OK, I've read the dozen or so other entries in this thread, but nobody has addressed [so far] the obvious question in my mind: what in the world is the "pheonix browser"? Never heard of it till this post, and even if I had, I don't know that I would have associated it with Mozilla -- after all, whenever I hear "mozilla", I think "ahh, a browser..." [actually, I think "ahh, THE browser", even though I never used it]
phoenix (the browser, now called firebird (see below)) is a standalone browser (no mail/news, composer, etc) based on the mozilla trunk. it also uses a different front end based on xul which is more customizable than xpfe. the goal was a small, fast browser based on the gecko engine. there is also a similar project for mail called thunderbird (based on the minotaur mail/news standalone). according to the latest roadmap update, after the 1.4 release, mozilla (the suite) is going to be replaced by a set of standalone apps (firebird + thunderbird + whatever) based on the gecko runtime engine.
In other words, why do the Mozilla folks think they need a new name for their browser? Did someone crowd out their use of Mozilla as a name?
the phoenix bios company set their legal team against the phoenix browser project because they have their own (in bios) browser. this has caused a huge delay in the release of phoenix 0.6 (0.5 was released dec 7) because they had to choose a new name and get it approved by their own legal team. -- trey