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Firefox To Be Renamed In Debian
Viraptor writes, "Debian is ready to change the name of Firefox in its distributions, beginning with Etch. They say it can be done within a week. The reasons stem from Mozilla's recent insistence on trademark fidelity and its preferences regarding Firefox patches. Debian doesn't want to accept the original trademarked fox & globe logo; they don't see it as really 'free' to use. On the other hand, Mozilla doesn't want Firefox distributed under that name if it lacks the logo. Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing. But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first. We will surely see more clashes between copyright claims and 'really free' distros such as Debian. Ubuntu is also asking similar questions." No word yet what the new name will be or what the logo will look like.
Word.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Will Debian stop using the Linux trademark as well?
I'm looking forward to see the new Debian Coolwolf on my sexy desktop. :-)
Irefox.
Why does Mozilla have to do this, Debian too, i always thougth FF was under GPL or close to it, i hope Mozilla isnt going Microsoft here, and breaks out the lawyers, why does mozllia care when it come to free software like debian, and also with debian, they have alway had a stick up there ass, there is a thing called Non-free and debain can just goto hell, i know its a great distro but my god, i think we need to worry about microsoft and not free distros, mozilla did have good intentions when firefox was still Beta, lets just hope mozilla doesn't start selling firefox
Wulfram 2 -- Free Online 3D game, Runs on a PII!
Firesomething is an extension that keeps changing the name you see. It's for people who aren't willing to wait for the regular changes like m/b->Phoenix->Firebird->Mozilla Firebird->Firefox->whatever Debian calls it.
This is no big deal. My Mandriva install has a blue earth for a FF logo. Changing the branding in Debian will be easy and the only losers will be the Mozilla corporate moguls. Even the FF project won't lose anything.
Oh well, what the hell...
epiphany is default browser in gnome, debian and ubuntu anyway.
Maybe it'll be a blue world or circle, with 'Internet' in the name somewhere, and perhaps, as its used to explore the wonders of the internet, add the word 'Explorer' to it perhaps.
:)
I can't see that catching on though, they'll call it WaterVole or something equally stupid
Didn't Prince try this in the 90's?
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
nuff said
As someone outside of both projects looking in, both have seemed way too concerned over legal minutia like this. I suppose "the system" forces the problem but I still get a dirty feeling when using firefox. I wish the code got the same scrutiny as these legal issues do.
I'm sure that most of you would agree, there's nothing worse than being forced to watch two nerds argue. They can yell at each other about the most trivial of details, and neither one will budge. It's kind of like elk.
Watching open source development is like watching 50,000 nerds argue.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Here is a link to the thread on debian's bugzilla:3 54622
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=
The trademark problems discussed make the issue pretty clear.
Oh thank god. I was sooo worried I would actually be able to tell a new linux user what program they used to browse the internet! Now I can just tell them to RTFM and the debian "social contract"!
Someone once said that academic politics is so fierce precisely because the stakes are so low. Maybe that applies in this case as well...
This is only the case if the Firefox trademark will be used. Now that Debian is changing the name, they don't need to have their patches vetted.
There's been complaints for years and years at Mozilla over the dubious quality of some of the Debian patches, not to mention the very large amount of them (Debian users have a hard time getting support in the Mozilla IRC channels because there's a thousand and one new weird issues that are unique to Debian), and that's directly helped shape the policy that the trademarks can only be used with unaltered products, or with the alterations directly vetted. This is not unreasonable. The actual code is still completely free and available for everyone to do with as they please - it's purely the Firefox branding (and its meaning as a high-quality product) that's being protected here.
Read the Mozilla Trademark Policy.
Speaking as a Ubuntu user and a Firefox user... everyone needs to grow the fuck up. It's their project and just like Linus wants to check all things that go into the kernel, they have the same right. I don't see Debian bitching about Linus and his need to trademark Linux. So why the hypocrisy?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Would the hat be full of suggestions to replace it to the program_title
.Profiles? Nope, that would be quite a security risk if a malicious advertisement from a corporation made its way to place its crud into such an easy target. Unless...a suid for a separate group controlled that profile. That would not be favourable to hold someone "alien" files in a directory that a particular account can't overwrite or delete directly, but that's the chore of the Group maintenance that many unexperienced users just-might learn to utilize.
"fairuse" (because websites are fairuse) and "tresspass" (because a locally-cached website is potential copyright infringment)?
I only hope the command-line was more forthcoming to default preferences of a particular account. Just typing "internet" or "internet browser" at a smart console (to replace a shell or a window-manager idle screen), should yield a preference for program use. Perhaps that preference could be to the control of symlinks having higher standing in ${PATH} and located in ${HOME}/Desktop/.Defaults or
God-bless the group!
without prejudice
But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first.
Oh no, we don't want that. I mean, we just cannot have that. I mean, if Debian releases get any slower than they are now, they'd be going backwards in time.
The reasons stem from Mozilla's recent insistence on trademark fidelity and its preferences regarding Firefox patches. Debian doesn't want to accept the original trademarked fox & globe logo; they don't see it as really 'free' to use. On the other hand, Mozilla doesn't want Firefox distributed under that name if it lacks the logo.
;)), and so long as the distro's patch set doesn't change between security releases, no additional review is required (as I understand it) for the security updates, so this really shouldn't be a problem there.
The problem with allowing the name and logo to be separated is that it damages the brand identity - people might wonder whether this "Firefox" with one logo is really the same as a "Firefox" with a different logo, or people might think the unofficial logo is the official one (which would clearly harm the brand - consider Firefox t-shirts and the logo).
Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing. But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first.
Both sides have a point. Often, problems that users encounter with "Firefox" in distributions turn out to be a result of the questionable downstream modifications the distro maintainers added. Do you really think Mozilla would be worried and spending their time on these kinds of issues if there wasn't a good chance that people would associate Mozilla Firefox with low quality due to distro modifications? If there was no risk of damaging the brand, it would certainly be better for everyone to use the same logo and name.
From the distro's point of view, of course it's annoying to have to get approval on all patch sets. However, there is generally a long time between releases anyway (especially Debian's releases
We will surely see more clashes between copyright claims and 'really free' distros such as Debian. Ubuntu is also asking similar questions.
One irony of the situation is that Debian itself has the same problem with their branding: if you modify the distribution, you can't call it Debian any more. It's an unfortunate issue that if you want to have a useful (i.e. recognizable and trusted) brand, you can't allow people to ship their own derivatives of your product while using your branding.
Allowing users of your product complete freedom is a nice ideal, but it's not possible to do under the current laws unless you place no value on branding.
My server
Thank you for spreading firefox, we can manage it from here on. Now let's not hope Qt will pull something because then KDE will also suffer.
Serge wants to do debian?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
NSFW - Thanks for the warning asshole.
You can read the discussion in the bug report.
I'm not a Debian user & do use many Mozilla products, but I think MozCo could have handled this better.
The logo is under a non-permissive copyright, which Debian objects to & which Mozilla has always defended from others using in "non-official" builds (including in Gentoo and the "optimized" builds for Windows and Mac by fans in the forums). These builds used a generic logo (the blue globe of the official logo, but without the orange firefox) or made their own logo.
Debian was granted permission to use the trademarked name and not the logo, but this was later rescinded.
While MozCo is perfectly within their rights to do this, they could have been a better player--no one (not even Debian) objects to the trademarked name or logo. But The COPYRIGHT on the logo runs contrary to the DFSG. Furthermore, MozCo can police their trademarks as they wish--I'm aware of no law which would require them to require the use of the image whenever the name is also used. So why did they change their minds as to what is permissable?
Furthermore, Debian has been backporting security fixes to older releases. MozCo encouraged them to use only the newer version (as Red Hat and Novell apparently do now) & said that this backporting would not be workable with the new trademark policy.
No problems with trademarks, and a more modern browser too.
But we will all survive it.
Oh, yes, I remember, they couldn't work together to provide a unified user experience, each wanted to be distinct and make stuff different just for the sake of being different.
There seems to be a general forgetting of who the real enemy is.
Seems like Ubuntu are renaming FF "Bon Echo" in the current Beta of the upcoming 6.10 Edgy Eft release...
After all, if there's an enemy to the FOSS movement, it's *definitely* the Mozilla Foundation...
SeaMonkey > Opera > Camino > Safari > Firefox > W3M > Lynx > Mosaic > NS4.7 > IE
Does that look about right?
nuff said...too
Mozilla is becoming evil. Pretty soon they will turn into IE.. What is Mozilla doing??
Linux, because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
Why is this only happening with Firefox? Why not Thunderbird or the other Mozilla products which are in Debian's package repository? Why not the "Mozilla" name, itself?
We will surely see more clashes between copyright claims and 'really free' distros such as Debian.
Except that this seems to be a clash over potential trademark claims. I realize that not all slashdot editors are lawyers, but haven't yall learned by now to distinguish between different forms of IP?
Internet Foxplorer
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I can't see where renaming Firefox can be bad since it is the stupidest name for a web browser you can imagine. How about a name that in some way is at least vaguely associated with what the program does? My god what a concept. A name that would give reasonably intelligent people who have never heard of the program the ability to guess that they should click on that to browse the web!
In the OpenBSD install I am using to type this, the title bar says "Firefox Community Edition" and the icon does not contain the familiar fox, only a globe.
It's a dumb decision on the part of Mozilla, if you ask me. But it hasn't been earth-shattering. I still have a fully functioning web browser and it is still called firefox, albeit "community edition", which seems to be a phrase mandated by mozilla.org.
I saw people talking about this on the Ubuntu Forums yesterday.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
Well, "Debian people", as you put it are not out to sell a product. They are perfectly happy to have you use another variant of linux if you don't find theirs suitable for your needs. Debian has values that may be a little more "strict" than other distributions, but this is their right. Freedom, recall, does not guarantee sameness. Nor should it. Stand your ground Debian. But try to clean up the FF patches, please. D
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
And I guess Foxy is in the eye of the beholder : http://firefoxy.vegard2.no/firefoxy_045_cosplay_76 8x1024.html
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Is this possible?
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Corporate moguls? Why do 'corporations' always become devils? The Mozilla Corporation is more of a technical entity, with all "profits" going into development of Firefox. It can do things that Mozilla Foundation, as a non-profit, can't do. That doesn't suddenly mean Firefox has come over 'corporate' control. Save your insults for executives with a $100 million salary.
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
Thank you for helping to clear that up. I followed a link in another post where the essence of the argument over the issue was supposedly located, and it ended up being page after unreadable page of typical Debian infighting.
Debian's problem has always been that its handlers place users and the usability of their distribution far below very petty internal arguments intended to frame the distro as some sort of legal pioneer (Debian Linux vs. Debian GNU/Linux "controversy" anyone?). It's a huge turnoff to the non-zealots among us, and certainly makes for bad PR.
It probably will happen with Thunderbird somewhere down the road. As you can read in the bug report that was linked to from another comment, there's been a hiatus of activity at the Mozilla Foundation of working on this, but now they're going down the list again. Thunderbird is pretty much the forgotten child of the Mozilla Corporation though (there's all of two developers working on it, I think), so that simply doesn't have any priority yet...
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Does anyone care, you ask? Yes. The Mozilla people. They are the ones who object. They are the ones that explicitly forbid Debian to call their modified Firefox by the Firefox name with its logo.
And this is clearly laid out in their licenses and trademark terms. So, all of a sudden, obeying the law makes you a zealot extremist? Ignoring the law is the reasonable thing to do? Debian is doing this because it has to.
Why not fireballmer (Couldn't resist)
It is only now, that Mozilla has changed the way they police and grand permission for their trademark, that the trademark has become an issue. Other distros have been able to get trademark permission. There is no way for Debian to get this same permission while that image remains under a non-permissive copyright & while it remains a term for trademark use.This is really ridiculous--brandnames and logos are separated ALL the time.No other F/OSS software package seems to have an insurmountable problem with this. They don't even have major problems with Gentoo & the strange CFLAGS or compiler arguments that some users of that distro use. Bugs are typically reported to the distro. If it is an upstream probelm, they'll hear about it.It is more than "annoying." It is dangerous. Distros should NOT have to wait for approval for patching security bugs. This isn't just theoretical--Debian does backport fixes to versions of Firefox that Mozilla stopped maintaining. While there is some time between releases, the package repositories get updated all the time.
The Firefox logo/trademark is important. Firefox has 10%+ of browser share now. That wasn't very easy to get. More and more non-techies are now familiar with Mozilla and/or Firefox and the logo. My father-in-law and wife are not technical, however both prefer Firefox now. One calls it Mozilla the other calls is "the fox", however both know what icon to click if I place it on their desktop.
The people of Debian are being stupid. The Firefox logo is an important logo and should be kept. Debian protects their trademark(s), why shouldn't Mozilla? I use Ubuntu over Debian, I just hope Ubuntu doesn't follow this stupid example of Debian. Mark S. seems to have his head on straight and since he is a business man I would think he understands the importance of a trademark.
It is not like Mozilla is trying to lock up the code and make everything proprietary. They just put a lot of effort into getting their name _and_ logo known and want to keep it that way.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
Seeing how awfully slow firefox was on FC5, seeing how awfully late the updates came for it... I switched to Swiftfox, which is an optimized build of firefox... it also has a better logo :p
Lest a slashdotter click a link, the people at Debian find the license terms of the Mozilla icon set to contravene their own free software guidelines (the DFSG), so don't use their icons but still brand the product as Firefox. MoFo / MoCom want the Firefox name and logo to go together, so Debian are considering not using a different icon and name.
The new Debian name for Firefox should be PissyFit - it seems approporate.
Need to surf the internet on Debian then just use the "M.F. Browser". /. may read that as "Mozilla Foundation Browser" but most of the adult English speaking world will see something else :-)
This really is not very big news at all, it does remind us that different people have different ideals but it also shows us how they can all work together (nobody suggests Debian should remove the code, just how best both parties can satisfy there needs within the rules). It's not very different to HedRat littering their packages and distros with their unredistributable trademarks, if debian ships a package whose upstream is encumbered they have to strip those problems. Any Debian derived distribution could always decide to "package" upstreams Firefox(tm) anyway, as could a third party. It's reasonable for an author to say "this name is mine and if you want to use my name with it your going to have to ..." it's just great when they also say "this is Free Software" so you can choose to ignore using the name but use the product as you wish regardless. Will debian not having a "firefox" package make any real difference? Not at all a user who needs to will just fire up their program/package install/searching tool of choice (from debtags to packages.debian.org via apt-cache and klik) and find it anyway.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I am writing this off of a laptop with Ubuntu on it. I am also running three other desktops, two with Debian and one with Ubuntu. All of them have the Mozilla version of Firefox, and not the Debian version.
As much as I like Debian, I hate the Debian Firefox package. It gets updated infrequently compared to the Mozilla updates, etc.
You don't have to use the firefox brand since it will be just called Deer Park if you don't put in the --name-brand or whatever that configure option is called.
Well, the Debian people are "rabid zealots", in a way - a good way. They care about freedom and they don't back down. If you, or anyone else, doesn't like that, you are free to use another distro. Debian's attitude towards freedom is one of the reasons I use Debian.
Also, this kind of thing is nothing new in Debian. For example, they had huge arguments over whether the Gnu Free Documentation License was free enough (They decided it wasn't, with the exception of GFDL documents that have no invariant sections).
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
How is the the fault of Debian? The original bug report on this was filed by a Mozilla representative, essentially saying that if Debian didn't abandon it's principles, start using the real logo, and start submitting every patch for approval (including security fixes for old versions), that the Mozilla Corporation would formally revoke Debian's permission to use the Firefox name. From the tone of the bug report, it seems that Mozilla is also quite willing to take legal action against Debian over the problem.
There have been theoretical legal issues that have been brought up in the past within Debian (involving linking OpenSSL, for example), that have resulted in some developers looking rather like zealots. This is not the same.
If you had actually taken the time to read the page you linked, you'd notice that Debian has TWO logos to explicitly prevent situations like the one that Mozilla is creating.
From the page that YOU linked:
So what, exactly, is your problem with Debian's logo situation?
"But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first."
We certainly don't need anything that will further slow releases...
If you're using KDE...
I prefer FreeFox. Still very recognisable, while at the same time rubbing it in that Firefox is not truly free.
Agreed, products should always have names indicating their purpose. We need to lobby Congress to pass a law. For example, what the hell is a Buick Regal? Or iPod? Are there peas in an iPod? NO! Then why call it that. Look at DreamWeaver. What the hell does that have to do with the web? What's a DreamWeaver? Sounds like some euphemism for LSD or some shaman witchery. Evolution is an email client? WTF? What's this idiotic language called Ruby? What the hell does that have to do with programming? Or Perl? Or Python? Or C?
Here are my suggestions...
Firefox should be "HTTP/FTP/Gopher/Archie/XML Renderer"
DreamWeaver should be "Software for Designing HTTP/XML Format Documents for Internet Usage"
C should be "Low to Medium Level Computing Language"
Gentoo should be "Linux Distribution for People Who Prefer to Churn Their Own Butter" (I kid, I kid)
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Heh. Good one :-)
For you visual learners out there:
Exhibit A.
Exhibit B.
Has anyone bothered to ask why Mozilla has _corporate moguls_? Wasn't this an organization that was fairly light weight a few years ago? This is what happens when you hire too many assholes and managers...
I think people are REALLY being thrown off by the "name" and "icon" part of it. It's really obscuring the issue, and I think most readers would agree if it was reframed. These days, graphics and the name of the program are a very large part of the program. Imagine if you tried to use photoshop, only its name was changed to Photo Editor and all of the icons were changed to something else. It would be undesirable. So, rather than thinking of the name and icons as such, think of them as units of source code. Now, imagine an "open source" program that had a couple of source code units marked as "special". The license said you can make all the changes to the program you wanted and distribute these new versions. But they added in a clause that said if you didn't allow them to approve your changes, you couldn't use those special source code units and had to completely replace them with your own. Most of us would think that's not very "open". Imagine if gcc said if they didn't approve of your changes, you can't use main.c or the unit that parses the command-line options. So you had to make your own and hopefully get the command-line options identical (but maybe not). Wouldn't this be silly and a bit over-controlling of them? If RMS did something like that, I'm sure there would be at least one or two comments about it. So I can see the Debian teams POV on this one.
why can't they just put the package into the non-free repository and be done with it?
Rename it "Foxxy Webb" and use a bigbreasted-fox as the mascot.
This about patch submission and nothing else.. stop the we cannot because of trademark bullshit.. Linux has a trademark and so does Sun Java in Debian..
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
Mozilla still has a draft policy allowing people to name modified versions of "Mozilla Firefox" as "Firefox Community Edition." What happened to this? Many distributors have been following this. Why can't Debian use the name "Firefox Community Edition, Debian" as the new name fro their browser? Or will Mozilla be going after all of the other distributors they had previously granter permission to as well?
Note also that the "community editions" also forbade use of the official logo!
I want to call it "Intarweb Exploder".
Do the distros change the referrer info that is sent along with Google (and other) searches performed from the browser search bar? Some speculate that Mozilla Co. makes some pretty good cash this way--are there any distros that change this and get a piece of the action?
The excessive publicity and "rabidness" of these arguments harms the linux community as a whole. So much infighting and debate over what many people consider triviality. This kind of thing just leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many people, especially those on the outside.
Huh. We used Debian on the crappy WYSE clients they give us as first years in grad school and I always wondered why the icon was different and IMHO ugly. The new icon did not cause any confusion at all. While I used Debian on my laptop it was still Firebird and I don't think they were using different icons then.
u nity-edition-policy.html
c on Also trivial.
o urces/firefox-icon-restorer.xpi
Theres no need to overreact and rename the damn thing FartingFox or some such. Debian can name it some like Firefox for Debian and be done with it.
If you make a damn community edition and then Mozilla tells you NOT to use the bloody logo. So renaming it really does solve this problem. http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/comm
However, most of us will agree that this is a stupid problem to begin with.
Changing a desktop icon is trivial. Here is a happy Mozilla page giving you instruction on how to change the titlebar icon and a number of other things. http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips#app_i
So, Mozilla Foundation exactly why can't Debian change your damn icons (even if I couldn't care about their reasons for doing it) when you even tell us all how to do it. Are you going to start going after users because they choose to change your icon.
Most Debian users will know how to change the damn icons back but a quick google search reveals
http://downloads.mozdev.org/iconpacks/toolsandres
Frankly I liked the old Ships Wheel from Navigator the best.
My personal opinion is that both parties involved should shut up and code and provide people with a great browser and a robust distro, and more people will use both without nearly as much posturing.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
"But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first."
Yes, we certainly wouldn't want Debian Stable's release frequency to slow down any further than it already is.
#DeleteChrome
Or (regarding the Debian Official Use Logo):
It would seem that Debian recognizes that the use of trademarks is important to protecting the reputation of a project, and may even require approval in some cases. So why should they expect FireFox to be any different?
/K
I allmost felt like ranting about Debian and their suposedly stupid policy, but then it came to mind:
1) Their probably right. The trademark is probably less free than debian requires.
2) Nobody chooses Debian over good looks or automatic visual consistency anyway. And those who do to customize their optical appearance of the Desktop use their own special themes anyway.
3) There's a reason why Ubuntu is so successfull and this is a staple case for that. It can only be better if both Debian and it's most successfull derivate distinguish from each other by emphasising "One Desktop only" or "We are super free and nothing else" policies.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Your disconnect with reality has now reached 100%.
Congratulations!
However, due to this this event, please STFU.
.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
~$ dumptruck
This isn't a dumptruck, try "tubes".
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
From TFA :
I believe that everything has been said here ! As long as people with such a childish attitude will play a role in the free software world, Linux will have a hard time getting accepted by end users ! It's amazing how politics can anihilate technical merits ! What's important to these morons is not to provide a good products to their users, it's just to have their names etched (no pun intended) somewhere, associated to "the man with big balls who didn't bend in front of Firefox". Thanks to these "smart" people, there will be yet another browser.
What I find sad is that I recommended debian it to skilled friends who did not want to install bloated distros, and as they followed my advice, they now have notebooks which approximately work, because of all the things debian don't consider to be Free and simply removes (please note the touch of ideology behind the uppercase 'F' in 'Free'). It is so much annoying to them that they often consider switching away from this distro. Sometimes, I wonder if we'll have to wait for "Debian is dying" posts on Slashdot for this stupidity to end... Oh, it seems to be getting closer : http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7543606709.html
Willy
they want to change the name and icon?
Debian is losing the spirit of their rules here.
Firefox is really free.
They just want their fox and globe on their really free software.
Debian is just non-conformist.
now that firefox is popular, they don't like it any more.
that's what this is about.
They're using their grammar skills there.
After all, it isn't really free software if it is encumbered by trademarks. Will the next GPL revision address this?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Yes. He changed his name to TAFKAP (the artist formerly known as Prince). Of course, it was really some ahnk like symbol that no one could assign a word too...
This is already true of Thunderbird. In stable, the package is still called 'mozilla-thunderbird' but the program calls itself "Debian Thunderbird." In testing and unstable, even the package name 'mozilla-thunderbird' has been replaced ('mozilla-thunderbird' is an empty package that depends on 'thunderbird'.)
Going with IceWeasel?
http://dugnet.com/klown/pics/iceweasel1.png
Once you've worked out all the political wrangling over the "Firefox" trademark, et all, could you please get decent SATA support in Stable? Because, I'm having trouble finding decent servers that ship with parallel IDE support these days, and where I work we happen to have _need_ for that. Debian is our preferred server distribution, but seeing as how I'm the dude who decided these things - that can change. And, frankly, without SATA support in Stable, it may _have_ to change.
I think Debian made a terrible mistake when they decided that more than source code had to be free. Sure, it's nice to have great principles like that, but it's better to have a usable distribution.
I've been a Debian supporter for a long time, but when Firefox is no longer called Firefox I will no longer be a supporter. With the more practical Ubuntu around, it's not a hard decision to make.
Mmmmm, stakes.....
So why not "Debian Firefox?" A Moz representative said that the FIREFOX name (as opposed to the "Mozilla Firefox" name) couldn't be used.
I think the big problem here is that Mozilla keeps changing what they consider acceptable uses of their trademark & don't have a coherent policy. No one knows what the heck to do.
A trademark MUST stand for something other than "Well, we started with this but hacked the hell out of it so it's something completely different now." Mozilla is NOT being unreasonable. The other projects which let people misuse their trademarks are risking the loss of enforcibility of their trademark.
Yes, this is an issue that the open source world has not thought very deeply about yet.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
We don't, particularly — the trademark isn't the problem. What we care about is that it also has a copyright license that does not allow any derivative works. So, you can't start with a Firefox logo image, pull up your favorite image editor and hack it into something new and interesting — say, for example, an icon set for a desktop theme.
Debian takes the right to modify software very seriously. And yes, that includes images shipped with software.
It is possible to trademark an image yet still allow derivative works to be created from it. Mozilla Corp, unfortunately, chose not to do this.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
How about flaming coyote instead of firefox?
Deb Browser
Debain to remove firefox
Sun Sep 24, '06 09:57 PM
Rejected
FireFox is a brand, Mozilla is right that if they don't ship what they have designated it's not "FireFox" anymore -- even if the two largely share the same codebase. But if Debian calls it "Web Browser, based on FireFox (TM)" with a generic logo it should make everyone happy.
(a) Identifies the package by function for users
(b) Does not suggest that it _is_ Firefox and respects the integrity of the trademark
(c) Users can figure out both that it's like firefox, but not exactly.
(d) Fits with how Debian policy and advocates wants its own trademark used (want to be recognized but not misappropriated).
501 Not Implemented
There needs to be a GPL licensed browser that is primarily developed for open source operating systems, with nothing official going elsewhere.
FF is not that browser,and it is primarily a windows application, and as such is not really doing the open source community all that much good in the long run, despite the claims it was going to act as some sort of gateway drug. It hasn't, there are no stats to even come close to proving it has. It's been a temporary crutch to keep people functional on windows primarily, it hasn't resulted in any significant change to open source operating systems, and has given MS time to revamp IE. And once the new IE is out, with tabbed browsing and etc, along with vista coming pre installed on new machines starting next year and a tighter security model and real seperation of users and admin, you will be seeing a drop in global useage of FF from windows users, because there won't be any point to it, especially if you want to keep using new media and stuff like the latest Flash and windows media and etc that you'll be able to do quite easily inside IE with no hoop humping or compromises. FF has passed peak in adoption, what you see is what you have gotten, roughly around ten percent, and most of those people, the vast huge bulk, are still on windows. FF has been a great success for microsoft. It's like getting a huge loan they never have to pay back,it gave them an additional three years or so developer lead time to correct their mistakes and see what people want and what they don't, etc. In other words, you won't be getting a reach around from MS for all that work that went into FF.
So, debian doesn't need to rebrand, that's just silly and shows lack of forethought, they need to start a new GPL browser project and push it hard and try to get open source developers back to working only with AND on open source.
Debian bug report for this issue
Tell them what you think by mailing 354622@bugs.debian.org
Isn't that exactly what's happening here? Debian's acknowledging that the Firefox trademark is protected, and therefore preparing to change the name in Debian. I'm sure there are people involved in Debian who'd like to keep the Firefox name, but unless it can be done within the terms of Debian's main goals, it's not going to happen.
That said, why should Debian be bending over backwards and sacrificing how it does things so a single package (out of thousands) can keep up its perceived market-share, as you seem to imply in your post? People such as yourself might care about Firefox's market-share, but this has nothing to do wiht Debian. Besides, who cares if Debian people are being stupid? It's their right to govern their distribution as they see fit, and if this bothers people outside, such as Firefox users who don't want to see their perceived market share diminish, then it's their problem more than Debian's.
I know it's not just you, but your post is an example of what seems to be a huge misunderstanding everywhere that the open source "community" is some kind of big organisation with common goals. It's not -- it's a vast collection of people who share and use each other's source code through the application of open source licenses. What people use it for and who uses it is up to the people involved. Personally I like this, and I prefer it hugely over proprietary vendors arguing with and paying millions of dollars to each other to decide who can see what, what works where, and how broken something will be when it's released. Trying to imply that there's a massive open source organisation, though, and that everyone has the unified goal of having OSS take over servers and desktops and whatever else it takes to get noticed, is ridiculous.
It's Firefox that's clamping on the restrictions here, and rightly so for their own interests since Firefox wants to associate its name with a level of quality that it has control over. Fair enough, but if the Debian developers decide that Firefox's interests are incompatible with their main distribution goals, they're completely within their rights to do this. Any "loss in perceived market-share" is entirely because the Firefox team hasn't done everything necessary to cater to what its users require.
In fact, the use of trademark law to encumber GPL software and make it non-redistributable is something I've been predicting for a while; I recently wrote about it and sent a note to RMS suggesting that protective measures be considered for GPL v3.
RMS replied that he doesn't have a problem with what the Mozilla folks have done, but that there could clearly be a problem down the line when the loophole gets widened.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
This is what diveristy is about. Part of what makes Linux distros so interesting is their ability to adapt to the needs/will/wishes of their targeted user-base. If the Debian development crew wants to be purists and have issues with the trademark, more power to them. As long as this doesn't boil over into the distro *I* choose to use and they don't get in the way of the Firefox teams work.
Personally of course, I'd call this stupid. But them ideologically Debian's never been my 'fit'. But that doesn't mean I can't see their POV or respect it (from my comfortable distance).
Hopefully we can all keep in mind that there are A) other POV's out there and no reason to descide because they don't work for you they don't 'belong' B) don't insist in shoving our own POV's down other peoples throats (something we in the Linux community *have* been guilty of...some of us continue to be).
Quack, quack.
Obsessing about this kind of trivia makes it very hard to finsih projects. 3 years between point releases? No problem.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Why opensource software isn't taking the world by storm? This may not be the most aggregious case of this sort of thing I've seen in OS history, but FFS this is just like politics in the real world, but worse. It's all about personal preferences since money isn't really involved like business.
No sig for you!!
This totally insignificant and absolutely trivial renaming issue has produced so much silly controversy and ignorant bickering on slashdot and other geek forums that maybe Debian and Ubuntu should rename their versions of Firefox to Flamefox.
"Debian takes the right to modify software very seriously. And yes, that includes images shipped with software.
This is called "cutting off your nose to spite your face".
...my biggest question was "What the hell is up with the stupid logo they use for Firefox?" I've been an Ubuntu user pretty much from the get-go, and I've always wondered what the deal was with their logos. Honestly, I can't see myself using anything other than whatever I wind up getting from Synaptic / apt-get, but really, I think they should just acquiesce and move along.
The grand parent may be trolling or mixing the idea of freedom of the program source code with trademarks. The Mozilla Foundation simply don't want you to patch their product and still distribute it under the same name and using the same artwork and logos. That looks OK to me. The source code is completely free as in free speech, and Debian is free to apply their own patches and distribute the resulting program under a different name and using different logos. As some people already said, Debian themselves follow a similar policy regarding their name and logos.
There is one for everyone. Debians developers don't have to be developing for *you*. Just like you have (a whole lot of) choices as to which distro suits you best.
Don't like the hard-line approach but want to get gritty: try Gentoo. Don't like their politics; Linux From Scratch. Want something immediate and usable? Redhat. Suse. Mandrake (I just can say Mandriva with a straight face). Linspire (from the founder of mp3.com!). Or even Ubuntu, although I don't know how close they are to the core Debian crew and their politics, I suspect they are slightly more pragmatic.
The point being while its fun to watch the Linux dramas unfold the truth is there is an operating system out there for everyone. FreeDOS. BeOS. Windows. Mac. Minix, Linux, *nix.
Quack, quack.
how about let's not put everything into the debian distro and not make a big deal out it
For some reason Debian doesn't think this is a good plicy. Ok, if that is so, then why does Debian itself state that
"Debian" and the Debian Logo are trademarks of Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
I doubt Debian would like it if I came along, changed a bunch of apt source code, and re-relased it using their name and logo.
This anal position is just part of the reason I don't use Debian. I'm all for free an open source software. It's my prefered source of software, but I'm not extremely anal about it ala Debian.
It's great that they're all about open source and "freeness," but at this point Debian is more of a political statement than a user-focused distribution. Not exactly something I want to use.
actually, worse, they are communists
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
So pick another distro.
Seriously, Debian is the THE zealot distro.
At work we have this constant struggle between the developers who want to use recent versions of various things they want to use and me who doesn't particularly want to get into the backporting game.
I'd give it all up and throw debian out for a distribution that was neither so anal (ie this stupid Firefox business) nor so backward (stable means we don't like fixing bugs unless they are security issues).
If there were a distribution that was as good as Debian for its maintainability, rock-solid stability and ease of updates and upgrades I'd easily convince my boss to change.
So far no other distro comes to mind. I guess that stability and reliability comes with a price; the Debian religion.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
In a word, you can take any image bundled in a Debian "free" package and do whatever you want with it, no one will have anything to say about it.
I think it excludes the Debian logo itself though, and this is considered a bug.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
No it's not. >br>
It's called being true to your word.
Debian takes that right very seriously, and it has the right; Mozilla doesn't have a problem with that. However, their unmodified images are part of the branding, and the use of the name with the logo is mandatory as part of the branding. Mozilla's lawyers indicated to them (by my reading of the original thread) that while they *could* trademark the Firefox logo and make it under a modifications-allowed license, they would greatly risk their ability to police and enforce the Firefox logo as a trademark. Similarly, Debian's patches are of questionable quality and necessity and allowing the use of the "Firefox" name with these questionably patched versions would potentially damage the quality of the Firefox mark.
Debian just can't expect to get a free ride for doing a half-job. Or even, as the case appears to be, a quarter-job.
As has been pointed out: Debian takes its image and mark very seriously, too. Why the bitching by Debian supporters when they have to make changes for the very sort of thing that they do themselves?
Ni bhionn an rath achx mar a mbionn an smacht (There is no Luck without Discipline)
>Similarly, Debian's patches are of questionable quality and necessity. Why a volunteer driven organization such as Debian should spend time making "unnecessary" patches is beyond me.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Nice of you to log in and post from your slashdot account!
OBVIOUSLY, the solution is simple. Debian needs to quit changing Firefox. Then, the people around me don't have to make the huge logical jump from "Firefox" with the Fox and globe icon to "Firefox" with the globe icon. You're expecting too much out of non-Slashdot readers. Seriously. You can't expect normal people to be able to locate a browser on their first try. You all have to be considerate of others.
And the response from Mozilla:
Mozilla could still have the "same, restrictive trademark license" to protect the trademark. Removing the copyright to allow "derived works" does not prohibit Mozilla from enforcing its trademark.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
DreamWeaver should be "Software for Designing HTTP/XML Format Documents for Internet Usage"
It should be. But whatever DW spits out barely qualifies as formatted...
Well, there's Firefox, and fire is one of the four elements (fire, water, earth, and air), and of course a fox is a type of canid. So, the logic choices are obviously:
Well, I guess those aren't the only permutations. There is also Airwolf, but unless the Debian people are really into bad 1980's television shows about helicopters...
I say they change the name back to Phoenix or Firebird and tack Web Browser onto the end.
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
Quite honestly, I am experiencing the most problems on debian with firefox.
...
Under Windoze it is pretty stable, under solaris it seemed pretty OK, under readhat it is OK, and under debian it seems to crash on me once-three times in a day minimum.
It is just an experience though and i am not saying that the debian package is screwed, i am also using that version the most, and statistically that might mean more problems at all
so what do I think ?
Well, I understand if mozilla/debian wants to approve patches to ensure quality, and I think it is a stupid stunt from debian. My favourte distro and all that, but I really do not care about the logo and it is not worth the fight or the conflict at all.
Now, now, Debian Bug Tracking System quite likely pre-dates Bugzilla®©...
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=198447&c id=16260281
I read the point made on osnews forum about the change. The claim is that since the Firefox logo is trademarked, it is not-free.
If this is really the case, then Debian needs to stop distributing *any* other trademarked bit of software.
Let me give you a really simple example which , if it were really about trademarks not being free, they would have to stop distributing.
The Linux kernel. See the bottom of www.kernel.org . Or the url http://www.kernel.org/legal.html
You see, if it was because trademarks aren't free, then they would have to stop distributing anything with a trademark, including the kernel. Since it is not about trademarks, but about a group that is looking for a way to get around a reasonable branding request, they are doing and saying dumb things.
Good job Debian. Good job. This really moves forward the concept of companies/organizations putting their stuff out as open source, only to be strong armed by the likes of Debian.
This is sad. For Debian, and anyone who follows in their mistaken footsteps.
Looks like the GNU project have already started a branch of Moizlla called Gnuzilla: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
How about just not including Firefox as a part of the distro?
If the user wants it after setting up the system they can download it. Simple.
If I can't, then is Debian truly free? This is stupid. There's a world of difference between the purpose of a trademark and the purpose of a free software license. Trademarks are like a signature: they associate a product with a unique producer. They do not restrict freedom in any meaningful way. If Debian is changing Firefox without Mozilla's approval, they shouldn't be claiming it's Firefox, because it isn't: it's their own fork of Firefox.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
hese are
the conditions you need to get on board with:
- All changes the distributor wishes to make to the source code must be
provided as discrete patches, along with a description of why the change
is required
- Releases are expected to be based on the CVS tag and/or source tarball
for the release version, plus approved patches.
- build configurations should also be submitted for approval.
- The logo and the trademark are required to be used together.
To me #1 and #3 are blatant restrictions on the freedom of using firefox, so I can agree with Debian's stance of calling it something else.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The most useful name to the consumer would communicate that:
1. The software is based on FireFox, and therefore will probably be compatible with Firefox Add-ons
2. The software has been tweaked by Debian, and therefore might not be perfectly compatible, and now you know who to complain to when it breaks.
Not that I expect them to do this, but it would be the right thing to do.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
And here I was thinking that Firefox (as such) was less than three years old. I would have thought Debian would ship something more stable, from a more mature code branch, such as Mozilla 1.7.x or possibly even Mozilla 1.4.x. What are they trying to do, keep up with the rest of the world all of a sudden?
On the other hand, why shouldn't they change the name of Firefox? Mozilla.org has certainly changed the product's name enough times...
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Maybe Debian needs to think more about it's policy on branding. There should be special consideration given to artwork that isn't libre, but is gratis. It could squash that pesky bug about it's own logo at the same time...
I support the Debian effort, but, in the long term, this is an issue that will stife the porting of apps that will want to have their branding left intact.
Everyone jaws about growing linux, but people that use their branding to generate revenue in situations where the actual software is free would suffer for not enforcing branding. This case in particular makes the Debian team look like asshats: "We want all of your work, we want it for free, and we want to modify it however we like, even if it is detrimental to you and your brand"
They shouldn't be required to provide an alternate logo/name. It's not Mozilla's job to work around Debian's overzealous definition of "Free". If Debian wants to say "we can't include it unless people are allowed to use it to their heart's content" they need to figure out what they are going to include instead. Debian can't take the copyrighted Firefox logo because it is not free for people to use for their own derivative works. Mozilla wants to protect the logo from that usage because it is a company logo.
Should a company not be allowed to protect a mark that identifies a program as being a product of their creation?
This is what the whole system of branding is based on. How can a consumer judge whether a product is up to the quality standards they expect from a certain company if trademarks and copyrighted logos cannot be protected and anyone can just come along with their new product and stick any name on it they wish?
If Debian applies their own patches to the Firefox source tapball without Mozilla's approval of those patches and then ditributes the package, they are doing exactly what Mozilla doesn't want, protraying a piece of software as Mozilla's work when it may or may not meet the funcationality, quality, and security standards they hold it to (joking about stability and memory leaks aside).
404 Not Found
I see that all the time on other websites! Even those that don't exist! Damn those Debian trademark-infringing scalawags!
I actually recognize the "unofficial" logo more readily, but I realize the other is also a Debian logo. If you go to Debain's official site they have the "Debian" text in the header, but the logo is the unoffical one and does not include the bottle. Kinda confusing usage if you ask me.
I know, that's not something slashdot readers usually do, but from reading the bug report I didn't get the impression that a rename was really imminent. In fact, the last couple of messages talked about calling it something like "Firefox Community Edition" which isn't a real change of name...
Laugh as you will but I have drastically improved firefox usage over merely preinstalling it if I renamed the shortcut to "Internet". Evolution is a terrible name, programming languages aren't intended for use by people who have never heard of the language, and Dreamweaver is not a program intended for people who have never heard of Dreamweaver either. A web browser is a free application that was probably installed by someone else.
It isn't. This is a very old issue (I remember chewing the matter over on debian-legal several years ago) and it covers all the Mozilla foundation projects. The article is just the usual bad reporting we expect from slashdot, that's all.
It calls Firefox "Bon Echo."
So very, very stupid.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
This is not a political issue. Mozilla will sue Debian unless Debian changes the name of its Firefox package!
:)
As for your SATA issues, I suggest that you do an iota of research before splashing out on new hardware. Making sure that hardware is capable of running the software you want to run on it is always a good idea; after all, the hardware only exists to run your chosen software--it should not dictate that choice itself.
If this is not possible then I suggest you try one of Kenshi Muto's Backported d-i images, or a backported kernel from backports.org.
Finally, next time you need help with Debian I suggest you use one of the known support channels. Off-topic bitching on an un-related internet forum just makes you look like you are trolling.
Infighting is handing every victory to Microsoft. The best product will eventually win, and there won't be anyone to notice it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Nuff said.
Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing. But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first.
Please tell me someone else found the humor in that?
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
Now what EXACTLY is the problem that I'm assuming some new guy at Debian building a little empire is having with the logo? Does his PC have all the identifying marks sanded off everything on the motherboard too?
I think the original poster already pretty much answered the question for you. He thinks a Linux distro like Debian should focus more on being usable/desirable to the majority of users, vs. being less so for the sake of "principles".
Seems like a perfectly fair and valid comment to me. Although, it is one that's biased towards software developers in his case. (Again, that might make some sense, if you come from a viewpoint that Linux is mainly of interest to people who want to hack around with the code they're initially given.)
I think the problem here is, Debian did such a good job with their distro over the years (above average packaging system and so on) that it became popular with a crowd that just wants as complete a set of OS/Apps as possible. If they're allowed to legally download the ISO for free and use what's given to them, they're happy. They probably won't ever care about modifying a line of source, nor will they care if some package actually has a few restrictions on its use. (If it's on there and they can make it run, they're happy. They'll just ignore such nonsense as "This is only for *personal* use, not business use." or what have you.
These types are going to dislike anything that causes a well-known, popular app to get removed, renamed, or moved into some special place where it's not installed by default.
But hey, whatever. I think Debian has made it clear what their goals are, and it's turning out those don't make for the best "out of box" experience for some people.
Watching open source development is like watching 50,000 nerds argue.
:)
Hi welcome to slashdot. you must be new here
Everyone is so busy trademarking and copyrighting every fucking thing even in the "Free" software arena. It's all going to hell in a handbasket. Even without this nonesense there's no such thing as a truely standard OS in the same sense that a Windows XP installation is standard - you know EXACTLY the same tools and interfaces so things aren't a total suprise and people don't have to re-learn the intricacise and idiosynchronicies of the OS every time they install a different version I mean sorry oops distro of Linux. You expect this in the paid software arena which is heading towards the DRM every time you activate or run the software. But for fuck sake pull your fingers out in the free software arena before we start end up in the "dark ages of software" where no one can even run 2 year old apps because of legal or DRM restrictions.
FUUUUUCCCCKKKKK!!!!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
As if we needed another bully on the street... great! [/sarcasm]
The confusion is similar to other Linux-based distros, only manifesting more strongly in this case:
What is the OS and what are the "Extra apps"?
Does this mean Firefox is part and parcel of the OS, and if so then why is the whole domain of GUI stuff treated as extras? If not, then why the urgent need to impose their tweaks on those programs?
I keep getting the impression they don't want to have a clear policy on desktop use, reworking applications, trademarks, etc, so they just switch between different attitudes as each situation suits them. In the case of DCCA distro using "Debian" in their name, Debian enforced their trademark against the former. Huh?
Mozilla foundation enforces the trademark on Firefox & Thunderbird. They come from a corporate background (what was Netscape) and have considerable user-focus. Part of the focus means the exact handiwork they produce and support is clearly identifiable by the end-user.
StarDivision -> OpenOffice.org reflects a similar tradition.
OSDL seems much looser with "Linux". Vendors are allowed to say "Mambo Linux", as if they took the kernel, painted it a different color, added leather seats, and offered a re-worked kernel for direct use by the end-user. Meanwhile anyone who can recompile a kernel encourages this identity-abuse. But most of what the user is getting is NOT Linux... It's the GNU toolchain plus a massive amount of higher-level stuff that could theoretically be standardized into consistent a PC platform. Can the end-user clearly identify the "Linux" product when they want to try a new OS? Of course not... Nor can they "use Linux" directly, so it has little meaning to most people. "Linux" is a complete misnomer in this context, like telling shoppers to go into a car dealership and say "shifter" when inquiring about complete automobiles. OSDL/Linux comes from a decidedly informal coding or 'hacking' tradition, and still accommodates confusion about product identities.
So, some projects insist of trademark integrity (much) more than others. Frankly, I do not think OSDL should allow distros to refer to their automobile as a "shifter". In many cases even GNU/Linux is inaccurate, like saying "shifter+transmission", so Stallman et al aren't so clever or correct on this point.
The FOSS developer community does make design committments to end-users, when it comes to certain products like "Firefox" or "Truecrypt"... but those serving in the "Linux" namespace avoid such committments like the plague; they are there to impress and commit to their peers for the most part.
I'll close with this: "Linux" advocacy is usually an excercise in misleading users by implying there is some committment to a platform product at a level they can use and identify (though the avg user cannot use or identify a mere kernel). Hackers and techies think they are doing something that will be meaningful/recognizable to the end-user over the long term, when this is rarely the case. Firefox advocacy doesn't have this problem; If it did, Mozilla would only write Gecko, and the browsers based on it would be called "Gecko distros", having considerably different UIs, collectively claim less than 2% marketshare, and extension-writers couldn't reliably anticipate which API functions would be included.
I know, too simplistic, but if it could work, it would work like this:
- Debian: How about we call it something people will recognize as associated with your fine work, but not actually the exact same thing?
- Mozilla: Um, okay, what?
- Debian: Direfox. People will recognize your fine product but our users will appreciate it is patched by us and your users will know it is different somehow from yours. If they're the same user they can have both if they really want.
- Mozilla: I guess that protects our name, what about our logo?
- Debian: We'll wrap the fox around a geenie bottle.
Nods all aroundEverybody shakes hands and signs something to pay the lawyer. Then everybody goes back to doing good/reliable/free/socially responsible/crack software.
- A Perl command to instantly rename and re-iconize Firefox gets passed around. This is unofficially supported inside Mozilla and somebody from Debian buys beer for somebody in Mozilla to make sure it stays that way.
- Somebody throws a fit about wanting "Firefox" in Debian
- Debian puts Firefox in contrib and leaves Direfox in the base
---No elk were harmed in the making of this sig.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I bet Mozilla is shaking in their boots over the mindshare they're going to lose by shutting down the unreasonable request from what amounts to probably a fraction of 1% of their user base.
Two things. One, please prove that the Debian patches are of sub-quality. I doubt you will be able to because its simply not true.
Second, the problem Debian is having with it is the fact that they thought they had already dealt with it. A representative of Mozilla already came to them and they thought they had a deal where they could use the name but not the logo and everything would be fine. Now Mozilla is coming along, very close to the release of Etch, and saying that that deal doesn't mean anything and now Debian must change. Thats the hole story.
And saying that Debian is doing a piss-poor job with no proof is really not right at all.
"We Don't Need No Truthless Heros!" - Project 86
Good point. Lots of people don't care about freedom for any kind of content we ship, be it source code, images, manuals, audio samples, or anything else. For such people, free software is pretty much equivalent to warez that you'll never get in trouble for.
But I've also heard lots of people say that they really do care about the Four Freedoms for source code ... but do not think the same freedoms, or a close analogue, are valuable for non-program-code such as documentation or images. This is the part that makes no sense to me. One hears things like "it's OK for a font to be non-modifiable because font designers feel a need to maintain strict artistic control", for example. Yes, I've actually heard things like this! Why the same logic doesn't apply to programmers and our creative endeavors — that's what nobody seems to be able to explain to me.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
This is sound jurisprudence.
There is not enough Lockean analysis done on IP law. It's property, so some of these laws need to stand up to the basis is Lockean theory.
Accoring to Locke, a person can acquire rights in property if the person appropriated resources from the common (which in the IP case, is the field of all possible ideas and symbolisations of those ideas), and mixed his labour with them. This transformed part of the common it into his property, defensible against the world. But you could not not take more than you could consume before the property spoiled, and you could not take so much that the community would be deprived by the loss from the common.
That means if intellectual property is infringing on you, it doesn't meet the standard for property, and a decent legal system should rule that it is in fact part of the common.
And if that's not on topic, I don't know what is.
Which is why of course other distributions will eventually rename Firefox to something else, too, except maybe SuSE and Red Hat (and Slackware which I think has a policy of not patching upstream anyway). And hopefully GNU/Linux users will retaliate by not using Firefox; there's plenty of evidence Mozilla the corporation don't care about us anyway.
Look out!
FireFox has to be one of the stupidest product names I've seen. Although they did manage to tag the Mozilla Suite with an even worse name as they kicked it out of the house.
This way there is no need for every distribution/individual to come up with a new name when they modify Firefox and distribute the result.
Now we're in a potential situation that there'll be a dozen of differently-named browsers that all have similar functionality. This does not help the Firefox brand, but rather dilutes it IMHO.
"distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first"
This insane level of fragmentation of Linux distro's is what keeps me off it.
Let's fork Firefox(tm) and call it, say, Icemammal. Icemammel will track every ff release with one of its only with the only difference being the logo and the name, with a more generous licensing policy for using them so distributions can have a common name/logo to use.
Then create spreadicemammal.com and promote the hell out of it.
I predict the Mozilla people will scream bloody murder about Icemammal "stealing" its code when no one uses the Firefox(tm) name anymore.
First it was wrong to be "Googling" something. Now perhaps we all need to quit "Firefoxing" things?
After some 500 comments forth and back; it is obvious that Debian is the peanut counter, but Mozilla has the lever to defuse the whole lot.
Why don't we all write to Mozilla, requesting them to give the limited right to Debian to use the Firefox code base with a logo of their, Debian's, liking, under the name of firefox ? and the whole matter would be closed immediately and easily.
As it moves about now, it does a lot of damage in reputation to the perception of the general public on FOSS. That is the part making me sad. Yes, Mozilla is to be blamed for the latter aspect, since they do more damage than they achieve by sticking to their right of linking the code base with the icon base and the name.
I can't perceive Mozilla's great losses if they grant Debian the right to using the brand name 'Firefox' and the code base of 'Firefox' and instead plug a different icon.
Whenever Mozilla will come up next, I'll start to avoid them.
You sire,are a fuckin idiot.Go back to your windoze box and stay there.
Ah, the Unix community, always posturing to prove who the most hardcore communist is.
Mozilla changed their trademark licensing WRT Debian.
Before (Gervase from Moz Foundation): "Moz trusts Debian and grants it the right to use the trademarks, if we ever find any beef, we'll talk it over and solve it."
Now (Connor from Moz Corp): "we changed our minds, if Debian wants to use our TMs it must wait till we approve every single line that goes in it. Ah, effective immediately, nevermind you have a release to make -- alas, don't fscking release using out TM without our permission."
Got it?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Free software is about freedom. The exact method by which a user's freedom is restricted (be it copyright, patent, trademark, DRM or another issue) is irrelevant.
There are also the debian based distros, including ubuntu, knoppix and linspire.
Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
what do you tink about red_panda, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda
This stigman about being "truly free" is the #1 thing hindering the success of Linux today. I help Linux newbs via Qunu every day, and you know what problems they have most often? They can't set up the NVIDIA driver. They can't set up ndiswrapper. They need ntfs read/write support. They want the original Firefox icon. etc. etc.
If someone really wanted to, they could trivially create a Linux distribution which handled all of these things automatically. Some of it is actually kind of illegal to do, e.g: distributing software which is not freely distributable. It is understandable that a distribute would not include those things.
The Firefox icon is freely distributable. There is absolutely no reason not to include it. Mozilla isn't going to sue Debian. Mozilla just doesn't want people who have problems with Firefox as a result of Debian's weird patches to come to them for support or to blame them for possible bugs/holes. Can you really blame them? You wouldn't want someone modifying your product and distributing it under your name. It makes you look bad if they introduce a security hole or worse.
And what exactly do Debian's patches do for Firefox? I use Ubuntu, which I presume has the same patches, and you know what difference I notice? The Ubuntu/Debian Firefox is slower and less stable than Firefox on other platforms. I think I just might remove it and install the official Mozilla build. There is no reason Debian can not distribute the real Firefox with icons and about box and name. All they will achieve by switching to "IceWeasel" is to stroke their nonsense ideals while simultaneously making desktop Linux a tiny bit suckier. It's just one more thing to explain to newbs who might convert. It's giving them one more argument about why not to convert.
IMHO Debian lost almost all relevancy when Ubuntu appeared. Hopefully Ubuntu will not follow in their footsteps, and will distribute the real Firefox for the sake of their current and future users.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Debian is ancient and past the prime of it's life. I wish Mozilla would just deny them the inclusion of Firefox. Then Debian can close doors and slip into the history books as the "distro that was good in 2004, when the 2.4 kernel was at it's prime".
It's not like Mozilla's requirements are demanding in any way either.
Go ahead and -1 me. You can't handle the truth anyway.
> Two things. One, please prove that the Debian patches are of
... if Debian doesn't fix this now, they're breaking trademark
> sub-quality. I doubt you will be able to because its simply not true.
One: you can't read. I said that the patches are of questionable
quality. Others in this thread have amply proven that Debian makes
changes that have destabilized Firefox on Debian. I read the original
thread entirely in the Debian bug tracking system. The Mozilla team has
definitely looked at some of the differences and found them wanting (the
Debian team has, for example, changed how the branding is done rather
than using the branding switch that the Mozilla team provided for this
very reason).
> Second, the problem Debian is having with it is the fact that they
> thought they had already dealt with it. A representative of Mozilla
> already came to them and they thought they had a deal where they could
> use the name but not the logo and everything would be fine. Now
> Mozilla is coming along, very close to the release of Etch, and saying
> that that deal doesn't mean anything and now Debian must change. Thats
> the hole story.
Yet
issues for years after, given that Debian releases so rarely.
> And saying that Debian is doing a piss-poor job with no proof is really
> not right at all.
Except that it's not my claim. It's the claim of the Mozilla developers
-- and a lot of people on this very thread.
Ni bhionn an rath achx mar a mbionn an smacht (There is no Luck without Discipline)
"queue", v : form a queue, form a line, stand in line.
HTH, HAND.
Does Debian distribute its non-free images with its Debian CDs? If so, then they are doing the very same thing. But I doubt they're doing that. I was under the impression that a Debian CD is 100% licensed under free software licenses. That means no non-free firefox logos, and it means no non-free Debian logos either.
If Debian were doing "the very sort of thing" that Firefox is doing, then they'd be including the non-free Debian "Official Use Logo" in an official Debian CD, and not allowing anyone who distributed a CD without that non-free logo to use the term "Debian".
Squabbles between projects is keeping Linux from advancing quite fine.
Somehow this starts to remember how Unix wars started...
Most stypid thing to do would probably to be splitting Firefox in to pieces. it would not only make firefox revolution progress slower but also might hurt market share.
We all know that Debian developer are sometimes donkeys with things but I think that developing once source base would benefit people more than Debian firefox which has been patched for a and b but not c, official firefox patched for c but not a and b vulnerabilities is just plain stypid. and worst is that this situation will evolve into that if nothing is done for it.
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
I always thought most distros modify software too much... if they want to help out, why not join the upstream project so everyone can benefit? What are these patches that they are making that Mozilla wouldn't want in their code? Shouldn't they always be submitting their patches to Mozilla anyways? Isn't that the proper open source etiquette thing to do if you change the software? If Debian is so determined on making a Firefox derivative, then I don't see a problem with Mozilla requesting that they stop associating their name with it (especially since people say it ends up being a buggier version). Imagine if MS Windows' latest security update included a modified Microsoft version of Firefox (with source code of course), don't you think Mozilla would be worried as well?
"IceWeasel", I love it!
You don't have to press "Enter"
every time you reach the edge of
the comment textbox. Firefox
will word wrap your comment corr-
ectly without your help.
When you do that, people tend to
assume that you don't know
anything about web browsers
and may not be qualified
to interpret what a Debian
bugzilla thread really
means, especially when it is
about Firefox.
Besides, it makes your comment
look really funny on a wide-
screen monitor.
Thank
You.
They should name it "The Internet" and if that's already taken then perhaps "Linternet".
To put it simple: Firefox is not Free Software, because its distribution includes the image file for the logo, which is under a non-Free license.
Bollocks. As I said above, the Debian Official Logo itself is distributed under a non-free license, and that comes with Debian.
Why the exception for their official logo?
It's just Debian being pedantic.
Why can't you just include your precious alternative Firefox graphics in a separate distribution package? And then give the user an option to theme his/hers Firefox with the alternative graphics?
Firian
Debifox
At least Debian _can_ change the name and do what they want with the Firefox code. Mozilla provided the option, and Debian took them up on it. History will tell if this was a good decision for Debian, and if providing for this was a good decision for Mozilla. It could have a negative impact on either party, or both.
> the FSF used to ask people not to name their non-GNU projects "GNU something"
Of course they have been trying to co-opt the whole Linux movement with their insane GNU/Linux insanity. Since Linux is most obviously NOT an official GNU project it is pretty obvious why they want to glom onto it; even if it is wrong to affix one trademark to another with only a punctuation mark to seperate them without permission from both parties.
Democrat delenda est
Because since the logos are not free to modify, we can't put them in the main Debian distribution, so they would go in the "non-free" section. Please feel free to ask Mozilla Corp whether having the official logo set in a separate package on a separate area of the FTP archive, and not shipped on official CDs, is enough to satisfy them. I'm pretty sure it won't be.
...would be why the Debian developers need to patch Firefox internally in the first place. I seem to remember that Firefox's usual compile routine is somewhat unorthodox and involves jumping through a few hoops...maybe they're wanting to make it a bit more sane for CD-based installs or somesuch.
;)
Although it's really a moot point for me personally. I'll openly confess to not being a fan of Debian. It's devs seem to have an unhealthy love of beaurecratic formality, and I've also seen way too much genuflection before Comrade Stallman coming from them for my tastes as well.
I also have to wonder why the Mozilla peeps are suddenly so zealous about guarding IP...since maybe I haven't been paying attention, but I haven't heard them making noises about such things before. My guess is that we're seeing the usual human frailty at work, there...be completely open while you're still completely the underdog, and then start being possessive, dictatorial, and obnoxious once you become vaguely popular.
I suspect there is a generous helping of insectoid small-mindedness all around, here...it's usually the way. One thing that a few other people on this thread are right about:-
The constant background noise of neurologically crippled zealotry and divisive, juvenile squabbling associated with Linux isn't helping anyone other than Microsoft. If you want to remain on the lunatic fringe, then fine...keep arguing about license minutiae and Gnome vs. KDE. I happen to know, however, that least some of the people associated with Linux want to see it become genuinely and completely mainstream. That is not going to happen for as long as this sort of mindless, four year old shit keeps making headlines. The autistic neo-Bolshevik fanatic routine got old a long time ago, guys. Try taking an economics course and a prescription for Ritalin.
Apart from anything else, the Debian developers need to make a truly sober re-assessment of their level of relative importance in the world. I'll give you a hint to start the ball rolling; it isn't as high as you think.