Phoenix and Minotaur Get New Names 485
blazerw11 writes "Phoenix and Minotaur
have been officially renamed to Firebird for the browser and Thunderbird for the mail client. Interestingly, they're both named after cars I often see in my neighbors' lawns. At least these cars were pretty fast before they were put up on cinder blocks. Personally, I like the names and the browser is great. I'm writing this with one of the last Phoenix Nightlies."
Umm... (Score:-1, Insightful)
Don't Do what Donny Don't does.
a great compact browser (Score:4, Insightful)
Request. (Score:5, Insightful)
Quit renaming all the browsers! Every time I recommend them to a friend or coworker, the name changes and they get confused.
Bloody Codenames! (Score:2, Insightful)
Unity in the product line (Score:2, Insightful)
But I guess they already had a theme going with fantasy creatures to begin with. I wonder where it will go.
Re:Request. (Score:5, Insightful)
Firebird, as in... (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, as much as I admire the work these folks do, I have to wonder how one medium-to-high-profile open-source project can decide to use the name of another.
It's not like there aren't other good poetic variations on the Phoenix theme.
Re:Umm... (Score:4, Insightful)
New graphics needed (Score:3, Insightful)
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.c
Firebird and Thunderbird? (Score:2, Insightful)
But if they were going to change their names to the new "old car" motif, why oh why a Firebird and a Thunderbird? If they called one of them Stingray, I wouldn't be bitching. Not that a 'vette was a great car, but because the name is so much cooler. I know Stingray is probably taken, but so is Firebird, so
Even then, why name them after middle of the hill production cars. If the apps are supposed to be bitchen, use the names of bitchen super/muscle cars. The obvious: Superbird, Cobra, F1 (as in McLaren). Or, the not so obvious: Pantera, Barchetta, and Silver Shadow. Or you could even mix the two and go with the likes of Tuscan, Cerbera, or Tamora.
Re:Firebird, as in... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mozilla's Firebird browser is not going to be confused with a relational database. Without customer confusion, there isn't a trademark problem.
Ok, what's with you boneheads who keep bringing up trademarks??? Did the original poster mention anything about trademarks? What about a modicum of respect? What about when (Linux or BSD) distributions have to choose a unique package name for installed software? Who gets "firebird"?
Seriously, what would you think if MySQL renamed itself to Mozilla? Huh? Would you just shrug it off and say "well, no trademark is violated, so no big deal"? Or would you feel a little bit insulted?
(It would help with branding + IE war) Re:Request (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only would your friends know what you are talking about, but so would mine and everyone elses. When you say Internet Explorer, everyone knows what you are talking about, right?
I think people behind Mozilla should learn and adopt this simple 'trick' from Microsoft if they want Mozilla/Phoenix/Firebird to become more popular.
I would love to see the percentage of visitors using Mozilla go up in my access_log, and the percentage of IE go down. Both Mozilla and Pheonix deserve it.
Re:Why not Volvo XC90 or something? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe, in the past, but new Thunderbird [fordvehicles.com] looks very nice, and is very classy. I'd take that over most Volvos.
Re:moto? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not a good idea. You're much more likely to have a "fatal exception" on a motorcycle.
A plea for (phoenix|firebird)-i586 binaries (Score:4, Insightful)
The bummer is that both milestone and daily builds are -i686 binaries. Someone else filed a bugzilla ticket on this in December. I guess we can just vote for it and hope that the mozilla.org folks find the time to do a -i586 build, too.
Re:in related news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, wait - Triumph made a motorbike called a Thunderbird back in the sixties. I seem to remember calling it the thunderbox, though - it really wasn't up to the standard of many of their other bikes.
Thanks for the NEW Naming Confusion (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, they've given it the same name as Interbase's open-source flavor.
I mean, it's plainly there on SourceForge... not like it couldn't have been researched.
http://firebird.sourceforge.net/
http://www.ib
Re:A plea for (phoenix|firebird)-i586 binaries (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, people, just one little 800 byte HTML file?
cvs -d
password is "foobar"
cvs -z3 -d
cd phoenix
CC=/where/I/put/gcc-3.2
make
If you can't build this thing in 10 steps or less, how the hell do you ever expect it to be useful? Or is it supposed to be a "rite of passage" build system, like nethack's? And if I can't build it with gcc, then fuck it. I am not going to track down version 3.78.123-a-9q of proprietary HP C++ compiler #74 which requires a codeword to install.
(Sorry if I sound more bitter than usual. But the mozilla developers are truly on a different planet from the rest of us. Even filing a bug is a major chore, which has a serious impact on their QA. They should take a hint from Debian: apt-get install reportbug; reportbug.)
Firebird already taken (Score:3, Insightful)
See http://firebird.sourceforge.net. Geez, how rude.
Re:Request. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the name you're thinking of is directly pulled from a scifi or fantasy source, don't bother. These sources are WAY overrepresented as naming sources in software. Not only are your chances of coming up with something original pretty small, most of the names of characters and places in scifi are trademarked and you run the risk of being sued.
If the name you're thinking of comes straight from Greek, Roman or Norse mythology, try again. We've got more than enough mail related software called variations of "Mercury".
Run your proposed name through Google. The fewer results you get the better. If you get down to no results, you're there.
Don't try to get a unique name by just slightly misspelling something. Calling your new Windows filesystem program Phat32 is just going to end up with users getting frustrated looking at the results of "fat32" in a search engine.
If your name couldn't be said on TV in the 50s or 60s, you're probably on the wrong track. This is particularly true if you would like anyone to use your product in a work environment. No one is going to recommend a product to their co-workers if they can get sued for sexual harassment just for uttering its name.
If your product name can't be pronounced at all, you'll get no word of mouth benefit at all. Similarly, if no one knows how to pronounce it, they will not be very likely to try to say it out loud to ask questions about it, etc. How do YOU say MySQL? PostgreSQL? GNU? Almost all spoken languages on Earth are based on consonant/vowel syllables of some sort. Alternating between consonants and vowels is a pretty good way to ensure that someone can pronounce it.
The shorter the better.
See if the
Don't build inherent limitations on your product into the name. Calling your product LinProduct or WinProduct precludes you from ever releasing any sort of cross-platform edition.
Don't use your own name for open source products. If the project lives on beyond your involvement, the project will either have to be renames or your name may be used in ways you didn't intend.
I'll put this up at phpgeek.com [phpgeek.com] to build it up more.