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."

Comments

Everybody profits with open source

[Jack Zombie]

Users of Mozilla Firefox 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.

You're either with us or against us, right, comrade?

Re:Why?

[s20451]

You have the right point but the wrong explanation. Gucci does not want to endorse the fake Chinese watch, in part because the fake Chinese watch is likely of poor quality and would reflect badly on them, hence reducing the value inherent in their name.

Similarly, if Mozilla-branded merchandise turned out to be crap (or, in the Debian controversy, if the Debian folks accidentally distributed broken software under the "Firefox" name), the good will associated with the Mozilla brand would be reduced.

To put this in starker terms, under the GPL there is nothing preventing Microsoft from distributing a broken version of Linux. However, they can't call it Linux, because the trademark is owned by Linus Torvalds. This is a good thing.

And to respond to somebody above who said something to the effect of, "if you think derivative works could reflect badly on you, then you're not right for free software": firstly, sticking an icon on a T-shirt is not really a derivative work of software; and secondly, you can't throw out a crap T-shirt and get a free replacement from the official source, because they're not free. Apples and oranges.