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Mozilla Demanding Firefox Display EULA In Ubuntu
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.
It's just making Ubuntu more familiar to ex-Windows users.
Blindly clicking through meaningless and offensive EULAs is standard practice in the Windows world.
Firefox is a trademark, Mozilla need to defend that trademark, and it's in Ubuntu's interests to provide a browser that people have heard about, rather than "Iceweasel", which they haven't. That, and I doubt Mozilla's EULA would be that onerous; the only people who are going to be truly upset at this are the people who hear "EULA" and kneejerk a negative response.
I write bullshit
I honestly think that this won't make any difference. Personally, I think this is just Mozilla being picky, what would it matter whether or not the EULA is shown during installation, no one is going to read it anyway. Besides, anyone that actually cared about FF3's EULA would read it themselves.
Proudly posting without RTFA.
I wonder what further bad will come out of Mozilla being too corporate. It starts to look like an elegant way of getting a paycheck and less like about making a good browser.
It is inconcievable that Mozilla would face any legal problems due to a lack of EULA.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
In any negotiation, it's important to think about one's alternatives. At least in the open source case, there's a good alternative -- recompiling without the restrictive / undesirable parts. Sure, branding power will suffer, but this community in particular will understand.
Ever heard of BATNA?
--
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The iceweasel link should be http://packages.debian.org/sid/iceweasel
The EULA is a new thing with Firefox 3 it seems.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
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
The EULA covers others things/features too, such as allowing Mozilla to check whether the site is a known malware site or not.
Without an EULA/something allowing Mozilla to do that, I would assume the privacy advocates/lawyers would be up in arms about.
Maybe Ubuntu could follow the Fedora lead (again) - Fedora 9, upon the first launch of Firefox 3 displayed a page informing of the features that required permission and a simple request that if the user disagreed, go into settings and turn them off...
I wonder why they're being so difficult. Firefox already isn't called like that in my OS for over a year anymore, it's "Gran Paradisio", and firefox 2 was something else that I already forgot (and don't care what it was again either). What bothers me more is that the logo is an empty globe instead of the better looking one with the fox. But so again, I wonder why they're doing that, while this isn't a problem for most other software like gimp, pidgin, inkscape, audacious, openoffice.org, KDE, filezilla, and so on. I mean, what does mozilla do so different that they have this trademark problem and the others don't?
if you're talking about free as in beer, then no it doesn't preclude it from being free software. but when people discuss free software in the open source sense they mean free as in speech.
EULAs, ostensibly, force users to sign away copy owner & fair use rights. such contracts go directly against the spirit of open source and free software.
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.
...is to provide a "genuine firefox advantage" feature, that will check if your Firefox (tm) installation is genuine, and show a nasty transparent box in the corner of the screen...
I myself find EULAs extremely offensive. I have no problem with a distribution license, particularly in light of the fact it's required by copyright law if one wishes to grant (re)distribution rights. But the idea of a license accompanying a piece of data which governs its use is not something I can, in good conscience, support.
I say fork. EULAs have no place in a Linux distribution. We have come so far as a community. Why back down on our principles now?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Bug 439604 - FireFox 3.0 requires agreement of non-Free EULA
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439604
Maybe if a few people vote for this bug, it will bring it to the attention of whoever thought it was a good idea in the first place...
When Mozilla asked Debian to stop redistributing Firefox, many people complained about Debian being too idealistic. (I.e. they really didn't look into the issue at all.) Let's hear the same chorus now about Ubuntu! (Hint: It's not Debian or Ubuntu that is the problem here folks!)
You're thinking beer, perhaps? Forcing end users to agree to a EULA before using a particular piece of software explicitly claims limitations on that software. I don't believe Opera (which isn't free either) required an agreement to a EULA. Though they of course retain all their copyrights and trademarks, they are non intrusive about it.
I haven't read Mozillas take on it, and why they require it to use their trademark. But it's annoying. One reason I prefer FOSS is the lack of EULAs, serial number entry and general 'stay out of the users way' attitude.
I have to admit that I scoffed when debian spun iceweasel, thinking them overly concerned with *any* encumbrance. I'm glad they did now. I don't care what name my browser takes, if it's compatible with the addons I use and works without trying to annoy me... even if it's just the first time it's used.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
The average users doesn't use linux. The average user doesn't care if they click a EULA before running firefox.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Its typical for people to use brand names in regular conversation without even recognizing that they are brand names, it doesn't diminish the value of it. It was a stupidity of Mozilla to force a EULA on the Firefox name. For example, whenever I talk about Kleenex, Nintendo, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, etc, people know I am talking about a brand name and it doesn't diminish the value. For Mozilla to force an EULA is pure stupidity.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Agreed. Python is a trademark. And it isn't even GPLed. And it even comes installed on Ubuntu by default. How come I don't need to accept a Python EULA?
Hell, Ubuntu itself is a friggin' trademark. I don't need to accept a EULA when I install Ubuntu.
OTOH, the trademark holders of Python and Ubuntu don't require its users to accept EULAs.
Anyway, I wonder if this means that Firefox is violating the GPL? After all, Firefox itself is offered under the GPL (and other licenses) and uses GPL code, right? Doesn't the GPL state that you can't force additional restrictions?
My blog
The trademark issues with Firefox are not new. I don't think, that it is a big problem as long as I get a choice to use it or not. There are plenty of alternatives. I personally gave up on it some time ago.. Well, on the rebranded Iceweasel anyway. Pulling it up when I need to but using another browser most of the time.
Free Software, specifically copyleft software, only places restrictions on distribution. "End users" should never be troubled with an "I agree" button. Non free extentions and auto updates can be handled with permission dialogs when they happen and should never confront a free software user out of the box. Trade mark issues should be resolved at the distribution level, if at all.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...and wrongly so, because GPL doesn't cover use, just distribution.
Except you are extending FOSS to something it isn't. Firefox compiled binaries with or without EULA have no affect on the licensing of the code itself. Since Firefox's code is in fact FREE (as in freedom) and FREE (as in beer) saying it isn't FOSS is disingenuous at best. Firefox's is as free as any other open-source project (Unless you want to get in to the BSD vs. GPL freedom debate), but Mozilla has every right to put an EULA on compiled binaries, which again has no affect on the distribution license for the source code and is mentioned right at the top of the EULA.
I thought the idea of Ubuntu was to get linux adoption up - and by getting rid of Firefox, it'll just be more difficult to get people to migrate... Besides, displaying a EULA is common practice - maybe just have a big, blanket EULA when installing ubuntu - which covers all software included..
The unbranded package will have the same functionality as Firefox, and Ubuntu can cut most of the ad money Mozilla gets from Google by using it as its primary search engine. I say this is a stupid move by Mozilla, antagonizing users for no apparent gain. Besides, I still prefer Konqueror.
To do list for Windows
when people discuss free software in the open source sense they mean free as in speech.
No they don't.
If they did, it would be released into the public domain. Instead, it is copyrighted, with the restrictions in place relating to what that particular community thinks is an acceptable "price" for use, modification, and distribution rights. Sometimes it's truly free, like that users can do what they want in terms of using GPL software, but other times, it's not, like when you want to assert a right to distribution.
The major function of a EULA is notice. The license grant and restrictions is one or two sections of a greater document. The whole notion of a 'EULA' in general is an attempt to draw a false distinction between some kinds of SLAs and others, and to give the peanut gallery a chance to mangle semantics of utterly zero legal significance. They're all essentially the same. They all take the same form and become binding the same way. Yes, even the GPL. It's a fairly standard structure: recitals, definitions, license grant, license restriction, term and termination, warranty, liability, litigation provisions, and miscellaneous (trademark/patent license terms, export terms, international law issues, etc.).
They differ only in content and the nature of the restrictions. They're all license agreements. A license is just the grant and term. What an "end user" is or whether that's the scope of the license is up to the particular agreement, and people are entirely too sloppy with their use of the term 'EULA'--to the point that it is meaningless.
All of this is to say nothing about the obvious difference between the license on the use of the source code and the license on the use of the branded binary, which are two separate products.
but Mozilla has every right to put an EULA on compiled binaries
This isn't really about binaries, it's about branding and trademark. Since Ubuntu likely want to use the Firefox name and branding (for familiarity), they have to comply with Mozilla's demands. If they would strip the branding and call it something else, Mozilla would have no case demanding an EULA, regardless of whether the application would be distributed as binaries or source code.
Gimp. And too many others.
Are you people that sad and angry that you'll complain about a ONE TIME eula popping up when opening the application?
Really now? This is a big deal / problem how exactly? Good lord, it's a EULA not a fricking activation window.
Ridiculous.
If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: Copyright (C) This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html#howto
Not only that, but as you state, no Windows user would think twice about clicking through a EULA. As a long time Ubuntu user, I myself never realized until today that there are no EULAs present.
but this is a bit much.
I remember when Mozilla first decided to add an EULA to Firefox, and the coders weren't sure what the point was, except that a lot of other Windows software also had them.
My worry is, is this going to extend to the Firefox that is on the live CD (which will affect people more, due to the limitations of running anything on a live CD)?
I think the Mozilla guys are asshats about this. I'm surprised that they felt this was absolutely necessary.
Looks like the lawyers have taken over mozilla.org.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
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
Play with my webcams and lights here
Its the Firefox EULA,
Its an EULA, thats all there is to know. In the Free Software world there is no need for an EULA because if you obtained the software legally, you already have the right to use it, EULAs are only there to restrict your rights, if they don't do that, they are meaningless, if they to it then its no longer Free Software. Which is why there should never be an EULA in Free Software.
I for one like that I can install Linux on a new box and have it work and not like in Windows where I have to click through dozens of EULAs before the system gets into a usable state.
The EULA for Firefox deals with the use of the trademark "Firefox," only. In order to keep the trademark, they have to enforce it. If the EULA didn't exist, Mozilla Corporation could lose the sole right to call a browser "Firefox." Iceweasel etc do not claim trademark, and thus don't have an EULA. But I can just make a piece of shit browser and call it "Iceweasel" and nobody can stop me. The EULA doesn't place a restriction with what you can do with the software itself, it only deals with the name and logo. You are agreeing to a license not to abuse the name and logo of Firefox, not anything to do with the actual code.
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
eat my ass you homos
You're requesting a bunch of males intimately interact with your ass. Everybody else is the 'homo'?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Where you might just be agreeing that they're not responsible if you cause a Global Thermonuclear War by using the browser. Seriously, the point of the EULA is not to restrict the user as far as I can tell. It's to protect the Mozilla Foundation.
There is reason an EULA forces a user to give up rights, and the Firefox EULA doesn't really impose any such restrictions outside of some that are common sense or required by law in the country that Mozilla operates in.
It also informs you that some data that you may consider private is sent to the anti-phishing system servers, which is GOOD for the user to know so they can make an informed choice.
Also, if you look at GPL v3, it actually requires that you notify the user of some of the things in the EULA at startup. See: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=963567&cid=25002187
Its unfair to consider are EULAs bad, they can grant the user rights just as much as they can take them away, just like the copyright and distribution license on the source code.
GPL grants many rights and includes restrictions and most people accept that it is a reasonable distribution license and have no problem using it and meeting the requirements of it, even though some source code licenses are horrible and don't let you even see the code in some cases.
You're responding with a kneejerk reaction based on the typical evil EULA, why not take a more reasonable approach and read the EULA before you decide its evil.
Guns can be used to kill people. They can also be used to save people. They still have their place in our world when used in a certain way. EULAs are no different. They can be good, they can be bad, and they also do have a place in the world when used in a fair manner.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Wait. If accepting the EULA means agreeing not to abuse the Mozilla Firefox brand, does that mean I can abuse it if I don't agree? Of course not.
This EULA serves no purpose, Mozilla is basically asking Ubuntu to "say uncle".
But... the future refused to change.
Man, oh man, I do NOT understand the problem here. If you want the government to protect your name, you have to play by their rules. One of the rules is that you MUST, MUST, MUST control the quality of the software distributed under that name. Whether you like it or not, Mozilla feels that they must use a EULA to protect the quality of software named Firefox(tm).
Don't like it? Run Iceweasel, whatever the hell that is. It may be something, it may be nothing, you have no idea because they're not defending it as a trademark.
Trademarks are perfectly compatible with Open Source and Free Software. Don't like Mozilla's rules for calling it Firefox? Fine. Call it Iceweasel and you then become responsible for the quality (or not) of the software.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Another poster points out how benign the actual agreement is; so the upshot of this is a first-time clickthrough.
Why haven't people revolted against the "you're submitting a secure form" for the first time or "you're navigating to an insecure site" for the first time warnings and crap that Mozilla and others have had for ages. They're *far* more annoying than an Eula, IMHO, as there seems to be a few of them...
Such a non-issue, I doubt it'll hurt them seriously. And for those seriously freaked out, Iceweasel is an easy workaround, that makes everyone happy.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
They waited until an inconvenient time to improve the chances that Ubuntu would agree to their demands rather than changing the browser.
I'm not surprised that Mozilla has this stance at all.
Firefox was originally called Phoenix, then Firebird; each name was ditched after some other company got all angry and litigious. With "Firefox" they trademarked it to save themselves from getting burned again; this action is in line with that end.
"Guns can be used to kill people. They can also be used to save people."
No, guns can only kill (or not-quite-lethally wound, if you're a *very* skilled and extremely lucky shot). That's why handgun safety rules say you should never point a gun at something you don't want dead.
The best case outcome is that in a combat situation, where one creature is about to die anyway, you can choose to kill something you don't care about; trade one life for another. That's the closest a gun can come to 'saving a life'.
And you can only get that fake 'life saving' effect if you are truly prepared to remain completely emotionally unattached to the impact of the death of the living creature you shot. Doing that doesn't come without psychological consequences.
A simple first aid kit, on the other hand - that can *really* save lives, in a non-zero-sum way.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
If you approach me with a knife and I pull out a pistol and you run away I have potentially saved my life. An open mind is a good thing.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I'm sorry, but isn't this something that Canonical alone should be agreeing to if they're the one's whose right to use Firefox's name and logo is at risk?
I don't see the point in forcing users to agree to this, just so some company that said users have no official relationship with can retain the right to use Firefox's name and logo.
As a Firefox user, I think this is idiotic.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
The EULA for Firefox deals with the use of the trademark "Firefox," only. In order to keep the trademark, they have to enforce it.
The EULA in question isn't any form of trademark enforcement. If anything it might be trying to make people aware that the marks /are/ in fact trademarks. The traditional way of doing this would be to accompany them with a TM or (R) depending on trademark status, not provide a bunch of legalese nobody in their right mind is going to read anyway.
Iceweasel etc do not claim trademark, and thus don't have an EULA.
"Iceweasel" might very well be a trademark. It might not be a /registered/ one but that doesn't not make it a trademark.
But I can just make a piece of shit browser and call it "Iceweasel" and nobody can stop me.
Not until after the fact anyway. The creators of Iceweasel most certainly could sue you for misappropriating their mark and they would stand a decent chance of winning.
You are agreeing to a license not to abuse the name and logo of Firefox, not anything to do with the actual code.
It is not necessary for people to agree not to abuse trademarks - they are forbidden from doing so whether they agree or not. If this were not the case I can assure you you'd see a lot of Mickey Mouse branded restaurants across the world.
It is altogether unclear what Firefox is trying to do with this EULA. Apart from trying to divest themselves of liability, the rest appears to be pointless blather.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Coca-Cola is one of the most heavily enforced trademarks in the world. That doesn't mean I have to accept a EULA every time I open a can of it. I don't see why Firefox is different from that.
You mean back to the good old days when the kernel could barely self-host and you had to bit edit to get things to boot off a IDE hard drive?
Ah, those were the days.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Only showing an EULA once is ridiculous.
1) As many have pointed out, most people will 'click-through' the 1st time they see a license, not reading it at all. Showing the license multiple times, maybe each startup, or maybe every 5 minutes, helps to ensure that users know their obligations as users, and don't infringe on Mozilla's God-given trademark.
2) What happens on internet Kiosks, libraries, schools, etc? You can't only show the EULA once, as the sys admin will be the only one to know of their obligations, and none of the real users will know.
3) With so much pop-up advertising in web CONTENT, is it really too much to ask for our web browser to start demanding some recognition as well?
I KNOW SOME PEOPLE ARE ALSO PISSED OFF AT MOZILLA'S USE OF ALL-CAPS IN THEIR LICENSE, BUT HONESTLY, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT IF IT SLOWS DOWN READING A BIT AND MAKES IT LOOK LIKE YOU'RE REALLY FUCKING SERIOUS ABOUT YOUR EULA, AS MOZILLA CLEARLY ARE?
I therefore argue for an EULA popup every 5 minutes.
Of course I myself will no longer be using Firefox. Back to konqueror I suppose. It would be good if someone would write some Gtk2 wrappers for webkit.
Right.
Mozilla cares about branding because they're trying to maintain a product image. They don't want people patching their code and redistributing it under their brand. Debian griped about this a lot when it came up last time, and because Mozilla stood their ground, Debian forked Firefox and called it Iceweasel.
A few months later, a Debian patch to OpenSSL was found to significantly reduce entropy, to the point where keys were easily guessable.
I think that's something everyone should think about when they blast Mozilla for their branding decisions.
> The EULA for Firefox deals with the use of the trademark "Firefox," only. In order to keep the trademark, they have to enforce it. If the EULA didn't exist, Mozilla Corporation could lose the sole right to call a browser "Firefox."
That is bullshit. Software were trademarked before EULAs existed, and they never once lost trademark because of the lack of EULA. A simple short splashscreen with Firefox(tm) is more than enough for trademark.
GPL is probably considered a redistribution license, but if someone runs afoul of it, it revokes the license a\nd thus is also a EULA. I know, sounds like a stretch, but remember you have to consider that we are talking about lawyers and judges here. They live in a different world where words don't necessarily mean what we might think they mean. I sure wish NYCountryLawyer would comment on this. He'd have the right spin.
They waited until an inconvenient time to improve the chances that Ubuntu would agree to their demands rather than changing the browser.
There are several Brainstorm ideas that propose a way of dealing with the EULA for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex release:
So far, the Iceweasel option seems to be the most popular by a large margin.
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