Slashdot Mirror
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.
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...
Didn't Prince try this in the 90's?
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Distros like Gentoo maintain a set of their own patches for the Linux kernel
The gentoo kernel which has the patches is different than the linux kernel.
* sys-kernel/gentoo-sources
Latest version available: 2.6.17-r7
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of files: 40,538 kB
Homepage: http://dev.gentoo.org/~dsd/genpatches
Description: Full sources including the gentoo patchset for the 2.6 kernel tree
License: GPL-2
What debian is doing is simply making a fork to accomodate their own packaging conveniences. All Mozilla seems to be saying is that if they want to fork it, they should go through all the motions of the fork.
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?
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.
Yup. The Debian people are becoming idiots. Just switch to Ubuntu and say goodbye to Debian. Debian moves too slow to be useful anymore. I hope all the sane Debian people move over to Ubuntu.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
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?
1) Ubuntu is going to do the same
2) Ubuntu is Debian-based, you know? Like Knoppix and a zillion distros more
3) Debian repositories are generally very ahead of Ubuntu's ones
4) For servers, you JUST want something that "moves too slow"
I prefer FreeFox. Still very recognisable, while at the same time rubbing it in that Firefox is not truly free.
It's modded funny, but I actually think it's merely cynical. The actual discussion is an extremely interesting, if sometimes frustrating, read: say what you like about Debian's legal pedantry, the thread certainly doesn't reveal Mozilla in a favourable light. For me it really brings home the value of freedom: there are obviously big corporate pressures trying to pull Mozilla in one direction, but thanks to Freedom-with-a-capital-F, Debian are fully able to resist, even if it comes down to the desperate step of renaming Firefox.
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!
This sig all sigs devours
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 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.
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.
1) Is that official? I haven't seen the same stink about it in the Ubuntu mailing lists. 2) Debian-based doesn't make it Debian. Would you consider Linspire Debian? I wouldn't. 3) Huh? My Ubuntu desktop is using more current _stable_ software than when I went with Debian. 4) Your idea of "slow" and mine must be different. Debian stable is just too outdated. I prefer to use the most current _stable_ software out there. Debian's idea of "stable" seems to be 5 years old and outdated. I don't want Apache 1.3, mysql 3, php 4, etc. I will stick with a distro that is more in touch with reality, thanks.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
Made all the worse by the fact that the Mozilla *Foundation*, and specifically Gervase Markham, had an agreement with Debian that essentially said "we trust your usual conservative judgement on patches", and the Mozilla *Corporation* revoked that agreement and threatened to sue.
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)
Erm, no they aren't. Many, many companies use logos that are simultaneously their brand names.
That is completely wrong. Many projects have big issues with "questionable downstream modifications". I spent several years intermittently tracking down bugs that turned out to be due to broken patches applied to a project I worked on by distributions. This was incredibly frustrating because such "bugs" were not truly bugs at all yet they had a terrible impact on the brand of that project. Invariably, upon encountering a problem users would go upstream and say "This program sucks". It got to the stage where several distros were blacklisted in the minds of the guys doing tech support and anybody using it from such a distro would be told to rebuild from source.
The difference between that project and Firefox is that the Firefox guys are much bigger and have a much stronger brand, along with the legal/financial resources to handle this stuff. But don't think these problems are somehow unique to Mozilla.
Which is of course a stupid idea. I've been keeping an eye on the Mozilla codebase and development for many years now, pretty much ever since it was first open sourced. There have been quite a few major security problems - especially recently - that were solved by doing major changes to the internal architecture. This is not the sort of thing you can trivially backport, and if you tried to do so you'd probably just introduce new bugs anyway (unless you are a Gecko guru, of which there are very few).
A far more sane security policy is to work with upstream to fix bugs then ensure you are always using the latest version of what's available. But this is not "the Debian way" so they won't ever do this, instead, they'll continue to let users run old and known to be architecturally-insecure versions of Firefox all the while telling people that they're actually doing a great job. A shame.
My point is that Debian never claimed to be something else. Those users simply made the wrong choice, and perhaps Debian should have never got so popular in the first place.
Continuing my earlier example, if you decide to buy a $350 computer from Dell it would be a bit stupid to then complain that it looks cheap (well, duh), that performance is unimpressive, and that the stability of components selected to be absolutely as cheap as possible leaves something to be desired.
People actually go and do that, of course, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with Dell, just that people that bought Dell computers and then regretted it underestimated what they wanted, and how much it would cost to provide that. Same way, people who have a problem with Debian's obsession with Free Software shouldn't have went with it in the first place, as Debian never pretended they're not going to be picky with licensing issues.