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Mozilla Cracks Down On Merchandise Sellers
An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine reports that the Mozilla Foundation is cracking down on those selling unofficial Mozilla-branded merchandise. This takes the form of an open letter addressed to retailers of goods that bear the Mozilla name or logos. The letter suggests that the Foundation are willing to work with those selling Mozilla wares, as long as they get a cut and the retailer isn't operating in the US, Canada or Mexico, where they would be competing with the Foundation's own Mozilla Store. Threats of legal action for non-compliance are issued, albeit with friendly overtones. This open letter is part of the Mozilla Foundation's campaign to better enforce its trademarks, an effort that began when the Foundation was launched in July. In a related move, the Foundation announced that the new Firefox artwork is not open-source and can only be used in official builds or those sanctioned by the Foundation - this has led to debates about whether Firefox is free enough to be included in the Debian Linux distribution."
The word is trademark, not copyright:e nsing.html
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/lic
Redhat does the same thing with their distribution, but its spread out thoughout the entire distro.
Bye!
Yes, IE does reference Mozilla in its "User-Agent" header, but no, it is not generic; it is still refering to the Mozilla foundation (or a Netscape standard of somekind, anyway). Even if it was generic, there is still the matter of the logo; that is certainly not generic.
Debian can not distribute things that are non-free. period. It's in the constitution, in the social contract, etc. GFDL = non-free. simple. mozilla-firefox logo = non-free. one of the problems is the Name Mozilla and the Name Firefox are seemingly non-free, too. If there was a trademark encumberance only, ok. But the problem with the names is that the encumberance are in the Copyright Licensing, which is inacceptable. So to distribute the Browser Mozilla, or the Browser Firefox, in the current terms, Debian would have to call them other names and not use the logos.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
That would be interesting if AOL still owned Mozilla. Unfortunatly for you, they don't.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
"you can't represent your own compilations or modifications as official builds"
;)
Its more than official builds. If Debian compiles their own build of Firefox, they cannot call it Firefox or use the Logo. If you read the thread you'd know that. To quote Mr. Dotzler: "Before we're willing to sanction the distribution of a modified version of Firefox under our trademark name and logo, we need to know what those changes are, specifically."
That's not an unreasonable request, however Eric Dorland (Debian's Firefox maintainer) also has valid concerns:
"I understand that you would want Firefox to have the highest level of quality when using that name. But even if you approved of my patches today, what about tomorrow? Would I have to have you approve of every release that I do? If we disagreed and could not find a compromise would you disallow us from using the name? I'm not sure I would be comfortable working in that kind of situation."
Personally, I thing it is probably a non-issue. If they can't reach some sort of agreement then Debian can still compile the modified Firefox code with another set of artwork and call it something other than Firefox. I propose it be called "Phoenix"
One of the guys on the mozillazine forums who does nightly builds of Firefox is pushing for an official unofficial set of artwork that everyone can use for their builds: http://scragz.com/tech/mozilla/firefox-unofficial- branding.php
There is a simple option for those that don't get official permission from the Mozilla Foundation to use the trademarked artwork.
A simple "--enable-official-branding" flag can be used when building to include the official artwork. Otherwise, generic versions of the artwork are included (which are free/open). This is being worked on as we speak and should be in the nightly builds this week.
Steven Garrity
Mozilla Visual Identity Team
No, the Moz in IE (and many others) is to try to get round the evil stupid twats that think restricting web content using browser sniffing is a "good thing".
...) (in direct violation of an RFC, but hey) to get round the evil twats that should be kicked lots, then sold into slavery on eBay.
:)
Netscape has always(1) used the term "Mozilla" internally for its browser. Back in the Netscape 3/4 vs MSIE 3/4 days, Netscape was winning the browser war, and the aformentioned evil stupid twats that think restricting web content using browser sniffing is a "good thing" was restricting access to Netscape only. MSIE put the Mozilla (Compatabile;
(1) May or may not be "always"
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Debian is not saying their builds are official. They just want to be able to say what they supply _is_ FireFox. Mozilla is saying you can't use the name and image unless you haven't changed it at all.
Contrast this with Debian's logo policy. Anyone is allowed to use the Debian name and logo in a derivative product, but there is a *second* logo reserved solely for Debian's use on official builds and any approved projects, at their discretion. This way other people can use the name and logo that the Linux public knows while marking a distinction between them and official Debian-endorsed products.
Everything else is part of a GPL'ed package, that you have to be allowed to distribute as is. If you read their license, they are quite clear that those are the only two things they hold copyright and trademark over.
Kirby
" profiting off the work of the Mozilla collective, without contributing anything back. That goes against the spirit and the letter of the project. Please correct me if I'm wrong."
Spirit, probably, but agains the letter of the project? If that were true, then the license would have to have a part that specifically states that the license is only valid if you either not profit from using the product, or give stuff back...
If the artwork of the firebird browser is not covered by the same open source license as the source code, then the browser as a is not free (libre) software. If they restrict the artwork to 'only be used in the mozilla browser', then that artwork is not libre. It's the same as that the last versions of the netscape browser were not libre, even though they contained a lot of the same code as mozilla. simple and clear.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
I know I'm missing something, but shouldn't they be encouraging this form of free-adversiting?
No.
If you don't defend a trademark, you lose it.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
So the Debian guys could just change one letter and change the "o" to a "u" in FireFox, pronounced firefu.. :-)
The truth is much more complex than that. Under GPL, you are granting others permission to distribute package A under restrictions designed to force them to distribute package B than uses package A under a similar license. If you will, "I'll give this to the community, but, if you use it, you have give your stuff too".
However, this does not preclude you from distributing the same software under a different license, such as MySQL does. Doing so might cause you problems with dealing with contributions back from the community (since they may not want their code to be available under a commercial license), but that is your choice.
The BSD license is much more likely to cause what you are talking about. If I can distribute your software near-free, why would I buy a license from you?
The Mozilla Foundation and Toho (sp?) have an agreement concerning trademarks. This was resolved way back when Mozilla was under AOLTW/Netscape's wings. I don't remember the exact details, but basically it allows Mozilla to continue use of the name Mozilla and logos, and all current products named "-zilla," such as ChatZilla. I don't know if it allows new -zilla named products, but it might not (and that would be a bad idea anyway).
If you want, the proof is likely on google or mozillazine.
Raster graphics are just binary files, but that doesn't mean there's no source. Most raster icons are made with multiple layers and with paths, so a GIMP
Here are some alternative icons for Debian Freefox:
-Firefox Icon v3 by Jyrik (remade from scratch)
-Mozilla Firefox Final by auto-logic
-Firefox Experiment N3 by weboso
-Tails as Firefox by polimero
I am sure all of these people would be happy to open source their designs.:P
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Tails as Firefox. Meh.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Isn't Mozilla a generic name used in all headers for web browsers? I'm pretty sure IE6 uses the word "Mozilla" in it's information headers...
No. Mozilla is the original Netscape code name for its browser. When Microsoft introduced their first browser, IE 2.0, they touted it as Mozilla compatible. That's where that came from. To answer your question, no, Mozilla is not a generic name
"X Windows" is not correct. The correct name is "The X Window System"
You CAN relicense Mozilla code as GPL which is (as everyone knows) free software. That goes even without talking about MPL code and whether or not it is a license for "free software".
All of this has a big however.
However, the artwork is not licensed under the MPL. The artwork is their property and is not part of the "free software" code. It's their decision to make. Check out that link for the "why" (by ben goodger, lead programmer for firefox).
I think they are still being altruistic, but being smart about it. Like their name (which they had to fight the godzilla guy for), they retain a trademark on the graphics so that they can brand official mozilla-approved builds so that their user base knows they can trust their branded build.
If the Google search engine were free software, you wouldn't want to run into a really crappy google spin-off. "That was an incredibly crappy search." The Google name would be tarnished.
I do understand what you are saying, and agree with it on a limited basis: Mozilla was originally open-sourced so that they could benefit from the OSS developers that wanted to write a kick-ass browser. It wasn't so all man could be free in their web browsing (though that was a side-effect). I believe Mozilla to be pure in their intentions, and while there are sticky points (Debian), I think they've got smart enough guys to figure something out.
Get Firefox!
> and the ability to make slight tweaks to the source code
It's not quite that benign, unfortunately... as of 1.6, at least, Debian is shipping some changes to their custom Mozilla build that correspond to bugs that the main Mozilla tree has wontfixed (because they felt that those changes were bad for the project in particular and Internet standards in general).
As for Debian users posting bugs in the Mozilla.org database, we get a few dozen after every release. They're almost all due to changes Debian has made in their version of the builds... Figuring this out usually takes quite a bit of digging.
This is not to say that they break things on purpose, and they do make a bunch of changes that are beneficial to their users. But the point is that their builds have sufficiently different functionality that confusion of them with the Mozilla.org builds by users _does_ use up a good bit of QA and developer time.
That is not true, according to Mozilla.org's licensing policy. They intend to license everything under a three licenses where possible: the GPL, LGPL, and MPL. You could make a GPL derivative of most of Mozilla's code (with a few exceptions), you just can't fork your modifications back into the tree without licensing it under the LGPL and MPL as well.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
I don't know, dynamic content switching looks like the best bet.
If the MPL does NOT give me a license to copy/use the artwork, then what DOES???
:-)
Emailing licensing@mozilla.org and getting permission.
When you download the source, the artwork isn't necessarily included. It gets pulled if you set the configure option.
Gerv
Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the US and most other countries, and is also a generic term (which has been ruled as such in the US) from as far back as the 1950's -- incidentally Microsoft may be generic/descriptive and is also a registered trademark of MS Corp.
X Windows (which predates Microsoft Windows) is now called the X Window System (possibly due to threats from MS Corp.).
Microsoft Corp. do not hold a trademark on Word.
Lindows.com have not actually won yet -- but the courts have implied that they probably will. They have only been allowed to carry on using the name until the court rule on whether Micrsoft Corp. should have their trademark removed. If the courts decide against MS Corp. then MS may still be able to stop Lindows.com from using their name.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
The issue is that this is the start of a slippery slope. Let's try a thought experiment:
Company X take Mozilla, and make some big improvements to the interface, including adding support for (say) SVG. They release the source code back to the community, as required by the license--but they keep all the artwork and data files proprietary, including all the image and data files necessary for the XUL user interface and the SVG support. Furthermore, they take out trademarks and patents to prevent cloning of those data files.
Don't laugh off the idea--did you know that many methods of representing continuous color images using CMYK ink dots are patented, and that those patents have been upheld? It's not hard to imagine a method of dithering SVG images to textures on a bitmap screen being similarly patentable.
Now in our thought experiment, in spite of the software being "open source", it has effectively been stolen and made closed. Company X can sell their proprietary version of Mozilla, and nobody can use the improvements in the free version. They could even use Palladium-like digital signature technology to make sure that the proprietary binary distribution couldn't be made to work with open data and graphics, even though the source code is available.
As I see it, for a piece of software to be open source, you need to be allowed to redistribute and use all of the sources needed to build the entire thing. If I can't build Mozilla exactly as it is in the official binary distribution and give it to a friend, it's not open source.
That's why when I released one of my screensavers under the GPL, I released the artwork files under the GPL as well.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak