"I want our fellow geeks who saw the (falacious) F*rebirdSQL story in CNet to get the other side of the story, but I don't want to /. the poor MozillaZine server.

"What to do, what to do, what to do...

"If a MZ Admin sees this post and has a suggestion, I'd apreciate it. If not I'll look into the 'Contact Us' options a bit later today."

By all means, submit it to Slashdot. For important news, I think the site can take it once in a while (and if Kerz disagrees... it's much easier to ask for forgiveness than permission).

"BTW, is this really the first post?"

Yeah, it's only been up for about half an hour.

Alex

with all due respect to Alex, I'm not sure this is the news we want covered on Slashdot.

Is the Firebird naming issue the most important thing about the Mozilla project at the moment? I don't think so - we should be promoting (when it happens) the fact that there's a great new release of Mozilla Firebird, not the fact that we're still arguing about whether or not it was right to call it firebird in the first place and complaining that we've been treated unfairly...

Continued focus on something that Blizzard acknowledges damages Mozilla can only make the damage worse...

I agree. Can we please start coding now?

> Even Microsoft has never sued WordPerfect for the > use of "Word" in its name and both share the same > software market (word processors).

Um, WordPerfect certainly predates Microsoft Word, and I think (IIRC) that WordPerfect predates the incorporation of Micro Soft Corporation (note space between the words)! So I am not surprised that Microsoft has taken no action along these lines!

sPh

No one won this "war." Both sides were wrong with their conduct and/or their choice. I wish the media would realize that.

Sure communication by Mozilla.org could improve. I'm definitely don't understand why it took so long for this interview to come out, it would of been very useful during the debate.

Hindsight is 20/20, but no one could of predicted that things would get this bad.

If both sides could ever come together enough to make a joint statement that both approve of, I think the media will get the right story and this will be done with.

"It is easy to start a dispute but hard to end it" and "Never start a dispute unless you have a plan for ending it before it begins".

Mozilla didn't start the dispute, it was FirebirdSQL that did. Mozilla thought it was innocent doing the name change, it wasn't until FirebirdSQL started mailbombing did Mozilla realize there was a problem.

Mozilla definitely could of done a better job with press releases and such. I think all Mozilla users can testify to that, since there always seems to be confusion about an announcement. The arrogance you speak of I believe resulted from the mail bombing, which pretty much killed any efforts by either party to negotate since the particular e-mails that were seeking negotation were lost in the noise.

A quote from the interview: " If I remember correctly, they went from zero to mail bombing in less than 60 seconds. I don't remember there being very many, if any, cordial messages at the beginning and those were quickly lost in the cacophony of form letters and unreasonable demands. It's interesting to point out that our biggest problem at the beginning was telling who was in charge over there. We certainly couldn't tell from the incoming email. I would also flip that question on its head. Would mozilla.org have responded better if they hadn't engaged in a mail bombing campaign? I know we would have. But what's done is done."

Negotation: "Did any negotiations with the Firebird database community take place, officially or otherwise? Sure, there has been some official back and forth, mostly between Mitchell and some of the database folks."

As for admiting a mistake, Chris said he wasn't sure if the naming was a good idea, but it was a learning experience. We all learn from our past mistakes, so hopefully in the future any product names will go under a better review processes.

I my dealings with the people at Mozilla.org, they are a class act during disputes and problems. But as Chris Blizzard says, hindsight is 20/20.

the only party that clearly acted in good faith was mozilla.org ... its obvious from their history of painfully changing project names to get around conflicts. so they finally settled on a name that was legally, morally clear... so then what happened? the sql people embarced on a massive spamming/trolling campaign that continues to this day... so who would possibly think that *mozilla.org* started a conflict here?

furthermore, who has made concessions and attempted to meet the other party half way: clearly mozilla who have issued correction and clarification statments galore that make is PAINFULLY clear that Mozilla Firebird is disctinct from the sql engine. meanwhile the sql people have done nothing but make vague threats at a lawsuit based on dubious and unsubstatiated legal grounds.

this is pathetic.

"The arrogant belligerents aggressors of Mozilla.org began this infamous attack without any provocation! The infidel agressors of Mozilla are headed to their mass graves in the popular uprising of FirebirdDB!"

you are aware that there are several other projects (including an open source BBS that predates the SQL server) that were sharing the name firebird in harmony before mozilla joined them, right? so why would any reasonable person assume that mozilla would be treated differently than the other people sharing the name?

Do you really think that every time a project chooses a name, they should check every single other project out there to find out if someone else is using a similar name? Does IBPhoenix somehow have exclusive rights to the name Firebird? Maybe they should start mail-bombing a certain automobile manufacturer. Oh yeah.. they had the name first.

Don't you think it's a little bit possible that the people involved were thinking "hey, I kind of like that name" and maybe it didn't even occur to them that it was shared with Firebird database? Maybe it's even true that that database isn't as widely used as you seem to think?

I think it's time for everyone to just grow up... especially the IBPhoenix people. It's a real shame when the different OSS communities and projects start acting like the big corporations... or resort to mail bombing.

"Do the adminstrators of mozillaZine really think Jonathon Walther posted this? I only saw a few comments from him, but this would seem out of character."

Yes. I thought the same as you. It just seemed too partisan to be true. So I checked all the other comments made by roskegg: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alwn.net+roskegg

I came across this one: http://lwn.net/Articles/13805/

Unless this roskegg person is making a career of impersonating Walther, I think it's him.

Alex

the only arrogance i see is on the part of the firebird sql people who falsely claim to have exclusive usage of a common english word that has been in use in other software projects that predate them. *that* is arogant.

And you should see him here:

http://lwn.net/Articles/32142/

The media are as to blame as anyone in this, for presenting Mr. Walther as a "neutral" third party, without investigating this on their own.

It was not controversial when it was picked, and no one anticipated that it would become so controversial...

Duh, the s/w screwed up the http://wlkr.blogspot.com

except that you called it "Mozilla Firebird" on your blog on 8th May. also, the MozillaZine forums are under the heading of "Mozilla Firebird (Browser)"

Some random person commenting that there was another piece of software called "firebird" (when I was already aware of at least half a dozen other not-browser products having used the name) in a single discussion thread with nearly 2,000 posts, at a mozilla fan site, with thousands of naming suggestions and various justifications for why each was good or bad stretching across nearly 200 pages constitutes some kind of formal notification of a problem from the Firebird Database people? Whatever.

--Asa

You nailed it right on the head. It wasn't mail-bombing. It was a well-orchestrated protest, but thePowerThatBe@mozilla.org can't understand they are wrong, so they complain about everyone who disagrees.

"My definition of mail bombing means intentionally sending large files (think core files) to someone or organization with the intent of clogging or bringing down their mail server."

The Jargon File 4.4.1 says a mailbomb is just any attempt to send, or urge other people to send, large quantities of email. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/M/mailbomb.html

"It isn't (IMO) what many of us do to government types, sending a large quantity of e-mails, each one from a separate address, trying to get someone to change their mind. That's a petition."

If you're a government type, it kind of goes with the territory. I don't really think that's the case with people from open source projects (some of which weren't even deeply involved in the name change).

"So, can someone clarify what exactly happened? Was it perpetrated by the official Firebird database developers or by a group of irate users?"

The initial campaign was started by IBPhoenix, which is affiliated to the Firebird database project: http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_Mozilla0 (originally the page listed many more email addresses, around two dozen in all). Here's a contemporary MozillaZine article: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=3082

They've since apologised: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=3115

Alex

'None of the rest of the world'? None of the rest of the world gives a shit; none of the rest of the world confuses browsers with databases either...

Good to see mozilla.org continuing to seem utterly reasonable in their responses.

Basically all this seems to confirm is that there are huge numbers of mindless sheep in the open source world, ready to jump at everything vaguely corporate [look at the massive anti-MS kneejerkism] - and with a lack of skill in negotiations, or even getting things in perspective.

It's depressing how few moderately sensibly run open source projects there are (Mozilla being one, Apache being another...) - it seems like any project smaller than 'huge' tends to become a stupid pissing-contest of weak coders / strong egos.

As for the use (not in this post I'm replying to) of 'we'/'us' etc. - I personally have absolutely nothing to do with the Mozilla project, nothing whatsoever. I've reported a few bugs, that's it. I am not part of the project, I'm just a user... so the use of 'we' or 'us' would be inappropriate. I suspect the same applies to many other people using that term, and I kind of wish they would avoid it: it smacks of the same kind of stupid tribalism that the FirebirdSQL people exemplified so blatantly.

--sam

Yah that could be *cool* Imagine this query : select * from spam where subject like "%nigeria" or "%slashdot"

Maybe is good ideea ,even microsoft wants a *relational* (sql like) database as their next file system why not a email client ? There was a post on firebird list about one IM that uses firebird on the server and on the client (embedded) quote:" My compliements to the person who did the embedded version !!!!! I just converted my IM client from DBISAM to FB embedded using IBobjects. It was just minor syntax changes as both are tdataset compatible. FB embeded is much,much!!! faster than DBISAM, even with forced writes on it literally destroys it. The DBISAM people should be worried :-) -- Tony Caduto Inexpensive Corporate Messaging AM Software Design http://www.amsoftwaredesign.com"

"Any more questions?"

Yes. But I'm not flaming, so your promise doesn't oblige you to respond.

Why do you need to keep going through what has happened? Regardless of what you think, the situation appears to have settled down quite substantially. We will have Mozilla Browser and Mozilla Mail. Those will be the names people will see, those will be the names in bugzilla and those will be the names on sites. People will probably refer to it as Mozilla Browser (Firebird) for a while to distinguish it from Mozilla Seamonkey Browser. FirebirdSQL will have their database called Firebird or whatever other name they choose to give it. Since that is all clear, what benefits do you think repeating old and tired arguments brings? Do you still believe that an acceptable agreement (or at least stalemate) has not been reached? Can you give me a compelling reason for keeping arguing? Do you believe that only Mozilla has been harmed by this storm, or do you believe that both sides have taken some damage because of their handling of the matter?

Additionally: Do you believe that weight is added to your points by using unneccessary capitalisation of select words?*

*My answer to this is 'no'. It just makes you look angry and unreasonable. My experince is also that angry and unreasoanble people are best ignored because trying to argue logically with them is impossible and has little or no benefit (not that I wish to argue with you in this case, nor would I has you presented your post differently). I'm interested to know whether everyone has the same view on this that I do or if people think about such things at all.

Do you think being dismissive of the other Firebird projects, just because you've never heard of them, helps your position?

I would like to make one thing perfectly clear. Nobody has accused anyone of Mozilla or Mozillazine of hacking the IBPhoenix website. It was a bunch a adolescent twerps who exploited the SSL bug (recently installed, wasn't patched) to install a root kit for an IRC bouncer. We don't know exactly who the twerp was, but the greasy fingerprints were all over the place. But we know it didn't come from Mozilla.org.