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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
Summary, hopefully before anyone gets a chance to 'blame' Mozilla or 'blame' Debian over nothing:
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 Debian aren't going to call it Firefox.
No villains, and everyone lives hapily ever after. The end.
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.
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.
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.
Debian really had zero options here folks. Moz Corp's new policy is simple. "Nobody releases a browser called Firefox except us or those who allow us absolute control over their releases. Period, zero exceptions." So far RedHat, SUSE and Ubuntu have agreed to cede control over ALL modifications, including prior approval of security patches to Moz Corp. Obviously Debian couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't have done anything of the sort. Thus IceWeasel comes to Debian.
I already made the change earlier in the year. Done right FF plugins still work so no big deal.
Democrat delenda est
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
Sorry, looks like I picked the wrong tab to paste in there. This IceWeaselIcon wiki page has several drafts.
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
- Matt Groening
Simpsons, Futurama, Life in Hell
What you fail to understand is the liabilities involved in letting another organization use a proprietary logo.
If the unauthorized use of logos were not prosecuted by a company I could do lots of fun things. For example, I could repackage the gimp, throw photoshop's splash image in it and call it photoshopper. Maybe the name of my company would be AdobeHut too. Better still, I'll put a "circle R" next to all of it and make it look official.
If Adobe doesn't throw every last lawyer at me, then lots of other people could do it. The courts would see it as essentially public domain. Meanwhile, I can drag Adobe into court for using my logo. Crazy right?
Both parties are doing the right thing here. I doubt it really consumed very much time/energy on the part of the project as these kinds of details must be addressed and that's about it.
Stories like this tend to make a figurative fire where there is none.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Looks like Debian is getting burned by its own arrogance.
The GPL-3 allows the copywrite holder to place certain restrictions on the licensee's use of the software, for instance no military/weapons use (don't like your stuff being used; Freedom's a biach isn't it). Restrictions on what parts of the code the use may or may not change; requiring links to download the source be maintained.
Now they being hit, once again, by restrictions the copywrite holders are placing on the distribution: if you distribute software that we own the copywrite to, you must maintain our branding. Sounds reasonable, the application is called Firefox and the logos and branding are part of the application; after all the copywrite holder does have the right to say what's part of application, (certain exceptions may apply in the case of illegal monopolies, and fraudlent activities). The usage restrictions also don't seem out of line with Debain's official logo usage.
http://www.debian.org/logos/Looks like the Mozilla Foundation is pretty much in line with the Debian usage here.
So the Debian developers are free to change the code however they want, but they can't call it Firefox and they can't use the Firefox logos.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
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.
Yep. Mozilla has been on both sides -- they had to rename Phoenix to Firebird, then Firebird to Firefox.
And Debian's been on both sides, too, when they forced the DCC to drop "Debian" (originally it was the "Debian Common Core Alliance.")
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".
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?
The Debian Common Core Alliance(DCCA) was already slapped down by the Debian Project for the unauthorized use of "Debian" in the DCCA's name. Oh, the irony!!