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Mozilla vs Debian Analyzed
lisah writes "Linux.com has a behind the scenes look at the history of the ongoing debates between Debian and Mozilla that predate Debian's last release, Sarge. The article also reports the issue may have been laid to rest for good now that Debian tentatively plans on calling it "Iceweasel" but attorney Larry Rosen said this never should have been a debate in the first place. In addition, Mozilla has been prompted to clarify its position on the company's marketing blog."
Wow, what can you add to "Iceweasel?"
Someone around here has a sig that says something like, "letting a programmer name your product is like making a marketer program it." Never before has it been demonstrated so clearly. (Well, to be fair, at least the browser isn't Gimped.)
Comment of the year
There is no dispute.
Mozilla doesn't want programs called "Firefox" to diverge too much from the original. Debian wants to make some changes that go beyond what the Mozilla group are happy calling "Firefox". So they've taken option #2 and renamed it.
It's just a choice. It's the choice both are happy with. Why it keeps being portrayed as some kind of war is beyond me.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Dearest Debian Leaders: Why insult those who provide you (and everyone else) with important software? So there is a minor issue with the trademark name and Debian Free Guidelines. Is this something worth getting nasty over? I use Debian server side at work. I like stable - it is justly named. Please, focus on a new stable release and drop the interproject bickering.
As an Ubuntu user, I run Flash player, Nvidia drivers and several other proprietary additions. So why is this an issue? I understand if they don't to ship copyrighted logos but big DEAL. Does this comprimise the distribtion in any way? Could this open them up to potential lawsuits? I think they should just relax and let it slide. They're being a bit anal about all this as far as I'm concerned. Luckily, Ubuntu will still ship with Firefox so not an issue (even though it is a Debian distro).
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Debian wants to preserve my rights to modify the artwork included with the distribution. I greatly appreciate this right! I sincerely hope they continute to defend my right to replace the crappy artwork they provide with the official Mozilla Firefox artwork, since I begrudgingly do this every single time Firefox is updated on my systems.
This would be like changing the name of the distribution to Dumbo GMAC/Looney and wondering why Disney and GM are sending you C&D letters, while Linus sends you an angry e-mail asking that you respect his trademark. It's free software, we can call it anything we want, and you are free to modify it! While technically true, that doesn't get anyone anywhere.
To Debian: We don't live in a black and white world. Please find another academic circular argument, and let this one go.
Karma: Incomprehensible (Mostly affected by posting at +5, reading at -1, and metamoderating everything unfair.)
Firefox remains the same, Debian's the one that doesn't come with Firefox. Why they didn't just move it to non-free is beyond me.
Oh well, Ubuntu already has things worked out with Firefox, so no naming games going on there. Debian should note well that sometimes downstreams do take over when the parent project became too onerous to work with. No one is too big for this to happen.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
The article also states that Mozilla is expecting Debian to submit all modifications for review, and that if the modifications were not satisfactory, whether the code was in deep-freeze or not, that they would have to change the name.
A lot of this comes down to "what's in a name"? Personally, I see Debian's position as more proper within the realm of the F/OSS community. If you toute your program as open source, yet say that if anyone makes any changes to the program that you do not approve of, that they cannot use your trademark, then that certainly doesn't sound "open" and "free" to me. Especially, if your source contains all of the trademark data in the code, and altering the content requires a great deal of work.
When you come down to it, it's the same situation as I have with Windows XP. "Oh, of course you OWN the CD, you bought it. But you're only LICENSING the data on it." They hide all this un-free double plus ungood behind telling you that you're free to do whatever you want, so long as you don't screw with them.
If a program is released as free/open source under the GPL, or BSD, or any license for that matter, but contains artwork inside of it that is restricted, then that's absurd, and retarded! I'm sorry that I have to take a Stallman approach to this issue, but it's stupid to have Copyleft and Trademark compete against each other...
Let's all trade our freedom of IP expression for the shackles of another IP prison!
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Debian don't want to include certain icons related to Firefox because the licensing of those graphics isn't consistent with the aims of their project. Mozilla say that's fine, as long as Debian don't call the package "Firefox".
... So you would get a Linux distro (actually, it couldn't be called Linux) and you'd find all kinds of programs you never heard about, each of them being a "rebranded" version of the official package. Or alternatively, each Linux distro would need to ask each maintainer for the permission to apply each of their patch (i.e. for every cvs/svn commit during development!). I really hope all Linux distros drop Firefox (the name, not the software) and go with the same new name (IceWeasel?). Maybe that could even make Mozilla change their decision, although I'm not too optimistic. At least it would be a name all Linux users would recognise (Firefox? What's Firefox?).
I think it's not that much about the logo as it is about other changes Debian makes.
No villains, and everyone lives hapily ever after. The end.
Sure, everyone is technically in their right. However, Mozilla is being very much of a pain in the ass. Can you imagine how life would be for distros if GNOME decided it doesn't get called GNOME unless it's the official GNOME release (no modifications)? And then KDE could do the same, along with X.Org, OpenOffice.org,
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
It's fairly simple:
Probably, but what'd happen if someone rebuilt a whole Debian without including the (non-free) debian logo? Because that's what'd be equivalent to the situation between Debian and MozCo
(1): the Debian logo is non-free though, and this is considered a bug by the way
PS: this post was written with Mozilla Sunbeaver
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
He says that Mozilla's stance on protecting its branding elements is no different than that of any other company that wants to ensure a high-quality user experience.
Yeah, so? That's the problem. You're not supposed to be like any other company. You're supposed to care about freedom.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I applaud Debian for sticking to what they believe. I, for one, will be taking the free Debian artwork and name and replacing the standard Firefox logo and name on my distro(s) of choice. I think Debian should have a contest for a new Iceweasel logo every bit as snazzy as the Firefox logo.
What if the Firefox version released with Etch absolutely sucks? What if it crashes regularly, trashes the user's home directory, and eats small children? Are user's going to blame Debian, because of their patches? No, they're going to blame Mozilla and claim Firefox sucks. Word will spread, and people will be under the mistaken impression Firefox is an unstable child eating browser from Hell. If Debian makes their patches and renames it, people will only be under the impression Iceweasel sucks.
I don't know what kind of patches Debian is applying, but they must not be trivial, if Mozilla wants to approve them before allowing distribution with their name and artwork.
The Mozilla foundation laid all of this out a long time ago. Debian knew the terms when they began using Firefox. They're free to agree to the terms or not use it.
It sounds to me Mozilla isn't worried about them making modifications to the code, its the extent of the modifications ("grave concerns around the nature and quality of some of the changes the patchset contains" as they stated). They're concerned about the stability of Firefox, and rightly so. If the changes Debian makes impacts the stability of Firefox, its Mozilla and Firefox who're going to be blamed, not Debian.
Firefox is becoming more of a software dev platform. Recently, in an app I did, we had a prob with Firefox's GC for xml objects causing it to crash. An upgrade fixed it(at first a beta ver of FF/XulRunner) and now it's in the stable branches.
Now, pretend for a minute Debian had Firefox with that name and the regular icons. But they decided, for whatever reason, to roll back or use their own GC patch for the problem we had.
So, my app wouldn't work on Firefox, but would work on Firefox? Specifically, not on Debian FF but in the rest of the world? Any idea how inane this is? Firefox is trying to protect a brand of quality, if debian introduces a new bug into their browser, should Moz provide support? Should other people provide support in IRC, newsgroups, etc.. ?
What if I modified python to not use if anymore but use wellmaybeiwillonlyif instead, but released it, called it Python, same version, etc... should I be allowed to do so? Could I then say that python from python.org is not compatible with Python from python.org, which I should then call the unofficial branch?
Yeah, it's silly, but if I'm an OS, that's a lot of implementations of it that no longer support "if".
Oh good grief Mozilla guys!
Look - FireFox is OpenSourced - right? So for chrissakes let them
do what they want with it - that is THE ENTIRE POINT!!! If the
Debian guys (who are not exactly complete Klutzes at this stuff)
mess up, you say "Hey the Debian guys screwed up - come download
the real one from the usual places."
Geez - just make it happen and get over it.
www.sjbaker.org
Yes, I can imagine it.
It would fucking ROCK.
Being able to assume that "GNOME 2.10" really is "GNOME 2.10" everywhere, and not "GNOME 2.10 plus some stuff that I thought might cool and without the stuff I thought I didn't need"... well, it would make life a lot simpler for app developers.
You're getting it wrong here. It would mean that Debian would have "TROLL 2.10 plus some stuff that I thought might cool and without the stuff I thought I didn't need", and RedHat would have "EMONG 2.10 plus some stuff that I thought might cool and without the stuff I thought I didn't need" and so on. Distribution are *integrators*, they can't just ship everything unmodified (they'd all be the same otherwise). (Most) People want something polished where apps fit together and all.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
No one will let you use their trademark. It reflects back on them. If anyone could call a product Firefox, and put all of the Firefox graphics on there, then they can do anything in Mozilla's name. Anything includes making spyware, a virus, or just plain bad software. That would cripple Mozilla's reputation. If I took some of your code, messed with it to make it destroy a linux installation when used, and released it as your software, would you like that?
Maybe Debian should be allowed to use the name for small patches, but that would have to be a special accommodation.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
2) a user on a Debian system not knowing this goes to Mozilla IRC with a Firefox problem (this has already happened)
3) No one can solve the Bug... only to find it is an unofficial patch made or nto made by Debian
4) User complains that Firefox sucks because its not the same across systems
5) Brand is tarnished
6) Rinse. Repeat.
If you don't want to follow the guidelines, and follow your own way of doing things... change the name, or risk damaging the whole projects reputation. If I know Firefox works a certain way, I go to a new system and something doesn't work quite right, well guess what I'm not going to be happy. It's starts with the logo... but where does it end?
That's extremely childish.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds, though hes never told Debian, Fedora Project, Ubuntu, Gentoo, RedHat, Linspire, Xandros, SuSE, that they couldn't ship a patched kernel and still call it Linux (pretty much every Linux distro adds patches to the kernel they ship).
Get with the program? Are you serious? Should we not patch Linux either? How 'bout X?
You should read Matthew Garrett's recent blog entry about why it's a good thing (for the Mozilla Corp, Debian, and the user community at large) for Debian (or anybody else) to be allowed to distribute patches. http://mjg59.livejournal.com/68112.html
Also, you should probably read this post to the Fedora devel list that shows that Mozilla's trademark policies are a real problem not just for Debian but for other distributors as well.
noah
Actually the Linux kernel is forked all the time, and is generally changed far more than any distro changes Firefox. Most every single Linux distro out there doesn't ship the vanilla Linux kernel as released by Linus. Debian, Fedora, RHEL, Gentoo, SuSE, Mandrake, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Linspire, etc all ship modified (sometimes VERY modified, on an old version of RHEL when they were still using 2.4, they back ported LOADS of patches from 2.6) versions of the Linux kernel.
Here's the problem: Suppose Mozilla were to give Debian full control, Debian patches the hell out of it, and people say "Firefox sucks! It crashes all the time on Debian!" Now, suppose Debian gave Mozilla full control, Mozilla doesn't allow Debian-specific patches required to make it work properly, so people say "Debian sucks! Firefox crashes all the time on it, but not on Ubuntu!"
Both of them have legitimate complaints.
One big deal: A newbie coming over from Windows looking for FF plus plugins/extensions won't find it, and won't have a clue that IceWeasel is really Firefox. They should've at least attempted to make it clear that it's still Firefox, it's just Debian-specific.
I'd have to go with tradition here. Distros get to release derivative versions, and still call them by the original name. In return, distros do the best to make everything play nice, and generally will listen to reasonable requests -- for instance, Gentoo removed the ebuild that built Cedega (then WineX) from the CVS, because although it was technically legal (they allow CVS access, but charge for prebuilt packages), it made it just as easy, if not easier, for Gentoo users to use the free (CVS) version than to subscribe.
Distros have to keep in mind that users will just go and get upstream by themselves if the distro gets it wrong, or they'll switch to another distro that gets it right. Upstream has to keep in mind that if they refuse to cooperate with distros, they won't get distributed, so they should at least make an attempt to play nice with distros and other packages.
In this case, neither is willing to allow full control, and both are paranoid that the other side will tarnish their good name. Because of this mutual stubbornness, both sides lose out. I will likely never prefer Debian over Ubuntu again, and not just for this reason.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That's something very likely to happen. The real power of free and open source software always was and is what happens with forks. After all, that's how evolution works. An IceWeasel (and no, I did not vote for this name) being an improved, faster and even more secure browser than it's parent can easily be adopted not just by other Linux distributions, but also by MacOS (and even Windows!) users. It always begins with compatibility problems (incompatible code, license or personalities) and often creates the better software product. Let's support it and help make it strong. I vote for a full fork and substantial improvement. I would also invite all MozDevs to join IceWeasel, where a real free and open source browser will be done without "corporate governance". Greetings, Chris
"An operating system must operate."