Slashdot Mirror
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.
"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"
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
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 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.
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
> 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