200,000 bugs old and still going strong

Five years ago yesterday, Netscape released the Communicator source code. In the years since then, Mozilla.org community members have hammered on the code to create an extraordinary browser that leads the world in standards support and is a platform for other browsers as well as other products.

By coincidence, the 200,000th bug was logged in the bugzilla bug tracking system on the five year anniversary of the source code release. Although bugzilla tracks many components and tools other than the browser and includes features and duplicates as well as unique and real bugs, the magnitude of that bug number is amazing. Many, many bugs have been found and fixed over those five years, making Mozilla a solid and stable tool. A number of these fixed bugs include security exploits that remain unpatched and troubling in other browsers.

Happy birthday, Mozilla!

UPS ditches logo

UPS has a new logo. I’d swear this was an April Fools joke if it hadn’t been announced earlier. Have they gone completely insane? The old UPS logo, one of the most recognized brands in the world, was a distinctive design by Paul Rand created in 1961. The new one, well, it has a semi-swoosh. Boring! I can’t imagine wasting an estimated $20 million on rebranding to that. And in a slow economy, too. The courier-journal has a story which notes the problematic timing of the rebranding.

Old UPS logo: a parcel tied with string above a shieldNew UPS logo: revised shield with no parcel

Update: Subtraction blog nails it:

What this logo lacks, and what Rand’s logo had in spades, is wit. Rand said that he knew when he’d hit upon the right design when his young daughter saw immediately that the top of the shield was a gift box. Its message was clear and simple: UPS delivers good things — the effect was to inspire a smile. In spite of the fact that UPS forbade the use of string to tie up packages, the company recognized the emotional resonance that Rand’s work communicated, and they allowed it to become one of the most well-respected design landmarks of the modern world.