Any news is good news

Posted May 15, 2003 17:15 UTC (Thu) by Makali (guest, #11236)
In reply to: Another name for "apathetic" that tells the true story by roskegg
Parent article: Christopher Blizzard of mozilla.org Speaks on the Firebird Naming Conflict (MozillaZine)

Two points:

1. As the subject above says, the upshot of this whole controversy is that more people know about IBPhoenix and the Firebird database project than ever before.

2. If someone is looking for an open source relational database, they do NOT search for Firebird. Don't be silly. They'd google for "free database" or "open source database". And hell, people search again if they don't find what they want; if "firebird" didn't come up with the database on the first page, the chances are that they'd search again for "firebird database". The "damage" you claim is small at best; and the case for a financial damages claim wouldn't stand up in court. As countless others have said in this comment thread, "Let it go, man". An apology from Mozilla might be nice, simply out of courtesy, but the more salt you rub into the wound, the less likely it is that one will be forthcoming.

Bonus third point: If someone produced a new skateboard, or a film or TV show called Firebird and it shot to the top of the google search for that term, what then? Would you write an angry letter to the film studio? I believe that the analogy is valid, despite the "But Mozilla and IBPhoenix should be on the same side!" caveat. These are very much dissimilar products, and while a naming clash is unfortunate, confusion over the name would be virtually non-existant outside of the Open-source "fandom". Remember, open-source is just the development model - it's a tenuous a link between two products, and outside of the small circle of people whose primary interest is open-source software, no one will give a damn that a free web browser and a free database have similar names.

Disclaimer: I use both Firebird and "that mozilla browser", but I'm not involved in either project, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not even that clever.