Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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?
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...
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.
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..
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
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)
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
They waited until an inconvenient time to improve the chances that Ubuntu would agree to their demands rather than changing the browser.
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.