Mike Connor blogs that "The trademark and copyrighted icon were not created by the community. Firefox and its icon was created by the Mozilla Foundation in private, as a brand used for “official” releases as a sign of quality."

I think I understand what Mike is trying to say here, but this sentence is far too easily misinterpreted. I believe he is saying that the Mozilla Foundation can be credited with taking steps towards protecting the Firefox mark, by filing a trademark, and owning the copyright on the graphic image icon.

It is however not correct to say that the Mozilla Foundation "created" either actual entity in substance, since both of them were created by community members who volunteered their contribution to the cause.

The Mozilla Foundation as an entity did NOT:

• Create the name: that was Jason "kerz" Kersey who owns the community advocacy and discussion site MozillaZine on which this blog is run. He came up with the name, and I have the IRC logs that show him doing it. Jason was aware that the new name would be trademarked by the Mozilla Foundation and he was happy to help contribute to the naming process.
• Create the artwork, even though it holds the copyright to it. The artwork was created by Jon Hicks, a volunteer who has also contributed icons to the Camino project, and other Open Source projects. The final artwork was based on a sketched concept by members of the team at Silverorange, who became involved with Firefox because Steven Garrity posted a detailed complaint about Mozilla graphic design, and some of us said "we're accepting patches" in the traditional Open Source fashion, and Steven and his company were nice enough to oblige. Jon and the Silverorange team were happy to contribute copyright ownership of these works to the Mozilla Foundation with the knowledge they would become part of the trademark.

I just wanted to make sure everyone understood these historical facts when interpreting Mike's blog.