Mozilla Firebird becomes Firefox

Posted Feb 9, 2004 16:57 UTC (Mon) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987)
In reply to: Mozilla Firebird becomes Firefox by sphealey
Parent article: Mozilla Firebird becomes Firefox

Well, it always depends what you consider an "error" (BTW, it's the same with bugs: If your app crashes, it's clearly a bug. If you change the design three times because you or someone else didn't like the look, it's not a clearly a bug you fix, though it might be an enhancement or whatever).

I'm not fond of any of those names, not even of the product itself. As many people who lived in the Mozilla community quite some time, I love to stick with the Mozilla Application Suite (code-named "Seamonkey").
AOL/Netscape/mozilla.org went a long way to find a new name after they found out that Phoenix had issues (there already had been a browser called "Phoenix" somewhere), and they secured that "Firebird" had no legal issues. They did not consider, however, that (legally independent, because it's a different kind of software) there was already a not small, but not too public either, open-source project named "Firebird". After seeing that this was a peoblem, though not lagally, they decided to prefix the name with "Mozilla" so that "Mozilla Firebird" would clearly be a different thing. But after a short period, they saw that coming up with a different name again (sigh) was the nicer and more friendly way to go.
It again took the (now already founded) Mozilla Foundation months and legal chacking to find a name they could use (see Ben's blog). And still, the name has smaller issues with registered trademarks in Europe (Germany and Switzerland). From Ben's speaking, it seems they solves those issues in some way, though.

It really seems damn difficult to find good names today - to quote the Firefox name FAQ: "We've learned a lot about choosing names in the past year (more than we would have liked to)."
I hope this still will not make progress in good projects stagnate or stop, just because they have to consider one name after the other. And I don't think we want to end up with "The browser created by Ben Googer, Dave Hyatt and a few others" or something like that as a project name because shorter names are too hot. [Mozilla] Firefox, the browser formerly known as Mozilla Firebird, the browser formerly known as Phoenix, has shown us a good example of how hard it is to find a suitable name for a big project these days.

The more important thing is something completely different though:
A new release of Mozilla Firefox, and that 0.8 release can be considered the currently best cross-platform stand-alone browser available, and one of the best browsers available for Linux and even Windows. Spread the word and make some of your friends enter open-source with a more secure browser than the default on their OS might be.
(And if they want/should migrate Mail as well, consider newly released Mozilla Thunderbird, or the Mozilla 1.6 "Seamonkey" Application suite that includes browser and mail)

Mozilla Firebird becomes Firefox

Posted Feb 9, 2004 18:32 UTC (Mon) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link] (1 responses)

They did not consider, however, that (legally independent, because it's a different kind of software) there was already a not small, but not too public either, open-source project named "Firebird". After seeing that this was a peoblem, though not lagally, they decided to prefix the name with "Mozilla" so that "Mozilla Firebird" would clearly be a different thing. But after a short period, they saw that coming up with a different name again (sigh) was the nicer and more friendly way to go.

If you mean the word "saw" to be short for "was beaten bloodly by the Firebird and general FOSS communities, but like most people in the tech world was absolutely unable to admit to an error", then I agree with your post!

sPh

Mozilla Firebird becomes Firefox

Posted Feb 9, 2004 18:41 UTC (Mon) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

if they were beaten bloody, they'd better not have changed the name at all, as that's not how to do communication.
If they would have been less flamed but instead the projects leaders (drivers) were contacted by Firebird database project leaders, I bet they'd even had reacted faster and more friendly.
Even people in the Mozilla community who don't like the now-called Firefox browser too much felt like the Firebird databse people wanted to start a war aginst us, and probably won't think of using that product because of some stupid feelings that arise when you feel getting attacked by someone you didn't even know before.
With peaceful communication instead of wars, we'd probably live more happy together now and had resolved those issues faster.

Robert Kaiser
(being no official of mozilla.org in any way, only a small contributor and leading the German l10n project of the Mozilla)