Keith Devens .com

Mozilla news!

Firebird 0.8 has just been released, and they've renamed it "Firefox"!

Sexy logo! I definitely don't like the name as much as Firebird (yet), but I'm glad the name Firebird belongs solely to the database project again. What the Mozilla project did by usurping their name wasn't right.

In addition, Thunderbird 0.5 has been released (it's time for me to give it another try), MozillaZine has a new layout, and they've launched a wiki-based knowledgebase. They also now have some Mozilla-focused blog cross-mojination going on on the MozillaZine front page.

Here's Firefox's product page on Mozilla.org, a press release, and a FAQ about the new name. Ben Goodger has lots of information about the work that went into it:

This was by far the most difficult problem we've yet tackled in the history of this project. It involved people across multiple timezones and even continents. The name we have chosen took nearly 2 months to lock down, and while that might seem like a short time in the world of trademark law, it was the primary reason for the six week delay in shipping our 0.8 release.

And with some unlucky timing for me as I just installed 0.7 on someone else's computer tonight because 0.8 wasn't out yet.

Update: Here's a good explanation of some of the design work that went into Firefox: Branding Mozilla: Towards Firefox 1.0

Permalink | 4 Comments | id 4701

03:19 (utc-5)
edited: 2004-02-11 23:51 (utc-5)