Three Monkeys, Three Typewriters, Two Days

April 17, 2003

What's in a name?

I feel compelled to add my useless opinion to the Firebird naming controversy. It's a 3-part deal:

  1. The choice of "Firebird" for the name of a shipping open-source product, given the presence of another shipping open-source product of the same name, is poor.
  2. I am under the (possibly mistaken) impression that while the browser component will be called "Firebird" (just like the network library is called "Necko"), the name of the shipping browser itself is not clear yet (as in, once the Great Splitting is done the browser may well just being called Mozilla; see n.p.m.seamonkey discussion).
  3. The Firebird database developers and sponsors are being done a disservice by people who are sending rude emails in their name. How would you feel if you found out that someone had been going around, walking up to people, saying "Here is a present from <fill in the blank here>," spitting in their faces, and walking away?
Posted by bzbarsky at April 17, 2003 7:22 PM
Comments

I fully agree with all of your points. Probably, "Firebird-as-component's-internal-name" approach would allow to reach a reasonable compromise - I wonder if somebody of the project leaders is thinking in this direction.

Posted by: Vadim Vinichenko on April 18, 2003 4:05 PM

I also agree with all your points. I have to wonder though how much a codename will pollute google searches. Weblogs of mozilla developers alone will knock firebird the database off the first page.

Another thought is that Phoenix is essentially getting called Firebird. People have heavily latched onto the name Phoenix. If the new name gets the same level of mindshare, then people will only refer to it as Firebird. Firebird Db ends up on third page of google. Sucks to be them.... :(

Posted by: modok on April 22, 2003 5:03 PM
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