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Firefox Faces Trademark Issues
daria42 writes "The Debian development community is currently hotly debating whether the Mozilla Foundation's strict trademarks policy violates Debian's social contract. However, in a twist, it appears Mozilla has not received approval for the Firefox trademarks yet, and the Firefox name may already be taken in the UK and Germany. The foundation has not applied for the Thunderbird trademark anywhere yet."
So I'm interested in reading the actual discussions on the debian mailinglists - because I have this strange quirk where I actually find them interesting.
/. ? They're worse than useless.
So, google site:lists.debian.org firefox trademark - nothing since february, all of which has long since been resolved. So much for "recently criticised".
Could we please just stop linking to zdnet/cnet/... articles here on
Debian is not after market share, read the Debian Social Contract.It's about freedom.
But then again if you tired of Linux politics don't bother. But you will be sorry when this is the only alternative.
Debian wants to exert an interesting amount of control over what they package. That's fine. In my opinion, it's a bit control-freaky, but that's their thing, and they're welcome to it. They're allowed.
Mozilla gives away products. It also gives away the source for those products. It doesn't mind people making alterations to it's products. It just wants you to not call it the same thing.
That's not such a bad thing.
I wouldn't want to install Debian, only to find out that the version of "Firefox" is installed isn't the same as the version I could get from Mozilla.
Where's the problem here, honestly? Call it "Mozilla Firefox - Debian Community Edition" or "Debian Web Browser - Based on Mozilla Technology"
Or just distribute the original thing in it's original form.
Greedo shot first. Didn't we learn our lesson about messing with previous releases?
A few weeks ago, I installed the autoconf package on my Debian system, only to discover that there was no documentation included in the standard /usr/share/doc/autoconf/ location. After checking, I discovered that it'd be recently removed, because Debian considers the GNU Free Documentation Licence -- the main documentation licence promoted by the FSF -- as a non-free licence. (Debian has concerns about how it'd work in DRM environments. The Free Software Foundation doesn't agree.)
Luckily in that case, there's now an autoconf-doc package in the non-free section of Debian, and I installed that. What confuses me, though, is how Debian expects to cope in the future if it doesn't accept something as the GFDL, which is widely accepted as the Free Software Foundation's GPL-for-documentation, and used in a lot of places related to open source. All of the KDE help files, for instance, are distributed under the GFDL. Debian hasn't cut them yet, but does this mean that it won't be including them as soon as someone realises?
I really like Debian and I have no plans to stop using it unless it stops being possible to do what I want. I'm impressed by the project's dedication to being so specific about licences, but sometimes I wonder how much of that will eventually come back to haunt it.
i don't know if firefox the movie can be called famous. not even in russian. ;P
and trademarks tend to be limted to the specific industry. hence apple computer and apple music [think beatles].
sum.zero
If you ask people why they have used and still use IE, I'm sure that the vast majority of people will say that "it came with the operating system", not that it was better or worse. Add onto that their security problems, virus issues, spyware issues and so forth, it's no wonder that Firefox is as popular as it is.
So, regardless of how bad Netscape was, Microsoft, their tactics, and their lack of security are still the primary reasons why Firefox was deemed to be necessary and was therefore created. If IE wasn't forced on everyone, if IE wasn't integrated into every nook and cranny of Windows, and if IE didn't install spyware because I right-clicked on a picture, do you really think that Firefox would be here? (I'm beging facetious on the spyware due to a right-click, of course, but it's sadly not far from the truth.)
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Firefox > ?
Browser.
Why not? It's no worse than calling a word processor "Word".
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Get a clue! You sound like with the Debian Social Contract, Microsoft would be walking all over everything. But reality shows something else. Reality shows NON-DEBIAN distros emerging, growing and putting down deep roots, even at the same time that Microsoft is a monopoly. Mandrake, SuSE, Slackware, Gentoo, et al, do not operate under the Debian Social Contract. They include GFDL documentation. They include Firefox. Back when Debian said KDE was illegal, they included KDE. And did Microsoft destroy them for it? OF COURSE NOT!
Debian isn't about freedom, it's about anal pedantic legalism.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Debian is trademarked. You can take Debian, mess with the code and then distribute it, but you CAN NOT call it Debian.
Firefox is trademarked. You can take Firefox, mess with the code and then distribute it, but you CAN NOT call it Firefox.
If Debian doesn't like being on the receiving end of this, maybe they should change THEIR OWN trademark policy.
When I hear "firefox" or "phoenix," in no way would I automatically think of a web browser, or a software program at all.
Because "Outlook" certainly sounds like an email client and "Excel" just makes you automatically think of a spreadsheet... And infact, how do "Cheerios" tell you they're a breakfast cerial? Please...
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Restrictions, restrict freedom. Do you have a different dictionary than the rest of the world?
I respect that it is your right to shackle yourself with whatever rules/social contract etc... you want but that has nothing to do with promoting "freedom".
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
There was a simillar problem for mozilla thunderbird. When it first appeared in Debian Sid, it was called Mozilla Thunderbird. Now it is called Debian Thunderbird.
This name change was asked by the Mozilla Foundation because Mozilla Thunderbird is trademarked by the Mozilla Foundation and they don't seem to enjoy unofficial builds (i.e. builds that are not downloaded from mozilla.org or one of its mirrors)
So now I use Debian Thunderbird, and I suppose sooner or later I will use "Debian Firefox". So what ? I don't mind at all ..
I'm sorry but how do contract, rules and regulations promote freedom?
The contract and the rules are there to make sure that Debian is completely free forever. If there were no rules, and Debian maintainers could just stick anything in there, Debian would stop being what it is.
Right now, you know that you can grab a disk image of Debian, burn a stack of CDs, and give the CDs to your friends. You know this is legal, because the Debian guys are so careful about license issues.
Remember submarine patents, like MP3? MP3 was used for years in ways that infringed the patent, and people got away with it because the patent wasn't being enforced. Now that MP3 has market share, the patents are being enforced, but Debian wasn't affected because Debian didn't put MP3 in. (At least, not in the "main" section. MP3 software could end up in "nonfree".)
Debian's rules are basically a promise to me, to you, and to everyone that Debian will always be free. So tell me how the rules have "nothing to do with promoting 'freedom'."
They seem to spend more of their time complaining than anything else.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Good summary. Now, it isn't that we don't understand MoFo's side of this. Obviously they want to maintain some level of control over what kinds of products their trademark is attached to. Otherwise $DISTRO will release a version with a bug that they added, and the headlines will just say "Horrific Flaw in Firefox Kills Users on Load!"
I think the only decent, long-term solution is to name apps at the outset in a way that allows them to be prominently associated with a distributer that might have changecd it. Firefox is actually named very well for this purpose, it just hasn't been used that way to date. The official name is Mozilla Firefox, and the distro name could be Debian Firefox, RedHat Firefox, etc.
If such a naming convention were used across the free software world, then security flaws wouldn't be misreported nearly as easily.