General Information

What's new on the naming front

One might wonder, "Why all the hoopla over names they planned to use for five weeks?", but what they are currently doing matters a great deal more than what they said in the past.

Silly question about trademark scope: Why is an art gallery more like a computer chip than a browser is like a database?

Jonathan Walther of the Debian group has been quite successful in mediating the dispute. At his request, Ann Harrison apologized to the staff of Mozilla for any problems a mail bombing may have caused them and stating that it was never our intention to start a mail bombing or flame war. Simultaneously, the Firebird admins and the Firebird Foundation are attempting to open a more formal channel with the leaders of Mozilla.org. We hope that any open issues can be managed through direct communication between the leaders of the two projects.

Same old stuff

Here's a quote from one of the regular Mozilla forum contributors: "... it seems that people are barking up a tree at the top of which the cat is sleeping peacefully."

The response? "Time to call the fire department."

On a more positive note, Jonathan Walther of the Debian Group interviewed a Mozilla developer who explained - in many more words - that Mozilla Firebird is an internal name for the project that will become the Mozilla browser. Whether that matters is probably a question for lawyers. Jonathan has been trying to bring some degree of rationality to this dispute. I hope it can be resolved through the interventions of mediators like him.