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IceWeasel — Why Closed Source Wins
engtech writes, "There's been some hype about the Debian fork of FireFox called IceWeasel. Politics aside, this is a bad idea because it fragments the user base, divides the focus, and opens the path for Microsoft and Internet Explorer 7 to regain marketshare."
Just like how Firefox fragmented the Mozilla userbase?
Exactly *how*, is Microsoft going to capitalize on a fracture of Firefox... within *Debian*? This doesn't touch the userbase that is competing with IE etc whatsoever.
The point of open source software is to allow users the freedom to modify the code to meet their needs. If you restrict users to one single unmodified browser for the sake of unity then we have met the enemy and he is us.
I swear I didn't know it was loaded...
After stepping back for a moment, however, I realized that the problem isn't as complex as it seems. In fact, I think it highlights something I've been saying for a while: Package systems under Linux are a broken concept.
When I was working on the Linux Desktop Distribution of the Future article, I received quite a bit of criticism for calling the package management systems a major source of breakage. In the follow-up, I was forced to point out that complete system packaging creates a massive, monolithic code base:
What we're seeing here is a legal extension of that same problem. By integrating the software into the codebase, Debian is attempting to take legal responsibility for the software. Yet the software provider (Mozilla) is already handling that responsibiity, and does not wish to give it up. On any other operating system, the binaries would get bundled (or not at all, if they're too untrustworthy) as a self-contained application, and the software provider would be allowed to continue handling updates. End of story.
In this case, Debian wants this software to be managed like all the other software they manage. Which means that taking responsibility becomes easier for them, rather than allowing the software producer to handle their own software. While this theoretically allows for a more cohesive system, that cohesiveness only goes as far as the packages checked into Debian's repository. Mozilla should be outside of that repository, but any software that's not in the repository is not well supported by the packaging system. Ergo, the process breaks down.
That's just my thoughts, anyway. I'm sure many will disagree. Loudly. And rudely. Oh well.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
How does this make Debian users use IE?
Great Intellect...
No, the problem will be relegated to people who use Linux, and more specifically, Debian and derivatives (I guess). Issues with extensions and themes not working for whatever reasons and so on are possible, I suppose, but people who use Firefox on other platforms wouldn't even see Iceweasel at all.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
That is a disturbing logo.
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
Debian's goals are to quickly patch security problems, and to backport fixes to versions declared stable for the benefit of their users.
Both these goals a) good, useful, helpful, and worthwhile, and b) in conflict with the wishes of the Mozilla Corporation.
Perhaps Mozilla could give a little here, instead of Debian. Hmm?
Debian can't carry the browser in their distribution under the "Firefox" name if they are to have any ability to tune it for their distribution or to fix bugs before the Firefox team makes their own release.
The software will be essentially identical to Firefox. I think we may see other distributions doing the same thing, as it's just not tenable for ANY distribution to contain software that it can't service.
And then hopefully we'll see the Firefox team go back to the policy they negotiated with the Debian organization only a year ago, before their new .com folks took charge, which was that they would agree to
trust some people to modify the code and not make a fuss about it.
The author of the quoted piece is being absurd to say this is "Why closed-source wins". It's not about fragmenting the user base, it doesn't have much effect on the brand and won't be very visible to naive users. It's just turning an obnoxious trademark policy that is flagrantly in conflict with the purportedly Open Source nature of the product on its head.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I am a proud IE-on-Debian user and there are millions* like me!
e
http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Pag
*0.00005 millions
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Hey those what 10,000 debian desktop machines will really mess things up for Firefox.
I am a Linux user but let us all get a grip. Firefox on Linux is a tiny blip... Firefox on windows is where what scares Microsoft.
Even then Suse, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu, and Linspire all use Firefox.
So I would rate this news as two yawns and a stretch.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The Mozilla Foundation doesn't have a problem with Debian modifying FireFox. What they have a problem with is Debian modifying FireFox fairly significantly, yet continuing to call the product "FireFox". FireFox(tm) is a specific codebase, maintained by the Mozilla Foundation. I think they have every right to ask Debian to rename their fork, so that end users are not confused, thinking that bugs in Iceweasel are general FireFox bugs (in some cases, they may be, in other cases, not).
I don't see anything wrong with asking someone who forks your codebase to use a different name to avoid confusion. What's the problem with that?
Plus, there is this thing about Trademark law. If you don't actively police it, you can lose the right to the mark.
As I understand it Debian does contribute patches back to Mozilla. But Debian wants to backport security fixes to versions of Firefox that Moz. Foundation no longer supports. I'm pretty sure this is true.
As I understand it Mozilla used to let them call these versions "Debian Firefox" but now they don't anymore. I'm not entirely sure this is quite right. Also there's a DFSG issue that I don't remember the details of.
Mozilla Foundation doesn't have to "deal with" Iceweasel at all, except to respond to all of this publicity. This looks "big-picture bad" to some people but to Debian keeping the stable branch secure is more important than Firefox advocacy. In other words, the "small-picture" disagreements that made this happen are actually the big picture.
For most users there's not much of a reason to use package management for a program like Firefox. It's frequently-updated and for most people frequently-used, and it has an auto-update system if you use the official binaries. People will usually want the updated version. For people that have a good reason to stick with a really old version, or who don't use the browser enough to keep it updated independently of other software Iceweasel gives them their security backports. And I can understand why MoFo wouldn't want their trademark applied to software that's maintained by Debian.
Debian releases are slow. Debian security patches are lightning fast.
If it is to be renamed then why not do it with some reference to the reason. A name like FreeFox or similar would at least maintain symbolic connection to the parent while underscoring that it is a wholly non-proprietary distribution of that parent. 'IceWeasel' sounds directly antagonistic of FireFox itself. If FireFox is hot, then it's alternative must be cold. It itself reads as a childishly extremist 'reaction' to what should otherwise be understood as a wise and considered move, for real and sane reasons.
The sheer lack of foresight amazes me. For years afterward we'll be hearing damaging myths that "FireFox doesn't install on Linux". Newbies coming into IRC to ask how to install FireFox will be pointed to what's later knows as the longest running $TOPIC in history. 'IceWeasel' just adds needless noise for all those millions considering switching to a Linux OS. FireFox is arguably the most important FOSS application for the desktop, if only because of it's notoriety. The name itself is larger than the software it represents. fscking with this reveals new depths of disregard for the adoption of Desktop Linux more generally.
Except that the Mozilla developers work on what they want to do, not what you want them to do. Take a look at bug 33654 - TEXTAREA incorrectly applying ROWS= and COLS=. This was reported in 2000 (yes, 6 years ago) and makes forms not line up properly. If you were to fix this, you couldn't technically distribute your fixed version, because the firefox license prohibits it. Hence, iceWeasel.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I hear this repeated a lot. It's not true. If you allow your mark to become generic you can lose your right to it. Firefox is not at risk of this happening. Google is. You can be selective about enforcement as long as you don't allow the mark to become generic.
Debian has handled this problem, for years, by having an official-use and an un-official-use logo for their own distribution. This allows people to package the program with modifications and still use consistent branding.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Except trolls nobody seems to disagree with you in that thread (when I started writing this post), so i feel I need to explain why you arguments are bogus instead of modding you down.
Since every package modifies the base system, the only way to prove that a package will work is to test it against every possible package configuration available!
Each package is independant with others except with its own dependencies. Those dependencies happen to be linear : for P packages, nP total dependencies, with n an integer independant of the number of packages. It's the job of a Debian package maintainer to check the dependencies are fulfilled and working : each maintener just needs to check n dependencies. That's part of the job people are doing to move a new version of a package from sid (unstable) to testing. I will add that chain of dependencies are irrelevant : if A needs B and B needs C, maintainer of A checks his program working against B, while it's the duty of the maintainer of B to check his program works with C. The only cross-dependancies are for kernel-mode code, that is only drivers.
In fact it's better than the windows "DLL hell", because the state of the system is known (for a Debian stable for exemple), while on MS Windows... Your program has been developped and tested for DirectX 8, will it work with DirectX 9 ? No way to know what the state of the user's system will be (and no developper includes DirectX as a static dependency, it isn't even possible). It's no wonder that most OSes are using repositories (Linux, BSD, QNX, BeOS with software wallet, that one being somewhat different IIRC).
any software that's not in the repository is not well supported by the packaging system.
You seem to ignore that there isn't a single central repository. Want Opera browser ? Just add http://deb.opera.com/opera/ in your repositories list, and you get the official binary matching your version of Debian, checked against it.
If something is not clear, feel free to ask for details.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.