Originally called Phoenix, since it was Netscape Navigator, reborn.
But Phoenix Technologies disliked that, so they renamed to a descriptive name for the same immortal bird – Firebird.
The Firebird database people would have none of that, so after a few-months gap between 0.x releases, they found the closest thing they possibly could which was not trademarked. It had nothing to do with the original name idea, fire being a weak link.
And we’ve been stuck with that stupid name for two decades.
There was a satirical addon back in this day that would change the Firefox name every time you opened it to like WaterHippo or SunJackal to make fun of this.
Originally called Phoenix, since it was Netscape Navigator, reborn.
But Phoenix Technologies disliked that, so they renamed to a descriptive name for the same immortal bird – Firebird.
The Firebird database people would have none of that, so after a few-months gap between 0.x releases, they found the closest thing they possibly could which was not trademarked. It had nothing to do with the original name idea, fire being a weak link.
And we’ve been stuck with that stupid name for two decades.
It’s kinda crazy the whole reason we have Firefox is a company was crushed by Microsoft and said “fuck it, shit’s open source now.”
spite is a great motivator
There was a satirical addon back in this day that would change the Firefox name every time you opened it to like WaterHippo or SunJackal to make fun of this.