Dear reader,

I know you have been bothered by - most probably - many
people about the recent name-change thingy.

I'm not writing this email to complain - although I feel
a bit stepped upon. I'm writing this email to explain and
to ask a question...

I know it's not the Mozilla browser that's being renamed.
But "only" a subproject... Those who say that the product
name will be "Mozilla Firebird" and expect users/
developers to use this "full name" should open their eyes,
both you and I know this isn't going to happen. It will
be referred to as "Firebird" - period.

But think of the confusion - perhaps not by users - but
developers. Two years from now, what happens if you
Google for "firebird security problem" or "firebird
windows" etc etc... Now, this WILL raise confusion. You
know it - I know it.

Yes, there are other projects with "Firebird" in it's
name - perhaps the Firebird database engine SHOULD have
taken another name. But it didn't ... and it's very active
for over 3 years now.

Then there are those people who say "I don't know Firebird,
it can only be positive for them as more people will know
them" - now, that's plain crap. Those looking for a web-
browser are not interested in finding a db-engine. Plain
and simple.

There are also people who say "Firebird the db engine?
Never heard of - I (and the guys at the office) only know
MySQL and PostgreSQL" ... Well, that tells more about
those people than about the Firebird database engine. Most
probably these developers either don't care about data
integrity (MySQL) or haven't bothered to look further
and search a more (Windows) friendly database engine
(PostgreSQL).

The name-voting at Mozilla: pfff... to say that Firebird
won hands down is a plain lie. It got 37 votes instead
of 30 ... Yes, a 25% difference - but still hardly a
major difference.

Anyone could have found out about the Firebird database
engine Open Source project very very easily - simply by
googling and checking sourceforge.net - the stronghold
for open source projects...

As for the rest of the arguments - I'm pretty sure you and
others of the Netscape/Mozilla/AOL/Whatever team are very
sensible people. Then, I ask you: WHY did you select
"Firebird" as the name for the product if you KNEW it would
'cause "problems" or raise hairs in the back of peoples
necks?



Martijn Tonies
Upscene Productions
Member and Founder of the FirebirdSQL Foundation
http://firebird.sourceforge.net/ff/foundation/