What was the logic behind choosing firebird(the name)?

amber_method · Post by **amber_method** » April 17th, 2003, 6:04 pm

I'm looking for specific answers from the people responsible for this decision.
Is it that you simply weren't aware it was in use?
I understand that you have no legal obligation to respect other people's branding, but the core of open source development is about doing good things without being forced to. It seems like a gross violation of that good-natured ideal to interfere with someone else's work on this level.

I can understand that the name was a sensible change in terms of similarity, but surely there are other names that would not cause as much trouble as this. You could even dip into the godzilla franchise, what about Rodan? It doesn't have as much recognition, but he was a beast who certainly resembles renditions of the phoenix I've seen (there was even a movie where he became Fire Rodan).

I will stop supporting phoenix if something is not done about this situation. Possibly the mozilla suite as well, depending on who was responsible for this decision.

Post by **Alex Bishop** » April 17th, 2003, 6:25 pm

FYI, there's a <a href="http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9133">long topic about the name change</a> already.

MoNkaholic · Post by **MoNkaholic** » April 17th, 2003, 6:30 pm

It was the most popular choice, deviated the least from the current name, and lacked any legal issues.

Wow... the current situation seems just as bad as it was before the name was announced, now we have a number of threads about the choice. Perhaps the forum admins could lock threads like these, forcing users to comment in the proper thread.

shill · Post by **shill** » April 17th, 2003, 6:47 pm

MoNkaholic wrote:It was the most popular choice, deviated the least from the current name, and lacked any legal issues.

Legal issues? What about open-source dignity issues? There is already an open-source project called Firebird, and the Mozilla people's excuse of "it's not a browser" just doesn't cut it. The Firebird project was obviously offended, as you can see on their front page, they should've asked first and they obviously did not.

amber_method · Post by **amber_method** » April 17th, 2003, 7:03 pm

Alex Bishop wrote:FYI, there's a <a href="http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9133">long topic about the name change</a> already.

Yes, I have seen a few of them. But none of them seemed to directly address my question, and I felt that perhaps those behind the name change have better things to do then read through 19 pages for questions. I would still understand if you locked this topic, though.
I'm not intending to flame anyone with this, and I don't want this to turn in a flame thread.

Paul · Post by **Paul** » April 17th, 2003, 7:13 pm

There is going to be major confusion between Firebird Browser and Firebird Database. Many say there will not be. Well here is one example of the major confusion: type inot any search engine the term "Firebird". The sammler project, likely due to smaller traffic at their server will be listed much lower in the listing making it harder for people to find the database project. They may click on the first result and be taken to Mozilla.org and say to themselves, "I thought Firebird was a data base, but i guess I was wrong since it says at Mozilla.org it is a browser???"

The call for a name change from Firebird is called for so that there will not be confusion stemming from search engines. This is why we need a more unique name.

technocrat · Post by **technocrat** » April 17th, 2003, 7:31 pm

amber_method wrote:I will stop supporting phoenix if something is not done about this situation.

Like stop paying your dues? Or do less web browsing with Mozilla Firebird? One reason why we don't complain too much about the developers not always keeping us in the loop is because the software is free. We generally like what they do, we know they put a lot of effort into it, and we know that they only want to do what's best for the software and its users.

I was under the impression that the choice of Firebird had the most support from the users (of course I don't know how many of them knew it was "taken" already). I saw thousands of ideas were suggested and Firebird was definitely a "Top 20" choice from my perspective. One positive was that Firebird evokes a lot of the same imagery (and icons and logos) that Phoenix invokes. The vast majority of the suggestions were either a) a random word like "Hey!", b) some mythological character like "Aglaia", c) some foreign phrase like "Saviour Faire" or even some random combination of letters such as "wfwfwof". We weren't lacking in the quantity of suggestions.

Their were a few choices that I liked better than Firebird, but it wasn't my choice to make. It had been brought up in the thread that a open source project already existed with that name, but many brushed that criticism aside with "but it's not a browser." Since at this point I think the developers have already made up their collective minds (and probably spent some cash to pay for trademark fee), I don't think the name is going to be changed again next week, so I hope that we can all live peacefully in the same namespace. Please remember that most of the people reading this message board are users. We found out what the new name was at about the same time you did.

amber_method · Post by **amber_method** » April 17th, 2003, 7:58 pm

I meant in the sense of ceasing to be a phoenix/mozilla evangalist. As well as ceasing to beta test (which has been rather arbitrary anyway, because I only ever reported one bug, and that was before the 1.0 release).

I know Firebird had received support (as it should, being a sensible name), but majority does not make right.

Personally, if it had been worked out with the Firebird database people, I would have no problem. But they obviously feel snubbed, and why? What is gained by snubbing them?

I also recognize that it's mostly users that browse these forums, but I still hope that the occasional decision maker reads here, and will enlighten us on the reasons this course of action is more positive than negative.

scratch · Post by **scratch** » April 17th, 2003, 8:14 pm

chocoba65 wrote:
MoNkaholic wrote:It was the most popular choice, deviated the least from the current name, and lacked any legal issues.

Legal issues? What about open-source dignity issues? There is already an open-source project called Firebird, and the Mozilla people's excuse of "it's not a browser" just doesn't cut it. The Firebird project was obviously offended, as you can see on their front page, they should've asked first and they obviously did not.

There was an Open Source project called Firebird BBS before the Firebird SQL project started.

Spewey · Post by **Spewey** » April 17th, 2003, 8:45 pm

What I am left wondering about is whether the new name (in the long run) is meant to be a development codename or the start of a major rebranding initiative damnthetorpedoes-style. I have gotten whiffs of the former strategy* from on high since the announcement and I also see the faithful manning battle stations to defend the latter in a very defiant posture. The enemy kamikazes came in fast and low but now their citizens are pleading only for diplomatic reason. I plan to at least listen for a day or two before I start to chafe.

So: I would like to allow civil, adult-speaking FB RDMS fans to be able to start new threads. Maybe not dozens, but the name thread has gotten long and distended. Why should we tell them to get back in the sandbox when there is plenty of room on our beach to set up an umbrella or two?

Now what were you saying, amber? Oh yeah, you feel violated. Gosh, you seem like a nice OSS person--I wish I could do something to unhurt your feelings before this gets any worse but I am afraid this is it. Good luck getting an explanation and even more luck with your software.

*(especially including: "No, no, it's MozillaFirebird! Go away!")<---da fsck? it is?! They told me it was just Firebird.

Blake · Post by **Blake** » April 17th, 2003, 8:52 pm

chocoba65 wrote:
MoNkaholic wrote:It was the most popular choice, deviated the least from the current name, and lacked any legal issues.

Legal issues? What about open-source dignity issues? There is already an open-source project called Firebird, and the Mozilla people's excuse of "it's not a browser" just doesn't cut it. The Firebird project was obviously offended, as you can see on their front page, they should've asked first and they obviously did not.

There are no "open-source dignity issues." I don't know where people got this Open Source vs. The World idea but it doesn't exist. We should not be expected to act "brotherly" toward open-source projects because they share our code model any more than we should be expected to act brotherly toward Microsoft for sharing our industry.

Disclaimer: I don't like and didn't choose the new name, but I did sign off on it, because it was time to move on, and in 6 months the name won't matter.

asa · Post by **asa** » April 18th, 2003, 12:27 am

chocoba65 wrote:
MoNkaholic wrote:It was the most popular choice, deviated the least from the current name, and lacked any legal issues.

Legal issues? What about open-source dignity issues? There is already an open-source project called Firebird

Actually, at least 3 -and all getting along just splendidly it appeared. There was the Firebird BBS open source project that pre-dates the database folks. Then there was the database. Then there was the completely unrelated but also hosted at sourceforge Fenix FireBird project. Considering that three open source projects, two hosted at the same site, were peacefully co-existing without so much as a single call to mailbomb the others it didn't seem a stretch to assume that one more would not be the end of the world. And what about all the not open source software projects called Firebird? They should be treated differently?

chocoba65 wrote:and the Mozilla people's excuse of "it's not a browser" just doesn't cut it. The Firebird project was obviously offended, as you can see on their front page, they should've asked first and they obviously did not.

We didn't ask any of them. They all seemed content using a commonplace English word that was also being used by lots of other software projects. Should we have asked every Firebird? Just the database people? The BBS server people? What about the FireBird Fenix IDE? Not important to ask them? Because they're small? What about the educational software folks? The video game maker? The financial morgage software people? The circuit testing software guy? The NTP client folks? What about the software and networking services firebirds? What about the computer hardware firebirds like the joystick and the CPU cooling fan?

Why, when many, many software projects all named Firebird were getting along just fabulously should we have anticipated such a reaction when that many became many+1?

--Asa

Post by **Nitin** » April 18th, 2003, 12:43 am

Blake wrote:and in 6 months the name won't matter.

Whew.. Blake is back... so we're going to see 0.6 soooon ;-)

(sorry wrong thread for the post... just couldn't resist)

joshk · Post by **joshk** » April 18th, 2003, 12:49 am

chocoba65 wrote:Legal issues? What about open-source dignity issues? There is already an open-source project called Firebird, and the Mozilla people's excuse of "it's not a browser" just doesn't cut it. The Firebird project was obviously offended, as you can see on their front page, they should've asked first and they obviously did not.

It's their fault for not watching the discussion unravel here. Surely if Firebird DB is a relative high-profile open source database solution, there's bound to be at least a few people following threads 'round here that would be slightly intimidated by the fact that the general consensus was leaning towards Firebird (or at least not vehemently against it, given the boatloads of total disagreements that have been had over the past few months) near the end of the decision-making period.

I feel that the Firebird DB crew should have POLITELY gotten in contact with someone like Asa to discuss the namespace conflict. They entirely have a right to raise a stink, but spamming the hell out of the people you want to negotiate with is NOT diplomacy. The impression I have by reading all of the correspondence on the forums and the original news story is that people are thinking that mozilla.org made the change knowingly and willingly of the namespace conflict. I don't know what goes on in the mind of mozilla.org developers -- but a large project like Mozilla is organized enough not to do dumb stuff like that. (I sincerely hope so.)

I also wish this whole mess will end relatively soon. I'm sick of the name bickering. How much do people think counts on this one name change?

goodben · Post by **goodben** » April 18th, 2003, 1:34 am

Paul wrote:There is going to be major confusion between Firebird Browser and Firebird Database. Many say there will not be. Well here is one example of the major confusion: type inot any search engine the term "Firebird". The sammler project, likely due to smaller traffic at their server will be listed much lower in the listing making it harder for people to find the database project. They may click on the first result and be taken to Mozilla.org and say to themselves, "I thought Firebird was a data base, but i guess I was wrong since it says at Mozilla.org it is a browser???"

The call for a name change from Firebird is called for so that there will not be confusion stemming from search engines. This is why we need a more unique name.

I'm sorry, but this is stupid. There are no tenative or passive database users. If someone wants to investigate a database and has heard of Firebird SQL they're going to do more than look at the first one or two Google entries. They aren't going to lose any users if their site doesn't pop up first in a search engine listing.

The only possible reason to complain is hurt pride and possibly the sneaking suspicion that maybe they won't be as cool as a project like gnome where you can type in "apt-get install gnome" on a debian machine and have the whole shebang automagically downloaded and installed.

What was the logic behind choosing firebird(the name)?

What was the logic behind choosing firebird(the name)?

Re: What was the logic behind choosing firebird(the name)?

Re: What was the logic behind choosing firebird(the name)?

There is Confusion between Firebird Browser and Firebird Dat

Re: What was the logic behind choosing firebird(the name)?

I am a lowly MozillaFirebird user

Re: There is Confusion between Firebird Browser and Firebird