Christopher Blizzard of mozilla.org Speaks on the Firebird Naming Conflict (MozillaZine) [LWN.net]

Christopher Blizzard of mozilla.org Speaks on the Firebird Naming Conflict (MozillaZine)

Posted May 15, 2003 12:49 UTC (Thu) by jamesgraham (guest, #11216)
Parent article: Christopher Blizzard of mozilla.org Speaks on the Firebird Naming Conflict (MozillaZine)

First a disclaimer: I came to this story by way of Mozillazine. I am posting this from Mozilla. If you search for my name you'll notice that I've posted on the Mozillazine forums, on the netscape.public.mozilla newsgroups and have done some limited work for the project, for example looking at bugs people have submitted to bugzilla and attempting to reproduce them. If that constitues unacceptable bias, then feel free to ignore me.

I find the conduct of Mr Walther in this affair to be unprofessional and distasteful. Offering to mediate in a dispute in which he has a strong personal dislike of one side represents a clear conflict of interests. He should not have offered to act as an intermeditary in those circumstances. Dispite claims that he " went to bat for the Mozilla team", the best he can offer for his postive role was failing to inform the press that the Mozilla team were (in his opinon) lying. This hardly represents the actions of an individual prepared to make compromises to resolve a conflict in a fair and amicable way.

In this thread, he has accused the Mozilla team of arrogance, whilst responding to comments that disagree with his own opinion with curt and belittling remarks. He has told others that they don't "have the knowledge to evaluate his [Blizzard's] interview", whilst being unprepared to back up his comments with the extra information and context that he feels is necessary to grasp the situation. This attitude suggests that Mr Walther himself is guilty of the arrogance of which he is so eager to accuse others.

In addition, Mr Walther makes unproven allegations, particualy relating to the Safari project, whilst simultaneously arguing that we should "stop with these 'maybes' and suppositions". Apparentley, the irony of this dual value system has passed him by.

He also suffixes his posts "Debian developer", although as far as I am aware, he does not speak on behalf of the Debain project. It would seem to me that if he wants to make inflammatory comments then he should be careful to disassosiate himself from any organisations for which he cannot claim to represent. In his determination to drag the Mozilla project through the mud, it is clear that he is willing to take himself with it. It is tragic that he is prepared to risk damaging the good reputation of the Debian project at the same time.

In my opinion, his lack of impartiality, use of hyperbole and unwillingness to back up his claims when challenged reflect poorly on the character of Mr Walther. I believe it was immoral of him to volunteer to mediate in this dispute and that the fact that he has done so, and the manner in which he has subsequently acted, has brought Mr Walther into considerable disrepute.

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Christopher Blizzard of mozilla.org Speaks on the Firebird Naming Conflict (MozillaZine)

Posted May 15, 2003 13:48 UTC (Thu) by msutherland (guest, #11201) [Link]

> First a disclaimer: I came to this story by way of Mozillazine. I am posting this from Mozilla.

Great. So now I know that the weight I should attach to your words should not exceed that of a small bag of chicken feathers.

> I find the conduct of Mr Walther in this affair to be unprofessional and distasteful.

Unprofessional? How could that be? He's no longer a mediator... and if you read a damn thing he said: "My comments today were made as a private individual who knows that his job is done."

> the best he can offer for his postive role was failing to inform the press that the Mozilla team were (in his opinon) lying.

It is not an opinion. It is fact. If Mozilla.org were Pinnochio.. then their nose would extend clear across the globe... right into the middle of Baghdad.

> In this thread, he has accused the Mozilla team of arrogance

That's because he is being honest. The misfits at Mozilla.org are arrogant. The only mystery is... why???? What the hell on earth compels them to be so arrogant?

> I believe it was immoral of him to volunteer to mediate in this dispute

Who the hell are you to lecture anyone about morality? If you want to preach morals to someone... then log in to #mozdev and yack away.

Christopher Blizzard of mozilla.org Speaks on the Firebird Naming Conflict (MozillaZine)

Posted May 15, 2003 14:11 UTC (Thu) by DavidSwinstead (guest, #11226) [Link]

Before posting I will point out that I am in no way connected to mozlla.org, mozillazine, or any part of the FireBird SQL project. My take on this is (almost) completely neutral. And that is all this post is - my own personal take on the situation.

I say _almost_ because I am very fond of the FireBird browser and have been using it for a while. This obviously gives me some bias, however when following this whole farce over the past few months I must admit I have lost a lot of faith in the mozilla.org staff.

Having read all the evidence I find it very hard if not impossible to believe that the intent was always to rename FireBird to Mozilla Browser at release 1.4. In particular, the following statement that _was_ at the Phoenix project page seems to indicate no such intent:

"After months of discussion and further months of legal investigation, we're finally comfortable moving forward with new names. The new name for the Phoenix browser is 'Firebird'. The documentation and product strings will be updated soon. In addition to securing Firebird, we've also got the OK from those contributing legal resources to use the name 'Thunderbird' for a mail client. Hopefully this will be the end of naming legal issues for a while."

It certainly seems to make their stance quite clear: They have finally secured a name and they are going to stick with it. It doesn't say the name will be Mozilla Firebird, it just says Firebird. And why on Earth would they go through the process of changing even the documentation if it was just a project codename for Bugzilla? The simple answer is that they wouldn't.

However, I don't believe that they ever intended to do any harm to the Firebird SQL project. I also don't see them as being "bullies" over the matter. It appears to me that what they are attempting to do is resolve this as peacefully as they can without an embarrasing total retraction at the demands of a much smaller organsation. It looks to me as though they are attempting a compromise by slightly changing the name for now (to Mozilla Firebird) and implementing a much bigger long-term change - whilst telling their users it was planned all along.

It may anger people who won't believe that Mozilla intended this all along - but what matters isn't that this was never planned, what matters is that it IS planned NOW. They may not be being totally honest about why they're doing it - probably to save face - but at least they're doing it.

You can argue all day about how much this has damaged Firebird and it's google ranking but what's done is done. The more that debates like this mention the names, the more the google results will be diluted by shit. It's still the top result on google and AFAIK they (Firebird SQL) don't make any money so they can't possibly have lost money from it. Their name hasn't been affected *that* badly. In fact you could argue it's been helped along a little by all of this; Personally I had never heard of the project before any of this kicked off. I'm now considering using it. I suspect I'm far from alone.

I await my flames eagerly.