"Open source cannot win if brother cynically steals from brother…"

"A slap on the face of the open source community"

These are strong words spoken by two open source groups clashing over a sensitive issue—branding. There is an interesting spat brewing in the open source community over of all things—a name. It began when Mozilla announced that it would be replacing its browser of the same name with a smaller lighter version.

In what it thought would also be a brilliant branding move, it announced that the product revamp would be accompanied with a branding and name revamp. Mozilla is a torchbearer of sorts among open source browsers. One of the Davids’ along with Opera, which is trying to put up a fight against Microsoft IE’s Goliath. The new lighter version it finally announced, would be called Phoenix.

That seemingly innocent and irrelevant act, however, led to a spate of controversies. To begin with, AOL-Netscape that works very closely with Mozilla shot down the new name saying that another browser called Phoenix First View Connect already existed.

Mozilla then decided to rename Phoenix as Firebird. In an official statement the Mozilla organization said, "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." Mozilla might have hoped the matter would rest there. Unfortunately, it did not. The second new name in turn sparked a howl of protests. The first protest came from the FireBird SQL database, which, like Mozilla, is an open source project. It promptly reacted with an announcement denouncing the name change. "We of the Firebird project are devoted to our branding. We are dismayed that Firebird was not contacted before Mozilla’s decision was finalized. This breach of principle has occurred in the heartland of open source, where we are all supposed to be above such things."

The company also took umbrage at what they thought was Mozilla’s don’t-give-a-damn. "The attitude adopted by Mozilla’s vocal proponents of the change, in essence ‘if they don’t like it they can sue’, is contrary to the generally accepted core values of the open source community. It reflects poorly on a community that voices strong opinions when corporate entities employ similar tactics. If open source is to win, we can do without brother cynically stealing from brother," it said in an announcement on its site.

Firebird’s chief appeal to fellow fanatics was—"Mozilla’s decision to go ahead with the name, FireBird, is a "slap on the face of the open source community". And typically, the open source community rallied around the underdog with a slew of protest message up at sites varying from Mozilla’s own home page to slashdot. To begin with Mozilla stuck to its guns and Asa Dotzler, Project and Release Manager, Mozilla said that no one could confuse a database with a browser. However, Firebird database supporters argued that having a browser and a database with the same name in the same space would confuse the market, especially as browsers and databases are often used in the same applications.

But the protest messages wouldn’t stop. They will eventually of course when the issue is sorted out. But question is, will such infighting tarnish the image of open source? "The Open source movement has always been a radical community who are passionate about their work. The community has been a bit far removed from the real-life issues like branding and copyrights.

There has to be a balance", says Gopi Garge, Network Services Consultant, ERNET and open source aficionado.

"Overall, I would like to see this in a positive light. These problems were just waiting to happen—and there is a lesson to be learnt here. The open source community needs to learn to handle such issues carefully, in mature manner", adds Garge Mozilla now seems more circumspect about the episode.

It’s site now says, "When referring to Thunderbird or Firebird before or during the 1.4 release cycle, make sure to use the project name with Mozilla pre-pended as ‘Mozilla Thunderbird’ or ‘Mozilla Firebird’ instead of Mozilla alone or Firebird/Thunderbird alone. Firebird and Thunderbird are project names and they are transitory." The open source community is just finding out—there’s a lot in a name!

S Chinmayee
Special report by CIOL