supporter of FirebirdSQL) but that for me it masks the main problem.
Now, why did they do it?. Well email protests are not uncommon t oget soemones attention, so it's not that far out of line, usually as long as you are polite. Our user and developer base were (are) really annoyed with both the what and the way Moz did what they did.
I send a protest message, (which I though was polite enough) to those identified as Moz admins and have corresponded to those willing to reply.
Now, I didn't call for it, but from my position, I can inderstand why someone asked for it.
I think active, but polite participation in appropriate lists, and with the appropriate Moz admin people, is the only way we can get our message across and hopefully resolve this issue to both groups satisfaction.
Regardless of how the Mozilla team have or haven't behaved, there is no call for asking for the sort of mass mailing you did in the way you did at this point.
Im assuming the "you" and "your website" mean the IBP people.
Like most opensource projects, we (firebird people) are a loosly connected group of individuals.
I don't have any control over the IBP website, not what they post, and that's true for most of us in the
Firebird project. Our statment is on our web page, and our users comments thoughout both our public and private forumns. The IBP people are responsible for their own actions.
Personally, I think they made a mistake, for IBP, to publisihing the email addresses the way they did, but not a huge one (email campaigns are fairly popular). But they were right to ask for firebird users to contact Moz and indicate they were displeased with both their choice and the way they did it.
I'd never heard of firebird before
apparently it's a browser:-/.
If you'd organised a petition amongst your users, published that, got publicity of it, mailed the petition to mozilla
A bit slow considering the speed they are moving on rebranding at Moz.
If the Mozilla team were that aware of your product (I can easily believe they weren't) and its name,
they were Asa, has admitted that.
then they do seem to have not thought through the potential problems due to name conflict.
Yes, that's the interesting question, why deliberately do this?
Asa's post on mozillazine which you quote on your front page was made on the 5th of December last year. The way you quote it seems to give the impression that's a recent response to you guys saying "we think there could be some confusion".
That doesn't quite sound right, but when mozilline comes back up I'll check, first I've (or anyone else in firebird) has heard or seen any of this stuff was a few days ago starting on slashdot.
People aren't going to get to the point where they have a browser in front of them and are going to be going "Hmm... this is a funny looking database...".
its more all the supporting things. 'Oh your from "that" firebird project', and the branding stuff.having someone with a lawyer talking [tm] is enough to scare most programmers - certainly we don't have the finances, legal or visibility to compete with whatever Moz wants to do.
Did you enter into much of a dialogue with the mozilla team before calling for the en-mass mailing of the mozilla team? In other words is it an action of last resort?
I didn't make the call, or become involved till later, that was IBP people, Asa's early attitude and responses in slashdot, and on the mozilline sounded fairly non negotiatory. I belive the IBP people had some more of a dialog (or with others in Moz, I only started my own conversations direct with Moz people recently) - but even that is limited to whoever is willing to reply. But with Asa in the early days, but he wan't moving. But last I saw (earlier today) Asa was still there pushing his point of view pretty hard, on mozilline ( I exchanged a few posts).
Or were you so irritated that you wanted to lash out?
First I heard of it, this was a "done deal", as posted on slashdot. Asa's comments at mozilline, ( currently giving mysql errors) - but along the lines of, 'it's checked by AOL legal, it's done'
So Yes, as a fb admin, and as member of the
ff committee, I felt justified and angry enough to post (my own message) to those identified as the project leaders and appropriate forumns of Moz. But hey, I just kept it fairly polite. and Moz people seem to give as good as they get. And for what and the way they did it, I think they need to expect to receive a bit of pith and vineger.
The Firebird project (at sourceforge) was not created by IBP, in fact I created it, it's hard to call it owned by anyone since it's a fairly loose association of people who are working on the code, including some from IBP. From several discussions evolved the usage of FirebirdSQL for some of the web and packaging.
In the last year the nonprofit association
FirebirdSQL Foundation was created, (through about 12 founding members) to direct donated and membership funds, and probably a holding place for "firebird community property". Possibly, if there was to be an owner of the FirebirdSQL (or Firebird?) brand that is likely to be where we would like to see it directed (although at this stage IBP would be fine too).
My small experience with "brands" also gave me the understanding that both being in the software business was close enough to "create confusion" in a brand, so I was very supprised to find Moz claiming fb as thier own.
Our lack of prior claim to Firebird or FirebirdSQL (other than through usage) is due to the fact we are your average opensource project, not cashed up , and full of coders not lawyers.
Currently we (all fb people) are still stunned, by Moz's actions to use the firebird name, of which we had no prior knowledge or warning. Our first meeting with big brother opensource, from a smaller project, has not been a pleasant one.
Unfortunately, due to their actions we will obviously need to now spend effort in carefully review our own legal situation, and the effect that Moz firebird(tm) will have on our usage of Firebird and FirebirdSQL. Things that as with most opensource projects, will need to be done by donated work, and volunteer time, we were hoping to skimp on, and rely on general good will. So any advice appreciated:-).
IBPhoenix was named as a twist on the InterBase, word. I'll let Ann fill you in on that when she replies to you.
But a sobering thought to finish on. Our name was just the top one on the list, apparently we only got 5% or 37 votes. So if your name is on this list
you were X votes away from getting the same treatment.
Because Im hoping some sense of decency will be awakened in the mozilla team, and they will recind their decision.
Firebird SQL's name is now totally rotten due to IBPHOENIX.
Unfortunately I think your right, the "high moral ground" and judgement at the click of a button, on this issue will create enough fog, and distract people from the predicament that this situation places the firebird project in.
Asking nicely should have been done in the first place, followed by asking for Slashdot opinion may generate support.
Actually a polite discussion from moz prior to publication, or even a period of public comment before using the firebird name could also have helped avoid this mess. That and the "I've checked it with the AOL lawyers, it's legal it's over" attitude really annoyed a lot of our users/developers.
Too bad Firebird SQL.
Another one bites the dust?
Yes and with it a sh*tload of hard work by a lot of people under hard conditions goes down the drain as well.
Users are fickle creatures. They don't know where their browsers come from and you could be on the phone giving directions, and we are both downloadable software projects.
When even a search for "firebird" & "download" will give both moz and fb download results I can see it will cause confusion.
It just seems to me, that with a bit of foresight, moz could have avoided this problem for both of us.
Mozilla's decision (if they decide to proceed) to use our project name (Firebird) will certainly cause a lot of confusion, certainly amongst our end users and more than likely amongst their users.
I would ask them to consider how they would feel if Microsoft decided to rename Powerpoint as Microsoft Mozilla - in their (mozilla's) legal teams opinion it would cause no confusion?
Yes, Ok we could have chosen better as well, Firebird is but our mistake is three years ago and we didn't have the financial means to get any legal advice (still don't really). It was a name chosen by a few enthusiasts, after checking round the web that it wasn't going to conflict with anyone. From the lack of complaints over the last three years, I guess we haven't stepped on anyones toes.
But with mozilla we will overlap, some examples of confusing areas:
1. I can see mozilla users ending up at firebird.sourceforge.net looking for information on mozilla-firebird.
2. I can see much confusion between news and list names : see
http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/index.php?c=4 vs: http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=list s
After a year of two of posts to these, that will seriously muck up google searches for "firebird" and "download" for instance, as well as firebird (and moz) getting user requests for browers/databases in both our general newslists.
3. I can see package confusion occuring on most linux distributions - install which firebird rpm?
4. Security releases for "Firebird" are likely to overlapping on searches by product name.
5. My (limited) exposure to legal issues, was that just being another software product is cause enough to create user confusion. So Im supprised at their legal advice (but am not a lawyer).
6. Web applications often include browsers and databases. Scripting languages often support both , so what will something like PHP with Firebird support mean. My feeling is after a year, noone will remember it was a database.
7. I don't want to spend the rest of my life explaining to people that Firebird (our project) is not a web browser.
So you've got to ask why cause all the confusion (most of which I fear will be suffered by our users and developers), when it can be simply fixed by Mozilla choosing another name that doesn't conflict with an existing project.
I find this especially strange when coming from one name clash, they decided to go into another, with all that "months of legal help" surely they can come up with their own unique name.
And yes I am involved with the firebird project and the firebirdsql foundation. Where a lot of people work very hard on a Firebird for zero dollars in return.
Regards
Mark O'Donohue -- See you at the First European Firebird Conference in May in Fulda, Germany http://www.firebird-conference.com
(since I've had a few pointy notes, that Im only doing all this for the publicity, [Im not personally I feel quite sick in the stomach about this whole episode] I thought I'd include my normal.signature:-)
I only hope Rasterman knows how popular enlightenment is, how much it is appreciated, and dispite his own pessimism, how much people are looking forward to a new release.
- for some curious reason everyone else seems to want to look like microsoft.
Re:This may be obvious but...
on
GPL FAQ
·
· Score: 1
It's interesting and I agree with the variety and don't see these licences as conflicting but as complementary.
I personally subscribe to the GPL not because I subscribe to the social change thing (that's a bit much to ask of software) but as a self protection thing so my code, and code derived from my code remains in the public domain rather than picked up and exploited by someone like BILL$, LARRY$ or the millions who would like to emulate them.
I remember being told that the hardware platform Oracle performed best on was a 35mil slide projector.
In all of this it's worth remembering that large companies spend a lot of money on PR to make not only you but your boss comfortable with the product, and a lot of that feelgood PR has nothing particular to do with the facts.
I always wondered why Oracle Forms is and remains such a dog, and why they never integrated DEC/RDB into Oracle proper when they bought it ages ago. Currently they sell them both as seperate products (Oracle and Oracle RDB).
In my experience (a bit dated on Oracle now) Oracle was alright, but wasn't anything special, the row level locking was pretty ordinary and was contained in a lot of other products at least 5yrs before Oracle signed on to it (for a large price addon as I recall).
And when many say 20x7x365, I must admit I've never seen one that really worked. They all seem to have a convenient memory lapse, and forget the 3days downtime where they screamed at people to get it back on the air while upgrading the software, that sort of thing. Mostly it seems to be done by duplication of the site and some sort of SQL patchup/merge after the problems are all over.
The free databases will get better, and I think eventually replace the costly commercial ones. Everyone will still make a bucket out of support etc, since after people loose their data once they usually start bothering to do backups (either online or otherwise)..
If it worries Larry that his income will fade a little, he'll just have to console himself that the same is happenning to Bill, his rival in the most pointlessly richest man in the world competition.
This is part of the patch to fix the problem. the orignal code was not as clear.
There is a lot of code, and a lot of it is old.
It generates thousands of warnings, and has lots of cute #defines
It was released without the proper build procedures, and it has (and there is still) an effort underway to make the build easy and crossplatform
Since we get no help from Borland and they are basically trying to ignore us. For instance an attempt to release a document called "Interbase Engine Internals" a 1991 document for public use was met with a legal threat to sue from Borland (and it still isn't released). The user documentation for InterBase 6.0 which has work contributed by Borland and others, still hasn't seen the light of day, since Borland wont even talk about settling the ownsership/release problem.
In all of these things, a security audit was one on the list, and we were pretty much starting out when we found this problem.
It's interesting that most of the engineers within Borland (most now former engineers, and some even on the Firebird team) didn't know about these problems.
I have other concerns as well (forinstance the default interbase install is to run as root user, that does not have to be the case and should not be) these all need to be addressed.
we have other issues that need to be solved but these are ones was we did expect to find.
BTW: Did you check out the problems with the file qatest.c. Which has been less widely reported.
What would you think of a QA department that insisted you place a routine into a production release of your product that lets any user delete the current database or crash your server at will.;-).
Cheers
Mark O'Donohue
--
Your database needs YOU!
http://firebird.sourceforge.net
This is the Firebird - daughter of interbase project.
All of the community changes happen here, and we have 30 odd registered developers and occasionalyl bump into the top 10 projects on sourceforge.
Of course since as one of those developers, Im probably biased;-).
Cheers
Mark O'Donohue
--
Your database needs YOU!
http://firebird.sourceforge.net
The code is intialised to the variables in the.h file, and when the server starts up it repaces them with random data using chars with ascii values 1-255
So every time the server starts up you get a different random password.
I've posted somewhere else, a bit about how this was done just prior to christmas, to fix the problem, and not introduce any unknowns.
A more perminant fix will be applied, we found it when we were doing a review of the security
There are problems, but in Firebird we have several people who do crypto/PKI things for their day job and we were doing a security review, that in part explains how we've found these. It also places us in a good position to fix these things. As far as Borland are concerned, they seem to be ignoring us,
They wouldn't tell Jim they were working on a patch for prior versions of InterBase, so he felt compelled to write his own.
But for now it's a good time to keep your Firebird/InterBase server locked behind a firewall
Cheers
Mark O'Donohue
--
Your database needs YOU!
http://firebird.sourceforge.net
I agree with a lot of what you have said, these things get tricky when it gets to the legal tick tacks. I guess we'll all find out in the wash, but currently I'm very happy Borland has released the source. That I think was a real milestone for them and quenches my fear that some last minute problem (like selling it to someone else) was going to ruin interbase. <p> So full credit to Dale and Borland for releaseing interbase. <p> I also wish Ann and the rest in ISC the best of luck in getting to their finish post from here, although with the release they are part way there.
I see everyone is interested in the gui. But for me the important event is Interbase. It's a quality product that in my opinion provides a lot of feature without having to own an army of DBA's.
I was (am) concerned by the delay (it's been 6months since it was announced and the products packaged and ready to go) I've always been suspicious of the "it's in the bag - we just have a few minor details to sort out before we sign", as that usually means some sort of big problem, and a 50/50 chance of it actually being signed.
I am however encouraged that they are still talking the opensource (interbase) talk while in the spotlight, and think the attention focused on borland during this crucial period will hopefully help keep them honest.
I've used interbase, and it is an excelent product.
It and it's predecessor (DEC RDB) in my opinion are better than most of the big names by a mile.
I was really shocked when got to try other relational databases. Interbase developed the blob stuff and has had transactions and row level locking in it from the start. The other notables, Oracle Ingress, Sybase and Informix were all latecomers to this (Im not sure if Ingress actually has it yet (and it was renamed OpenRoad/OpenIngress or something by Computer Associates)
Interbase was also beautifly simple to use, and virtually required no DBA, even for rather large data sets (couple of million rows). The constant tinkering and adjusting required by a full time DBA for the other big names, DBA time is a real hidden killer that is often the real cause for DB down time.
Oracle now owns DEC RDB (now called Oracle RDB) and are porting it to other platforms (either NT or Unix) although it is seperate from their other Oracle SQL product.
A good strong "commercial strength" relational database with an open source philosophy would be a nice accompanyment to a linux system.
Postgres and MySQL (although MySQL is not transactional) are pretty damn good and are filling this role fairly quickly.
I think that Borland could give a real kickstart to interbase by making it opensource and closely associating it with linux.
And I for one would relish the oportunity to work with it again.
Sorry to post again, but I'm getting a good laugh as I read through the message board in reply to this issue at yahoo. Although there are a variety of comments (including some negative ones) there seems to be a real Bill Love fest going on.
Or is this what america really thinks about MICROS~1 ?
I'll be interested to see some sort of analysis of the web comments in reply to this event both here and in news groups (and yahoo where I had a look).
Given the nature of the event and the previous history of web spin (eg the blair witch thing and the other MS thing) I think looking at the web reaction could be the really interesting story here, even if there was no spin.
Slashdot Mirror
Boy talk about picking a real flamebait post to start a thread at slashdot.
The spin CaptKirk puts on the post, misses most of the points Ann makes anyway, best to go and have a read for youeself.
You've got to wonder how many people are on the sideline cheering and putting up this stuff, not becuase they want to solve the problem, but just because they like to see a fight.
Cheers
Mark O'Donohue (yes a firebird person)
Yes, exactly the point why we chose FirebirdSQL. for our "formal" branding, web site etc - and it only took us a year to figure it out.
Cheers
Mark
So if you search the web, with software related terms, say "download" you'll get our web pages.
If you search the web with "kitty" you (may) get your pets home page. Same if I go to a software conference or a pet show, Im not going to get confused. I know you need to register greyhounds or racehorses with unique names, but perhaps with cats they are not so fussy :-).
If you want to avoid confusion, then continue using 'FirebirdSQL' (as I almost always see it) and the Mozilla project can use 'Firebird Web' or 'Mozilla Firebird'.
Formally, I think, we really prefer FirebirdSQL, it we get a trademark or something it's likely to be FirebirdSQL,
but on the ground, it's still refferred as firebird, our newsgroups are firebird etc. Now Moz's own firebird project is doing the same thing, now they have started - their groups are called Firebird-Bugs, Firebird-Checkins, very similar to our own lists.
We don't want to own the Firebird name, it belongs to a car. But within "the software industry" we don't want to avoid our firebird project clashing namespaces with Mozilla.sponsored projects.
Mark
Within the Firebird project, we're not interested in Phoenix or such like, only Firebird. If it came to trademark things, we would probably go for something like FirebirdSQL. But still to avoid confusion because we are both software products, and it will cause us confusion, we would appreciate it if Moz chose a name that didn't conflict with an existing (our) project.
The reason the Trademark office exists is to avoid situations like this. But failing to secure the trademark, you made it inevitable that eventually, someone would use the name.
I think most opensource projects live a little on trust, and good nature, and bad press to keep the legal wolves from the doors.
One complication is that most of us don't live in the states, for me Australian law is applicable, nor are we lawyers and yes Moz were aware we existed.
Cheers
Mark
However, you totally obscured the real question : why in the world did the FirebirdSQL team started an email flood campaign ?
The real question for me is for the firebird project not to clash namespaces with Mozilla.
The flood thing, is a distraction, (asked for by a stong supporter of FirebirdSQL) but that for me it masks the main problem.
Now, why did they do it?. Well email protests are not uncommon t oget soemones attention, so it's not that far out of line, usually as long as you are polite. Our user and developer base were (are) really annoyed with both the what and the way Moz did what they did.
I send a protest message, (which I though was polite enough) to those identified as Moz admins and have corresponded to those willing to reply.
Now, I didn't call for it, but from my position, I can inderstand why someone asked for it.
I think active, but polite participation in appropriate lists, and with the appropriate Moz admin people, is the only way we can get our message across and hopefully resolve this issue to both groups satisfaction.
Mark
Regardless of how the Mozilla team have or haven't behaved, there is no call for asking for the sort of mass mailing you did in the way you did at this point.
Im assuming the "you" and "your website" mean the IBP people.
Like most opensource projects, we (firebird people) are a loosly connected group of individuals.
I don't have any control over the IBP website, not what they post, and that's true for most of us in the Firebird project. Our statment is on our web page, and our users comments thoughout both our public and private forumns. The IBP people are responsible for their own actions.
Personally, I think they made a mistake, for IBP, to publisihing the email addresses the way they did, but not a huge one (email campaigns are fairly popular). But they were right to ask for firebird users to contact Moz and indicate they were displeased with both their choice and the way they did it.
I'd never heard of firebird before
apparently it's a browser :-/.
If you'd organised a petition amongst your users, published that, got publicity of it, mailed the petition to mozilla
A bit slow considering the speed they are moving on rebranding at Moz.
If the Mozilla team were that aware of your product (I can easily believe they weren't) and its name,
they were Asa, has admitted that.
then they do seem to have not thought through the potential problems due to name conflict.
Yes, that's the interesting question, why deliberately do this?
Asa's post on mozillazine which you quote on your front page was made on the 5th of December last year. The way you quote it seems to give the impression that's a recent response to you guys saying "we think there could be some confusion".
That doesn't quite sound right, but when mozilline comes back up I'll check, first I've (or anyone else in firebird) has heard or seen any of this stuff was a few days ago starting on slashdot.
People aren't going to get to the point where they have a browser in front of them and are going to be going "Hmm... this is a funny looking database...".
its more all the supporting things. 'Oh your from "that" firebird project', and the branding stuff.having someone with a lawyer talking [tm] is enough to scare most programmers - certainly we don't have the finances, legal or visibility to compete with whatever Moz wants to do.
Did you enter into much of a dialogue with the mozilla team before calling for the en-mass mailing of the mozilla team? In other words is it an action of last resort?
I didn't make the call, or become involved till later, that was IBP people, Asa's early attitude and responses in slashdot, and on the mozilline sounded fairly non negotiatory. I belive the IBP people had some more of a dialog (or with others in Moz, I only started my own conversations direct with Moz people recently) - but even that is limited to whoever is willing to reply. But with Asa in the early days, but he wan't moving. But last I saw (earlier today) Asa was still there pushing his point of view pretty hard, on mozilline ( I exchanged a few posts).
Or were you so irritated that you wanted to lash out?
First I heard of it, this was a "done deal", as posted on slashdot. Asa's comments at mozilline, ( currently giving mysql errors) - but along the lines of, 'it's checked by AOL legal, it's done'
So Yes, as a fb admin, and as member of the ff committee, I felt justified and angry enough to post (my own message) to those identified as the project leaders and appropriate forumns of Moz. But hey, I just kept it fairly polite. and Moz people seem to give as good as they get. And for what and the way they did it, I think they need to expect to receive a bit of pith and vineger.
Mark
The Firebird project (at sourceforge) was not created by IBP, in fact I created it, it's hard to call it owned by anyone since it's a fairly loose association of people who are working on the code, including some from IBP. From several discussions evolved the usage of FirebirdSQL for some of the web and packaging.
In the last year the nonprofit association FirebirdSQL Foundation was created, (through about 12 founding members) to direct donated and membership funds, and probably a holding place for "firebird community property". Possibly, if there was to be an owner of the FirebirdSQL (or Firebird?) brand that is likely to be where we would like to see it directed (although at this stage IBP would be fine too).
My small experience with "brands" also gave me the understanding that both being in the software business was close enough to "create confusion" in a brand, so I was very supprised to find Moz claiming fb as thier own.
Our lack of prior claim to Firebird or FirebirdSQL (other than through usage) is due to the fact we are your average opensource project, not cashed up , and full of coders not lawyers.
Currently we (all fb people) are still stunned, by Moz's actions to use the firebird name, of which we had no prior knowledge or warning. Our first meeting with big brother opensource, from a smaller project, has not been a pleasant one.
Unfortunately, due to their actions we will obviously need to now spend effort in carefully review our own legal situation, and the effect that Moz firebird(tm) will have on our usage of Firebird and FirebirdSQL. Things that as with most opensource projects, will need to be done by donated work, and volunteer time, we were hoping to skimp on, and rely on general good will. So any advice appreciated :-).
IBPhoenix was named as a twist on the InterBase, word. I'll let Ann fill you in on that when she replies to you.
But a sobering thought to finish on. Our name was just the top one on the list, apparently we only got 5% or 37 votes. So if your name is on this list you were X votes away from getting the same treatment.
Mark
Because Im hoping some sense of decency will be awakened in the mozilla team, and they will recind their decision.
Firebird SQL's name is now totally rotten due to IBPHOENIX .
Unfortunately I think your right, the "high moral ground" and judgement at the click of a button, on this issue will create enough fog, and distract people from the predicament that this situation places the firebird project in.
Asking nicely should have been done in the first place, followed by asking for Slashdot opinion may generate support.
Actually a polite discussion from moz prior to publication, or even a period of public comment before using the firebird name could also have helped avoid this mess. That and the "I've checked it with the AOL lawyers, it's legal it's over" attitude really annoyed a lot of our users/developers.
Too bad Firebird SQL.
Another one bites the dust?
Yes and with it a sh*tload of hard work by a lot of people under hard conditions goes down the drain as well.
Mark
Users are fickle creatures. They don't know where their browsers come from and you could be on the phone giving directions, and we are both downloadable software projects.
When even a search for "firebird" & "download" will give both moz and fb download results I can see it will cause confusion.
It just seems to me, that with a bit of foresight, moz could have avoided this problem for both of us.
Mark
Thanks for the kind words.
Hit by Friendly Fire is definately how I feel about this whole issue.
We don't have the resources for any legal challange, although I do think the claim we're in a seperate industry is questionable.
Essentially we probably have to cop whatever Mozilla (and their AOL legal team) decide they want to do.
If Firebird(tm) is all about standing up to defending your brand, then at least (but probably not in any important legal sense) we are doing that.
Cheers
Mark
Mozilla's decision (if they decide to proceed) to use our project name (Firebird) will certainly cause a lot of confusion, certainly amongst our end users and more than likely amongst their users.
t s
.signature :-)
I would ask them to consider how they would feel if Microsoft decided to rename Powerpoint as Microsoft Mozilla - in their (mozilla's) legal teams opinion it would cause no confusion?
Yes, Ok we could have chosen better as well, Firebird is but our mistake is three years ago and we didn't have the financial means to get any legal advice (still don't really). It was a name chosen by a few enthusiasts, after checking round the web that it wasn't going to conflict with anyone. From the lack of complaints over the last three years, I guess we haven't stepped on anyones toes.
But with mozilla we will overlap, some examples of confusing areas:
1. I can see mozilla users ending up at firebird.sourceforge.net looking for information on mozilla-firebird.
2. I can see much confusion between news and list names : see
http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/index.php?c=4
vs:
http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=lis
After a year of two of posts to these, that will seriously muck up google searches for "firebird" and "download" for instance, as well as firebird (and moz) getting user requests for browers/databases in both our general newslists.
3. I can see package confusion occuring on most linux distributions - install which firebird rpm?
4. Security releases for "Firebird" are likely to overlapping on searches by product name.
5. My (limited) exposure to legal issues, was that just being another software product is cause enough to create user confusion. So Im supprised at their legal advice (but am not a lawyer).
6. Web applications often include browsers and databases. Scripting languages often support both , so what will something like PHP with Firebird support mean. My feeling is after a year, noone will remember it was a database.
7. I don't want to spend the rest of my life explaining to people that Firebird (our project) is not a web browser.
So you've got to ask why cause all the confusion (most of which I fear will be suffered by our users and developers), when it can be simply fixed by Mozilla choosing another name that doesn't conflict with an existing project.
I find this especially strange when coming from one name clash, they decided to go into another, with all that "months of legal help" surely they can come up with their own unique name.
And yes I am involved with the firebird project and the firebirdsql foundation. Where a lot of people work very hard on a Firebird for zero dollars in return.
Regards
Mark O'Donohue
--
See you at the First European Firebird Conference in May in Fulda, Germany
http://www.firebird-conference.com
(since I've had a few pointy notes, that Im only doing all this for the publicity, [Im not personally I feel quite sick in the stomach about this whole episode] I thought I'd include my normal
- for some curious reason everyone else seems to want to look like microsoft.
I personally subscribe to the GPL not because I subscribe to the social change thing (that's a bit much to ask of software) but as a self protection thing so my code, and code derived from my code remains in the public domain rather than picked up and exploited by someone like BILL$, LARRY$ or the millions who would like to emulate them.
Cheers
Mark
So does this set a precedent, perhaps they are planning for instance, a future release of windows without IE?
Cheers
Mark
In all of this it's worth remembering that large companies spend a lot of money on PR to make not only you but your boss comfortable with the product, and a lot of that feelgood PR has nothing particular to do with the facts.
I always wondered why Oracle Forms is and remains such a dog, and why they never integrated DEC/RDB into Oracle proper when they bought it ages ago. Currently they sell them both as seperate products (Oracle and Oracle RDB).
In my experience (a bit dated on Oracle now) Oracle was alright, but wasn't anything special, the row level locking was pretty ordinary and was contained in a lot of other products at least 5yrs before Oracle signed on to it (for a large price addon as I recall).
And when many say 20x7x365, I must admit I've never seen one that really worked. They all seem to have a convenient memory lapse, and forget the 3days downtime where they screamed at people to get it back on the air while upgrading the software, that sort of thing. Mostly it seems to be done by duplication of the site and some sort of SQL patchup/merge after the problems are all over.
The free databases will get better, and I think eventually replace the costly commercial ones. Everyone will still make a bucket out of support etc, since after people loose their data once they usually start bothering to do backups (either online or otherwise)..
If it worries Larry that his income will fade a little, he'll just have to console himself that the same is happenning to Bill, his rival in the most pointlessly richest man in the world competition.
Just my 0.52c worth.
Cheers
Mark
This is part of the patch to fix the problem. the orignal code was not as clear.
There is a lot of code, and a lot of it is old.
It generates thousands of warnings, and has lots of cute #defines
It was released without the proper build procedures, and it has (and there is still) an effort underway to make the build easy and crossplatform
Since we get no help from Borland and they are basically trying to ignore us. For instance an attempt to release a document called "Interbase Engine Internals" a 1991 document for public use was met with a legal threat to sue from Borland (and it still isn't released). The user documentation for InterBase 6.0 which has work contributed by Borland and others, still hasn't seen the light of day, since Borland wont even talk about settling the ownsership/release problem.
In all of these things, a security audit was one on the list, and we were pretty much starting out when we found this problem.
It's interesting that most of the engineers within Borland (most now former engineers, and some even on the Firebird team) didn't know about these problems.
I have other concerns as well (forinstance the default interbase install is to run as root user, that does not have to be the case and should not be) these all need to be addressed.
we have other issues that need to be solved but these are ones was we did expect to find.
BTW: Did you check out the problems with the file qatest.c. Which has been less widely reported.
What would you think of a QA department that insisted you place a routine into a production release of your product that lets any user delete the current database or crash your server at will.;-).
Cheers
Mark O'Donohue
--
Your database needs YOU!
http://firebird.sourceforge.net
I'd sugest that if you want to download the source to the "active" opensource InterBase project.
I'd try here
http://sourceforge.net/projects/firebird.
This is the Firebird - daughter of interbase project. All of the community changes happen here, and we have 30 odd registered developers and occasionalyl bump into the top 10 projects on sourceforge.
Of course since as one of those developers, Im probably biased ;-).
Cheers
Mark O'Donohue
--
Your database needs YOU!
http://firebird.sourceforge.net
this is an instance where an Open Source release allowed a security hole, hidden for years as closed source, to be found ...
We should also include the following bit here:
and for it to be removed ;-)
Cheers
Mark O'Donohue
--
Your database needs YOU!
http://firebird.sourceforge.net
Have a closer look ;-)
The code is intialised to the variables in the .h file, and when the server starts up it repaces them with random data using chars with ascii values 1-255
So every time the server starts up you get a different random password.
I've posted somewhere else, a bit about how this was done just prior to christmas, to fix the problem, and not introduce any unknowns.
A more perminant fix will be applied, we found it when we were doing a review of the security
There are problems, but in Firebird we have several people who do crypto/PKI things for their day job and we were doing a security review, that in part explains how we've found these. It also places us in a good position to fix these things. As far as Borland are concerned, they seem to be ignoring us,
They wouldn't tell Jim they were working on a patch for prior versions of InterBase, so he felt compelled to write his own.
But for now it's a good time to keep your Firebird/InterBase server locked behind a firewall
Cheers
Mark O'Donohue
--
Your database needs YOU!
http://firebird.sourceforge.net
I agree with a lot of what you have said, these things get tricky when it gets to the legal tick tacks. I guess we'll all find out in the wash, but currently I'm very happy Borland has released the source. That I think was a real milestone for them and quenches my fear that some last minute problem (like selling it to someone else) was going to ruin interbase.
<p>
So full credit to Dale and Borland for releaseing interbase.
<p>
I also wish Ann and the rest in ISC the best of luck in getting to their finish post from here, although with the release they are part way there.
I was (am) concerned by the delay (it's been 6months since it was announced and the products packaged and ready to go) I've always been suspicious of the "it's in the bag - we just have a few minor details to sort out before we sign", as that usually means some sort of big problem, and a 50/50 chance of it actually being signed.
I am however encouraged that they are still talking the opensource (interbase) talk while in the spotlight, and think the attention focused on borland during this crucial period will hopefully help keep them honest.
I've used interbase, and it is an excelent product.
It and it's predecessor (DEC RDB) in my opinion are better than most of the big names by a mile.
I was really shocked when got to try other relational databases. Interbase developed the blob stuff and has had transactions and row level locking in it from the start. The other notables, Oracle Ingress, Sybase and Informix were all latecomers to this (Im not sure if Ingress actually has it yet (and it was renamed OpenRoad/OpenIngress or something by Computer Associates)
Interbase was also beautifly simple to use, and virtually required no DBA, even for rather large data sets (couple of million rows). The constant tinkering and adjusting required by a full time DBA for the other big names, DBA time is a real hidden killer that is often the real cause for DB down time.
Oracle now owns DEC RDB (now called Oracle RDB) and are porting it to other platforms (either NT or Unix) although it is seperate from their other Oracle SQL product.
A good strong "commercial strength" relational database with an open source philosophy would be a nice accompanyment to a linux system.
Postgres and MySQL (although MySQL is not transactional) are pretty damn good and are filling this role fairly quickly.
I think that Borland could give a real kickstart to interbase by making it opensource and closely associating it with linux.
And I for one would relish the oportunity to work with it again.
Cheers
Damn and here's me still waiting for him. Is he going to return? I mean, well his cup of tea is getting cold.
Oh well now I'll have to wait for his second comming.
Sorry to post again, but I'm getting a good laugh as I read through the message board in reply to this issue at yahoo. Although there are a variety of comments (including some negative ones) there seems to be a real Bill Love fest going on.
_ Antitrust_Trial/
Or is this what america really thinks about MICROS~1 ?
http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/fc/Tech/Microsoft
I'll be interested to see some sort of analysis of the web comments in reply to this event both here and in news groups (and yahoo where I had a look).
Given the nature of the event and the previous history of web spin (eg the blair witch thing and the other MS thing) I think looking at the web reaction could be the really interesting story here, even if there was no spin.