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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.
Will Debian stop using the Linux trademark as well?
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.
Someone once said that academic politics is so fierce precisely because the stakes are so low. Maybe that applies in this case as well...
No, Firefox is finally getting some name recognition and when people install Ubuntu or whatever they will be looking for "FireFox" and not whatever name Debian comes up with. It's a "brand". Linux splinters everytime someone has a little tiff and people wonder why there is no marketshare. The brand gets so splintered that any newb trying to figure out what to run is totally lost and yes, the Linux community needs newbs.
Debian really needs to get the stick out of their ass. It's a great server distro, but if they want any sort of desktop marketshare then they have to change. Ubuntu better tell Debian to shove it and include the logo and Firefox as Moz wants them too otherwise you're just going to confuse people. Not everyone wants to read Wiki's and forums to figure out that the browser they have is indeed Firefox.
In addition, so Debian starts patching and they start breaking extensions. Hmmm...people get pissed and stop using the browser and then stop using Debian cause the browser sucks.
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
This is close, but not quite true. All Mozilla, SeaMonkey and Firefox code is tri-licensed (MPL/GPL/LGPL), no exceptions. (Actually it used to be that a small percentage of code wasn't under the GPL yet, and Mozilla spent a couple of years tracking down the owners and acquiring permission to really make it all GPL-ed.)
And then there's the Firefox binary, which is licensed with the Mozilla EULA.
But yeah, as you said, the issue at hand here is purely about trademarks, which (sadly?) need to be strongly protected for legal reasons.
After all, if there's an enemy to the FOSS movement, it's *definitely* the Mozilla Foundation...
No, as I understand it, the problem is really trademark-related. Debian has HUGE patches that are of questionable quality, and the Mozilla Corporation is worried people will assume the flaky browser shipped by Debian represents the quality of Firefox. If you've never looked at a distro's patch sets, you really should - it's frightening - MUCH more than just a few lines of code or build config changes to put libraries in specific places. That the logo is under a different copyright licenses is more of a side effect of the trademark issues: to make it clear that the trademark can't just be used willy-nilly, they put the logos containing the trademark under a different copyright license.
My server
You have it backwards. Mozilla is the one being unresonable here. Other open source projects have trademarks but they don't insist that Debian must use a different name because they have custom patches.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
How can Debian just start using the logo? Even if the logo were DFSG compliant, Debian would still be required to submit every patch that they make, including critical security fixes, to the Mozilla Foundation for an approval process before being allowed to distribute them. Due to Debian's stability requirements, fixes are backported for old versions of Firefox which are no longer maintained by Mozilla. But the Mozilla Foundation has stated that they don't care about this, and even suggested that Debian start putting new versions into older releases instead of backporting fixes.
Epiphany is _not_ the default browser in ubuntu; firefox is. Unfortunately.
Gustavo J.A.M. Carneiro
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.
So pick another distro.
Seriously, Debian is the THE zealot distro. They obsess about Free Software. If that's not your thing, go with something else, plenty alternatives around.
"Didn't Prince try this in the 90's?"
That was just Prince wanting to release albums but not owning his own stage name. Apparently, his earlier contract included the stage name. The contract must have been for albums and term of years, so that when the albums were out he could contract elsewhere, but he couldn't take his name with him.
Or, I suppose you could say that "Prince" was his slave name.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Way to go, Debian.
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
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 did not choose this battle. They have been distributing Firefox for years in the same way they distribute other open source software. It was Mozilla who forced the issue by threatening legal action if Debian doesn't change the name or start submitting all patches (even security patches) to Mozilla for permission before they are applied. Mike Conner of Mozilla says "you should consider this, as I previously said, notice that your usage of the trademark is not permitted in this way, and we are expecting a resolution. If your choice is to cease usage of the trademark rather than bend the [Debian Free Software Guidelines] a little, that is your decision to make."
Debian asked "could we at least get a stay of execution? Etch is going into deep freeze in less than a month. Would it be possible to resolve this after the release?" and Mozilla responded that "If we were forced to revoke your permission to use the trademark, freeze state would not matter, you would be required to change all affected packages as soon as possible. Its not a nice thing to do, but we would do it if necessary, and we have done so before."
Many legal squabbles are instigated by Debian, but this isn't one of them. Mozilla has forced the issue. Linux Weekly News wrote a good summary of the situation.
-Fyodor
Insecure.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.
The idea that the MPL is less free than the GPL strikes me as hilarious.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Make your own distro and call it Debian and use their images, see who sues you... There is nothing wrong with Trademarks jackass.
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.
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.
Firefox is free, however it's trademark protected and that means you can't both hack it to pieces and use the Firefox name+brand. That's entirely reasonable - if I took Debian, changed things randomly that broke it in obscure ways then shipped it as Debian using the Debian logo of course they'd be pissed off too.
And for those who are wondering, yes, this is exactly what happened. The tensions between the Mozilla team and Debian have been around for ages, this is not news, but it got a lot worse lately. Firefox is getting larger and the quality of the brand matters a lot more, meanwhile, the Debian guys were taking Firefox and making massive changes to it. For instance I've seen persistent reports from many different people that the Ubuntu Firefox is much slower than the official build. The last time I came across this issue, it was because Debian had completely forked the XULRunner platform - some guy felt it was "too Windows-like" and that "the UNIX way was superior". So, day was night and night was day and the XUL platform Mozilla wanted to push was already incompatible and forked. The developers who had designed this platform were understandably angry and now Debian has got what it deserves.
Anyway, none of this really matters. Debian is non-existant on the desktop and has an atrocious brand. Meanwhile Firefox has a very strong brand. One of the reasons Fedora et al ship Firefox and not the GNOMEified Epiphany equivalent is because customers know the Firefox name and want it, and don't know the Epiphany name. On the desktop Debian vs Firefox is no contest.
People keep bringing this up, and what it boils down to is the assertion that, while certain freedoms are important for source code, those same freedoms aren't important for other types of digital content. I've tried for years to get people to explain what principles would make this valid — why certain fundamental freedoms are only important for program code — but so far I have yet to hear a logically consistent answer.
[In fact, some people go so far as to claim that freedoms are important for code written in some languages but not other languages. For example, code written for the embedded processor of a gigabit network card is often downplayed as "just firmware", with the implication that it's less important for users to be able to hack on that than to hack on the rest of their OS. This puzzles me too.]
What I suspect is that a lot of people care only about rights they personally would take advantage of — that is, the right and the ability to modify things they personally might feel inclined to modify. For programmers, that means source code in languages they already know, for applications they care about. For graphic artists, that means images. For music producers, that means audio files. I think it's pretty myopic, and arrogant, for a programmer to tell an artist or a music producer that the right to edit, resample and remix code is more important than the right to edit, resample and remix images or audio. The artists could, after all, say the same to you in reverse: "Who cares about program source code, or the right to modify it? We don't have the skill to read or modify it anyway, it's a black box to us, and who would want to bother?"
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
I think "Web Browser" would be the way forward. After all, everything gets renamed in Gnome menus anyway.
My little Linux and tech blog
Why do you guys always make such simple-sounding statements before getting your act together ?
'stable' for Debian means 'stable'; and this is what we users love about it. Therefore, when FireBuddy 1.0.5 is installed, and someone finds a vulnerability, Mozilla will tell the world to upgrade to 1.0.6; the latest and greatest. Eventually, not quite that stable and proven over time.
While Debian will provide the trusted Buddy 1.0.5, including the patch for that vulnerability. Which is clearly my preference. But how could Debian do that if it followed your suggestion ?
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.