the name to Firebird. Their legal advice is that it is OK and that no-one could confuse a database engine with a web-browser.
The opinion of the Firebird project is rather different. We feel very strongly that confusion will exist between two major Open source software projects using the same name.
I accept the moral argument. That wasn't such a nice thing for them to do. On the other hand, it is a fairly generic term which you presumably borrowed from Pontiac, or possibly the football team. They've got brand recognition in the Phoenix name, and Firebird is a short jump for them and their customers. I can see why they've used the name. My question is, how much damage is their use of the name actually going to do your project? If someone says "what SQL engine do you use?" and the reply is "Firebird", there's hardly likely to be any confusion with a web browser. That argument works both ways. If your project is genuinely hurt, theirs will be too. That's why your "precedent" argument doesn't hold much water. If I created a word processor and called it Konqueror I'd be shooting myself in the foot. It might hurt konqeror.org, but it'd hurt me too. So I wouldn't do it. I see why you're pissed. I would be too. But I'm not convinced you're not over estimating the damage this will do to you. On the contrary, I've now heard of your project, and visited your website, which is more than could be said 5 minutes ago. -- "...our desktop is falling behind stability-wise and feature wise to KDE ...when I went to Mexico in December to the facility where we launched gnome, they had all switched to KDE3." - Miguel de Icaza, March 2003