Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
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.