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Mozilla Nixes Firefox EULA Requirement
Less than a week ago, Mozilla asked (and Canonical relucantly agreed, in development versions of Intrepid Ibex) that users be required on first use to agree to a EULA before using Firefox. This drew lots of criticism, and Mozilla agreed that the requirement was flawed. Now, according to a story at Groklaw, the EULA requirement's been done away with. From the Groklaw article linked: "Bottom line: Now, you can install and use Firefox without having to agree to a EULA. The services have been separated out. If they were opt in instead of opt out, I'd be happier, but this is acceptable to me. There may be further tweaks, I understand, but I think it's time to acknowledge that Mozilla is behaving very well indeed now and demonstrating a desire to get this right."
by reading this post, you agree to mod me to +5, Informative.
If they had a desire to get this right, they would not have sprang a EULA requirement on Canonical this late into the release process (next Ubuntu release is in a couple of weeks). This is a reaction to the negative press they've been getting. Thanks, Slashdot!
As far as i remember, Debian kicked Firefox because its logo is non-free. So i guess it is not affected by these EULA changes.
No, unfortunately the problem with Debian is that the restrictive trademarks on the "Mozilla Firefox" name and icon conflict with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
Mozilla wouldn't allow Debian to put the name and logo on anything that wasn't built from unmodified source from Mozilla's servers. This would have prevented Debian from customizing, integrating, and maintaining older versions of Firefox (Mozilla's response was for Debian to stop using 1.x versions of Firefox even in stable).
Canonical came to some sort of agreement with Mozilla to allow Ubuntu to continue using the name and logo with their modifications. I never heard what exactly it took to come to such an agreement.
>Does this mean Debian can go back to using Mozilla/Firefox too?
Probably not. The issue that Debian had is with the restrictions on the Firefox name and logo. Mozilla didn't want people to change the code and then still call it "Firefox", which is a registered trademark. As far as I know, those restrictions have not gone away, they are just not requiring a first-run pop-up with EULA agreement.
Why is it that it took a major player like Canonical to get Mozilla to finally respond to their community?
Users can complain, but distros can do something about it by ganging up and shipping it rebranded only? Of course in the short term that's a minor issue for Mozilla but if it was established that Firefox on Linux == Iceweasel (or whatever, lousy name) and Linux becomes more popular through UMPCs and the like, Mozilla could stand to lose a lot of brand power and have no power to do anything about it. It'd be just like CentOS except the original isn't available, how long would it take for the new name to settle? Not long at all, I wager. After all, it'd still be the exact same browser down to the last bit, not like switching people to another browser. Mozilla is caving here because they got little to gain and everything to lose.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Probably not. The issue that Debian had is with the restrictions on the Firefox name and logo. Mozilla didn't want people to change the code and then still call it "Firefox", which is a registered trademark. As far as I know, those restrictions have not gone away, they are just not requiring a first-run pop-up with EULA agreement.
Yup, it's Windows vs Linux distribution meeting head on. On Windows they have the problem that people will take Firefox, include adware/malware/trojans/viruses and distribute it as Firefox since getting random .exe files from the Internet is par for the course anyway. On Linux I never saw that problem, everyone installs it from the repositories which have the real version. Since Debian will not take Debian-specific agreements, it follows that if Debian could use the trademark everyone else must be able to as well for both Linux and Windows versions. So to protect their Windows installers, they can not let Debian use their trademark. It's strange that Firefox is the only one to feel this problem strong enough to do it, then again they have a broad userbase that's not the most technically inclined compared to a lot of other developer/server OSS tools.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The trademark policy by Mozilla is restrictive in the sense that you can't take Firefox, make any modification you wish, and still call it "Firefox". This is not necessarily a bad thing, but in the end it was not compatible with the way Debian wished to do things. What was unfortunate is that permission had already been granted and Debian was acting in good faith when Mozilla entirely changed direction.
Mozilla expressly disallowed Debian to continue to maintain Firefox 1.5, which they are required to do for Debian stable by their social contract. More explicitly, Mozilla told Debian that they refused to review any patches which Debian might submit for products that Mozilla no longer maintained. Mozilla didn't seem to be interested in being reasonable on this point. Labeling their guidelines as "restrictive" refers to the set of rules that must be followed, not the instance where rules are being broken.
Have Active Directory? OpenOffice.org stores its settings in the user profile (Application Data, IIRC), and it's possible to set up a default user profile that is pulled from a network server.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/168475
I believe that Debian was prevented from accepting a similar agreement because it in some way conflicted with their ideology.
Not "in some way". It conflicts with an explicitly stated guideline, in particular,
8. License Must Not Be Specific to Debian.
If Debian can work out an agreement, that agreement needs to be with the entire free software community; the agreement must not be limited to something named Debian (after all, if the agreement becomes invalid when someone takes that component out of Debian, then by the general consensus, that component is not free).