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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.
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The difference is that the Linux trademark is much more free to be used than the Firefox trademark. Read Mozilla's trademark policy and you might see some of why Debian has a problem.
And of course, the Linux kernel does not, and never has, required patches to be submitted before they're used. Distros like Gentoo maintain a set of their own patches for the Linux kernel, with no problems. Debian also has their own kernel patches, last I checked.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
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.
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.
Fairly liberal I'd say, and if you care to contrast with Mozilla's trademark policy it makes a world of difference.
Not really different. In fact, Debian is happy to use the open-use Firefox logo, and that's what we're already doing. The "problem" is that Mozilla Corporation has demanded that, if we don't use the official-use logo, we stop calling our browser Firefox. Of course we will comply.
Nothing to see here, except Debian preparing to comply with the demands of a trademark holder.
The only remaining problem is what to call the browser instead. I'd probably support a friend's suggestion of Firefaux, except that I think it would violate trademark law, which prohibits "confusingly similar" names. Because of this I think it's a bad idea to use either "Fire" or "Fox" in the new name. So ... yeah. Iceweasel.
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