[ Thanks to AV for
this link. ]
“Firefox is the most popular and widely used free
software application and boasts more than a billion downloads and
more than 350 million users. The H discusses its history, present
and future with Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation. An
origin in ashes“Firefox started life as Phoenix – named after the bird of
Persian mythology – which rose from the ashes, but was later
renamed Firebird because of trademark issues, and finally became
Firefox in 2004 to end confusion with the Firebird open source
RDBMS project that had sprung from Borland’s release of Interbase
in 2000.“The first release of Firefox (0.8) under the Firefox name was
in February 2004, and was immediately successful because it was
able to defy gravity and take Microsoft on, despite the in-built
advantages that come from the Windows monopoly on the desktop.”