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."

Comments

Iceweasel?

[Blakey Rat]

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.)

Re:Iceweasel?

[Kelson]

Mozilla has exactly that. There's a compile switch that lets you choose between an officially branded Firefox with the official name, icons and logos, or an unofficial version with the name of your choice and a generic icon.

The "problem" was that Debian didn't want to use this switch and go the unofficial route. Instead, they wrote a patch that would mix-and-match the official name with the unofficial icons and logos. Mozilla, having consulted their lawyers, said "Wait, you can't do that! It has to be one way or the other." They went back and forth, and finally Debian settled on going all unofficial.

Re:Iceweasel?

[thebluesgnr]

Debian never wanted to go unofficial, they did so to comply with the DFSG. The Mozilla Foundation was aware that they were doing that, and they authorized Debian. Until recently, when the Mozilla Corporation changed their minds and filed a bug against Debian.

Re:Iceweasel?

[SirTalon42]

Previously the Mozilla Foundation said it was perfectly fine for Debian to release a patched version of Firefox and to keep the name, and to use the non-official artwork (the artwork that appears if you don't run make with the --enable-official-branding switch), but out of the blue the new Mozilla Corporation decided they don't want Debian to modify Firefox at ALL and be able to keep the name (unless they submit all patches to MC to have them 'approved' for their Debian's release, the problem with that is that when Debian backports security updates they wouldn't be able to release the fixed packages ASAP, they would have to wait around for the Mozilla Corporation to get around to checking it and letting them).

Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Summary

[snowgirl]

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!

Re:Summary

[jmv]

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".

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, ... 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?).

Re:Summary

[mad.frog]

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)?

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.

Re:Summary

[PygmySurfer]

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.

Re:Summary

[Mr. Jaggers]

Nope, it's pretty clear from the article that that logos and associated graphics are the issue. Trademark use conditions require that they be included. The Debian Free Software Guidelines require that they not be included. Thus, Mozilla Corporation postures some, and also attaches other strings; like the patch review & description, tagged subversion branch, prior approval of build conditions themselves, and inclusion of said graphics.

I agree with the rest of your statement, though, and I do think that this business is a big waste of developer time and effort. Now it is really more difficult to comply adequately, depending on the nature and volume of Debian's patches.

If one were to invite prognostication from me, I'd say that this sort of response will grow, as Mozilla Corporation flexes it's muscle over trademark enforcement. I'd guess that Debian, Ubuntu, and any other distro striving to be truly free, will probably do something like perform conditions 1 and 3 anyway (publicly submit patches w/descriptions, as well as tag their divergent branch), will probably exert the GPL and use whatever build time configurations they think are best, and lastly, come up with their own artwork and graphics.

That will further their goal of using & distributing free, high-quality software (without non-free strings attached to binary data included in the final product) to their users. My guess is that creative icon-ing will make this change remarkeably less noticeable to end users. After all, there is no reason that iceweasel (et. al.) couldn't use the same (or similar) versioning and advertise itself as being 'firefox compatible' as far as extensions & page rendering go. Not to mention, that I seriously doubt it would be a violation of trademark to install a 'firefox', or 'mozilla-firefox' symbolic link (in a very /etc/alternatives sort of way). In Debian and Ubuntu, it would be the 'sensible-browser', most likely. Folks could always still just go download the shell-archive installer from mozilla.org any time they want to and drop their own out-of-package-management version of the one true firefox.

On the side of Mozilla Corp., they will either decide that this dilutes the brand, and just bend to unify everyone, or they won't care and will drop strictly-all-free sorts of GNU/Linux distributions, assuming that the market share they bring is minimal.

And that will be that. Just my guess, anyway. If Mozilla Corp is smart, they'll exclude the user-agent string from trademark issues so that at least usage statistics will show a unified product, rather ruining firefox's growing usage statistics rank in a schism.

Re:Really sad...

[squiggleslash]

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.

Debian needs to relax

[Foofoobar]

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).

The problem is at Moz's end

[jmorris42]

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.

Matt Groening - Love is ...

[khasim]

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

As a sort-of-almost-not-quite-yet sdk

[bahwi]

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".

When Firefox ceases to be Firefox...

[9mind]

1) Debian doesn't want to use the offical patch system (i.e wait on Firefox's update approval process, etc.)
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?