Perfect example of Mozilla dishonesty and arrogance

Posted May 15, 2003 1:02 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

Please, no more profanity. It's in bad taste, and it's really out of place at a place like LWN. This isn't /. you know! ;-)

At least stop appending "Debian Developer" to your messages if you're going to persist.

Posted May 15, 2003 1:26 UTC (Thu) by mlx (guest, #11202) [Link]

no, but that name is taken by the current Mozilla browser. The previous name was also someone else's trademark... so it would have meant yet another name (and another 2 months).

"Let us stop with these "maybes" and suppositions."

Good idea.

"If your former "friend" doesn't even want to work with you on such a project, that should be a wakeup call."

So "ifs" and suppositions are ok for you? Dave Hyatt isn't their 'former "friend"', he is still a friend and is still working on the Mozilla project. Apple's decision, as Gerv said, was not based on personalities but on technicalities.

Accusing people of immaturity, dishonesty, arrogance, talking s*** and f***ing up generally isn't a good way to mediate a dispute. I would say it is you that needs to look in the mirror, and hopefully you will see your own immaturity, dishonesty, arrogance and recognise that it's not only mozilla.org that f***ed up here. You might also notice that Firebird SQL, yourself and Debian are being damaged by this as well as Mozilla.

Posted May 15, 2003 5:49 UTC (Thu) by Sharky (guest, #11210) [Link]

Posted May 15, 2003 6:11 UTC (Thu) by jesup (guest, #11208) [Link]

Being very careful not to be tempted into flaming:

To call my efforts a "Trojan Horse" means nothing in real terms, but sure sounds gosh-darn sneaky and malicious. If you had something real to accuse me of, you would have. That you stoop to such slurs is another example of the dishonesty that is rampant among the Mozilla team.
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Yet again you assault my integrity with dishonest statements. At the time I became involved, Mozilla HAD been ignoring the Firebird projects complaints.

The Mozilla staff (& drivers) are not being 'dishonest' in this. While I was not directly involved in any of these issues (I was busy with other paying work at the time), I am quite sure I've seen no one being dishonest on the Mozilla staff. I've seen some hyperbole and flaming just as you're using hyperbole and flaming here, but most of the mozilla staff have kept that to themselves, and not made public attacks on anyone. Most private grousing was in response to being mailbombed and nastygrams, and in the presumption that somehow we were either out to get smaller projects, or didn't care about hurting them.

On the contrary, I've seen a lot of Mozilla people trying to find a resolution that would work. Blizzard's interview, if you don't read it looking for something to pounce on, is another instance of attempting to clear the air and calm things down.

I personally guarantee you no one wanted to step on the Firebird database or it's google ranking. (This does bring up an interesting aside: it appears what incensed some people more than any trademark or possible user confusion was the possible loss of "I'm feeling lucky" ranking on google.) I personally had never heard of the firebird database before all this; and "firebird" is generic enough that I never would have thought I needed to check except for browsers. (As I said, I didn't take part in the decision.) But I do know that the motives and emotions (and internal conversations) ascribed here by you to the Mozilla team are not correct. You may choose to call me dishonest too if you wish, but doing so will not change any facts.

I can also tell you that the Mozilla team was not ignoring the complaints by the firebird database team. I know that after the mailbombing (which happened before anyone had a chance to reply or agree on a response I believe) some were tempted to do so, but they did not do so. That doesn't mean we jumped to a resolution or a response; there were lots of private discussions, and part of those were (I'm sure) to double-check our legal status before responding, so response may have been delayed.

Yes, things happen more slowly than some on both sides might like. Blizzard's "Branding" document lays out a path to get out of this and let us both get back to using our time to develop our products instead of infighting. Honestly we had been using and wanted to continue using "Phoenix", but that wasn't possible legally. This left us in a tough spot, which we thought we could reduce by sticking to a name close to "phoenix". Turned out we were wrong, and that's unfortunate.

If your former "friend" doesn't even want to work with you on such a project, that should be a wakeup call.

He was hired away by Apple to have a very nice position doing fun stuff. He still contributes to Mozilla regularly.

Are the people who work on Mozilla perfect? Of course not. They're heavily over-burdened developers and staff (like most large open-source projects) fighting against an MS product with such high penetration that MS can pretty much ignore or force the standards and we have to suck it up and find ways to be compatible. Yes, in 20/20 hindsight it was a mistake to choose the name (though not legally wrong), and I personally regret that, even though I didn't take part in it. There was no malice of any type, nor do I think anyone thought there would be any problems with the name (boy was that wrong!).

Knowing the Mozilla people, I do believe that a more measured and less hysterical (and less hyperbolic) approach from the start would have gotten at least more sympathetic responses, and perhaps faster action. This is hardly the first time open-source projects have name-collided - we in fact got blindsided ourselves by the Phoenix bit. None of the Mozilla team are acting like bullies in my opinion; I think many Mozilla people thought that there would be no problem with the names co-existing (once they heard of Firebird SQL), as many other projects have done, and so were surprised at the vehemence of the reaction. Again, I wonder how much the Googlization of the Internet affected the level of emotion in the response - it's interesting from a cultural anthropology point-of-view.

There were lots of flamebait retorts and flames I could have used in writing this. I tried hard to stay away from them, because that's not what we need. Flaming and ad hominem statements are cathartic, but they're a very poor way to influence people or promote discussion, and in fact often has the exact opposite effect, causing all parties to dig in their heels.

Posted May 15, 2003 7:19 UTC (Thu) by djst (guest, #11214) [Link]

There was NO misunderstanding; I and the Firebird team were just allowing you to save face in the hopes that you would start to play ball. But then Christopher Blizzards posts SHIT like the interview linked in this article, it becomes obvious that there is no desire of many on the Mozilla team to play ball.

You couldn't be more wrong. The plan ever since the name needed to change has always been to use Mozilla Browser in the end, and I can prove it by quoting an email from Asa Dotzler dated 2003-03-28, explaining the new names before they went public:

"Phoenix -> Firebird, and Minotaur -> Thunderbird.

But the real news (that I hinted about below) which makes the names unimportant is that we're working on having them simply be called "Mozilla Browser" and "Mozilla Mail". The plan (and please, please, don't pass this on to anyone) is to make Phoenix and Minotaur the official builds from mozilla.org and make the old suite the secondary project (like phoenix is now). We'll need "project names" or "code names" to keep the bugs separate in Bugzilla, etc. so I suspect that we'll call them Firebird and Thunderbird where ever that makes sense but to most of the world, I suspect that they'll just think of Firebird as "the broser from Mozilla". It's all still in flux and may change dramatically (may not happen at all) but that's what we're working on making happen."

So you're the one who is posting "SHIT", as you would express it.

Posted May 15, 2003 9:14 UTC (Thu) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link]

If I had no interest in the conflict, why would I have gotten involved in the first place?

You are confusing "disinterested" with "uninterested". "Disinterested" means being impartial. "Uninterested" means not having an interest.

To call my efforts a "Trojan Horse" means nothing in real terms, but sure sounds gosh-darn sneaky and malicious. If you had something real to accuse me of, you would have. That you stoop to such slurs is another example of the dishonesty that is rampant among the Mozilla team.

The Trojans conquered Troy by wheeling a horse up to the gates, ostensibly as an innocent offering to their gods. In fact, it turned out to be anything but innocent. I am likening your behaviour, in offering to impartially mediate whilst actually holding very one-sided views, to that approach.

You think just because you are a big oil tanker in the Free Software movement, you can run over Firebirds little Free Software yacht, and experience no consequences. I am sorry, but the whole point of Free Software is that people are responsible for their actions, and sincerely want to put their morals and ethics into action.

When someone starts a sentence with "the whole point of Free Software is", and then makes an assertion supporting their position in a debate, I immediately think of Slashdot.

Any assertion that mozilla.org picked the name Firebird with any malicious intent is quite simply false. We spent several months delaying the next release of Phoenix/Mozilla Firebird while waiting for the name to be cleared. (Phoenix 0.5 was released in December last year.) Once we finally had a cleared name that the Phoenix developers didn't object to, we were very relieved. I can honestly say that no-one expected what has happened.

Using "Mozilla Browser" is simply not possible at the moment, because there is already one product with that name.

Yet again you assault my integrity with dishonest statements. At the time I became involved, Mozilla HAD been ignoring the Firebird projects complaints.

May I join you up there on that high horse? You are also assaulting my integrity by calling me a liar. mozilla.org did not ignore the Firebird project's complaints when this storm broke; we were trying to figure out the best course of action. Projects like Debian and FirebirdSQL may be light and agile project when it comes to policy, making decisions in days and moving on, but unfortunately mozilla.org moves a little more slowly.

Up until now, I've resisted joining in this debate publically in any forum, because I was not concerned with the initial naming choice, and didn't feel that the kitchen required any more cooks. Privately, I was initially very sympathetic to the issues raised by FirebirdSQL, and spent time investigating different ways that we could move away from names involving "Firebird" as quickly as possible. However, my stock of goodwill (along with that of most other mozilla.org staff members) has been exhausted by baseless assaults on my integrity and honesty such as the one this message is a comment to.

Posted May 16, 2003 15:20 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]