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.
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?
Irefox.
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...
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
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.
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.
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
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?
Internet Foxplorer
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
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.
Epiphany is _not_ the default browser in ubuntu; firefox is. Unfortunately.
Gustavo J.A.M. Carneiro
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.
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?
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)
"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.
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!
"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 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.....
No, but he'd probably object because Firefox isn't a GNU project. I can't find the link anymore, but IIRC the FSF used to ask people not to name their non-GNU projects "GNU something". I don't know if that's still the case.
http://outcampaign.org/
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
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 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.
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
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)
Good thing my boss can't read!
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...
It is not that simple an issue. One of Debian's best attributes is the fact that everything in Debian complies to the DFSG. This means that I don't have to bother reading the /usr/share/doc/$package/copyright file of every package I install; I know that I may freely modify and distribute everything.
I think it is in my best interest (as a user) that Debian alter its package so that mozilla.com can no longer prevent me from doing so; therefore rebranding the Firefox browser (or even renaming the package, if necessary) is in the best interest of the user.
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."
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.
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.