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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."
This article would get an Ironic tag.
This, like the GFDL, is one of those aspects of some aspects of the OSS movement that doesn't seem to really follow the tenets of the whole OSS movement.
I have been pwned because my
How is an open letter 'cracking down'? Talk about biased reporting...
Either you believe in freedom or you don't, right? Wrong! These bootleggers are (presumably) 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.
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."
Will the Debian Linux distribution refuse all Open Source Software that also says, "you can re-compile this software, and even add your own modifications, but you can't represent your own compilations or modifications as official builds"?
Because that's all that reserving the artwork does: the artwork is an imprimatur, a symbol essentially equivalent to a signature, that identifies a build as official.
I've made some of my code open source, but I've never said that people could remove my name from the copyright, or conversely, put my name on their own work. If my signature were a Chinese ideogram, or a picture of fox wrapped around a globe, I wouldn't let anyone else use that.
If the Debian Foundation decides that Firefox isn't "free enough", can I produce my own Linux distribution and call it "Debian Linux"?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Hey! Don't rip off our Godzilla rip-off!
Personally I can't really see how the artwork should fall under open source. They're binary files, right?
This is purely a branding issue, it has nothing to do with the underlying program. They want to be able to make some money off of merchandise that they will hopefully invest in bettering their technology. How is this a bad thing?
I found it funny that the original poster felt it necessary to add "albeit with friendly overtones". I guess this was an attempt to ward off the knee-jerk reactions? Really, I wouldn't see the problem if they were rude about it, they have a right to protect their name and logo.
I think that what they are concerned with is that if somebody sells something that, say, falls apart as soon as they get it, they associate the name Mozilla with poor quality. And beyond that, they might not make the connection that the store isn't an official Mozilla-type-product seller, so they could mistake it as being something sold directly by Mozilla Foundation.
My other sig is an import.
When I first read about the trademark on the Firefox logo, and the plan that if you see that logo you know it's a quality build, I just assumed that mozilla.org had thought it through completely.
Looks like I was wrong.
Debian asked about how the logo works, and from the mozilla.org answers, it appears there is no fallback plan yet! They don't have an alternate logo available. Worse, you can't even call a modified version "Firefox" anymore? That's a problem!
Given the mozilla.org plans for trademarks, I really don't think Debian can build with the official logo and the official name. That's a shame.
If mozilla.org lets Debian use the name and logo, Debian will build Firefox for about a dozen different architectures (Power PC, 68000, Alpha, etc.) and mozilla.org won't have to do it. mozilla.org would be crazy to keep this from happening.
I suggest a compromise plan: allow the artwork and the name for any version of Firefox, but add an official "seal" logo to the about: dialog, and add "official build" to the name in several places.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I agree! I mean, no open source projects have ever looked very similar to Windows or MacOS... They've all treaded their own paths, much like jTunes or WindowMaker!
Evolution looks so much like Outlook, there should be royalties involved.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
The only thing Mozilla has is its brand. If it doesn't protect the brand, it can't control the quality of the product. It doesn't want others claiming to represent Mozilla through the use of its brand, nor does it want consumers to go to others when there are problems with Mozilla. I believe trademarks are the most important aspect of an open source project. A lot of open source projects have great programmers, great quality, but if they don't have a strong brand, they will never get the following needed to keep the project going, let alone make it big (like Mozilla or Ximian). You have to known... and to be known in any business, you need a strong brand and some decent marketing.
Trademark law may be lumped in with intellectual property, but it less about monopolizing an idea (patents) or controlling access to creative works (copyright) and more about eliminating consumer confusion.
If somebody wants to take Mozilla code and make their own browser or mail client, they can do that... but they can't call it Mozilla.
I wonder how many slashdot readers would have a problem with Mozilla enforcing its trademark rights if it was Microsoft who was selling Mozilla merchandise or a Microsoft Mozilla web browser?
Even ignoring the fact that AOL does not own Mozilla;
1. We want large corporations to be involved in Open Source.
They use their resources to grow the project, then return the
code to the community.
2. Open Source is about ensuring quality, adherence to standards,
and defence against hoarders (monopolies).
3. Open Source is _not_ about impoverishing coders and their companies.
You may not get rich from selling packaged versions of your project,
t-shirts, mugs, and books. You might be able to support yourself
and your shop, though. Successfuly defending a trademarked logo
might be the difference between life and death for a project.
-- "It was as if the paint factories had decided to deal direct with the art galleries." - Thursday Next
The point of free software is to provide a common base from which all people can profit.
Uh, the point is they (Mozilla) wanted to use a license which allowed users to have access to the source code. Anything above and beyond that is reading into the motives of the developers (in this case, originally the Netscape company) and supposing all open source developers have some sort of unified altruistic mission. There is no single open source movement. Open Source describes a licensing scheme and, perhaps, to a degree a programming methodology (though that's a stretch). Thus each organization or company which releases software under an open source license can do so for many reasons, but that doesn't necessarily mean they do it to "provide a common base" or that "all people can profit."
Some organizations and individuals have made Open Source into a sort of social-political movement. The foremost of these is the FSF. But not everyone agrees with them, nor needs to.
Read the GNU Manifesto... the goal is to have software available for free.
Mozilla does not use the GPL. It uses the MPL which is very different. Additionally, Mozilla is not part of the FSF, is not "free software" in this sense, and can have completely different goals from the rest of the so-called open source movement.
The first mistake most people make when evalutating open source software or the individuals and organizations which produce such software is to assume there exists a united effort with a single goal. Such a case is just about as likely as all humanity having a common purpose and single goal.
More on this subject at my blog
Who said Freedom was Fair?
It's idotic reasons like this that c an cause a Open Source implosion. What are we, the users, supposed to think? I think Mozilla seems to forget that to get users, they need to get the browser in front of eyes. Linux distros using Mozilla Firefox as the default browser can expose lots of users to the browser. Same goes for people making t-shirts. People can ask...what is that symbol for and the wearer can say te best damn drowser in the world! That is FREE publicity. Also, last I checked, Mozilla was considered open source. Anyone can download it. It's not like the Mozilla project is there to MAKE money unlike Microsoft and IE.
Gorkman
When the name was changed from Firebird to Firefox there was a lot of prattle from the Mozilla people about how they had carefully researched the name and chosen it to have no trademark issues. I took this to mean that the new name would be unencumbered and one could use it without infringing any trademarks.
But it looks like they had something else in mind. In fact, they wanted to create their own legal obstacles to using the name. I wish they had made this clear from the start.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
If you're worried that derivitave works will reflect poorly on your work, Free Software might not be for you.
How so? See the Apache license, for example - it says you can't endorse any derivative works with their trademarks. Other versions of the BSD licenses say the same. There are a large body of free software hackers who believe they shouldn't have to put their name or their trademarked brand names on (potentially) rubbish derivatives.
Gerv
The use of 'Mozilla' in this context was never a protocol issue. I've never seen any protocol specify that HTTP user agents must contain the string 'Mozilla'.
Internet Explorer was trying to trick dynamic web pages into thinking it was Netscape.
Of course, the primary reason why an attempt to sue MS would have failed is that trademark protection doesn't extend to anything that is hidden from the user -- the only offences under trademark law are related to attempting to pass your product off as somebody elses, or otherwise confusing customers so that you can trade on somebody else's reputation. Thats why 'trade' is in the name. Because MS weren't openly calling IE 'mozilla', no issue arises.
IANAL, etc.