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Mozilla Demanding Firefox Display EULA In Ubuntu

Posted by kdawson on from the branding-vs.-freedom dept.

TRS-80 writes "Users of the upcoming Ubuntu release, Intrepid Ibex, are being confronted with an EULA the first time they launch Firefox. Mark Shuttleworth says 'Mozilla Corp asked that this be added in order for us to continue to call the browser Firefox... I would not consider an EULA as a best practice. It's unfortunate that Mozilla feels this is absolutely necessary' and notes there's an unbranded 'abrowser' package available. Many of the comments say Ubuntu should ditch Firefox as this makes it clear it's not Free Software, hence unsuitable for Ubuntu main, and just ship Iceweasel or Epiphany, the GNOME browser." A few comments take Canonical to task for agreeing to Mozilla's demand to display an EULA without consulting the community.

8 of 785 comments (clear)

  1. EULA is quite important by Zurtex · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Firefox EULA outlines some quite important issues, not least of which is that it doesn't ship with a warranty. But what might be quite concerning to some, and is made clearish in the EULA, is that Firefox by default sends data to whatever 3rd party (Google) runs their anti-phishing. It's all to do with storing partial hashes rather than website addresses on the computer and in theory the 3rd party can't do anything useful with it and are legally required to not keep it. But some people still might find this quite concerning. More information on how Mozilla tries to make the data sent useless here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=419117

    1. Re:EULA is quite important by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The 'no warranty' issue could be shown during ubuntu's installation as a whole, as it applies to everything in ubuntu. As for sending data to google - it shouldn't present this as a eula; it should present it as a very clear /option/ at the first run; just like IE7 does.

  2. EULA Contents: by nog_lorp · · Score: 5, Informative

    EULA: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/legal/eula/firefox-en.html

    Summary:
    Preamble - notice that the source is available and this license does not apply to the source.
    1. License Grant - This license gives you the right to use the executable provided by Mozilla Corp.
    2. Termination - if you breach this license, S1 is voided.
    3. Proprietary Rights - again, the source code is not proprietary. The branding logos are, you don't have the right to modify them.
    4. Disclaimer of Warranty
    5. Limitation of Liability
    6. Export Controls - you must comply with teh law.
    7. US Govt End Users - 2 sentences of legal references related to employees of the US Govt using Firefox.
    8. Misc, nothing interesting at all. This agreement constitutes the agreement...

    Sounds like Mozilla Corp doing the bare minimum to cover their asses, in a responsible fashion, without actually affecting end users at all.

  3. Re:Fair enough by FooBarWidget · · Score: 4, Informative

    "The answer of course is B."

    Is that so? I've seen plenty of people who criticize that open source software will never succeed on the desktop until it's more business-like.

  4. Re:Fair enough by m50d · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's not the way it happened. It wasn't the Mozilla contact, it was debian's own people, pointing out that their deal with mozilla was against debian principles - debian does not allow itself to accept licenses which are specific to debian, believing this could lead to it distributing non-free stuff. (After all, that agreement meant that a user couldn't take debian, call it something else, and distribute it as a new distro, because they wouldn't have that agreement for the mozilla trademarks).

    --
    I am trolling
  5. EULA summary by Restil · · Score: 4, Informative

    1. We're letting you use the software. Have fun.
    2. If you don't want to use the software, don't.
    3. We need to protect our trademarks, so if you change something and redistribute it, don't call it Mozilla or Firefox.
    4. No warranty, get over it.
    5. We're not responsible for anything that goes wrong. This actually is just a paraphrase of section 4, and like section 4, we've stated it in ALL CAPS, so you'll be sure to pay attention to it.
    6. There might be laws about sending this software out of the country. Try to obey them.
    7. If you're using this in a US government environment, there are certainly many laws that will regulate its use. Please pay attention to them.
    8. We're doing it the California way, the UN will not be involved (thank goodness), this agreement is written in English, you can give this (unmodified) license and product to someone else, and we won't mind.

    There. The important parts.

    -Restil

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    Play with my webcams and lights here
  6. Re:Making Ubuntu Accessible? by xenocide2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The problem is that the official icon is more usable than the community edition icon, which still has limitations. Ubuntu didn't always ship the branded icon, but it's clear that nobody realizes at first that the firefox quicklaunch icon is a web browser. It's like a joke that requires you to call it a "world wide web broswer", or remember what WWW is supposed to stand for. But hell if I know what to do about it. A page in the NYtimes with iceweasel icons promoting open source web browsers?

    It's really incredibly sad what they're doing; phoenix was an unofficial project and they had to rename the project twice in order to make this branding thing possible again.

    --
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    Open Source Sysadmin

  7. Re:Fair enough by JohnFluxx · · Score: 4, Informative

    Go vote on the bug report then:

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439604