The article is about future potential incompatibility of licenses between kernel and applications. Amount of code which floats between kernel and applications is pretty big and might have implications, since GPLv3 is stricter.
Also RTFA highlights what was already said before that in fact it would trash completely whatever Intellectual Property portfolios young F/LOSS companies have managed to put together - further inhibiting spread of F/LOSS.
Nobody is switching Linux kernel to GPLv3. That's old news and plain impossible.
They were started by FSF - so they inherently have the copyrights written off.
FSF provides legal protection against GPL violations to projects which have done so. That's why some project give up copyrights to FSF. You have to agree, that few US citizens can afford lawyer competent in software licensing.
Absolute freedom - everybody does what he wishes - is anarchy. Nothing surprising.
GPL tries to give everyone more freedom by restricting the freedom of the slick and sharp to take freedoms away from the less sophisticated.
Have you read what you have wrote? Are you from US? Are you listening speeches of George W. Bush often? Because he uses the same pattern: to stop wars, we need to wage a war.
Restricting people for sake of freedom? How more dumber it could be.
What you are trying in fact to say, is that GPL tries to establish system of compromises which leads to sustainable software ecosystem. Rules and discipline are must for any system to be sustainable in long term. But also, both rules and discipline has to be flexible so that system can survive cataclysms.
As sign that Stallman/FSF are not capable of building such system, you can take the fact, that they have never managed to produce usable OS kernel. In other words, they have not compromised enough. End of story.
It's no fun dodging debris falling off a poorly maintained, slow, overloaded truck in front.
So you think GPLv3 does it right? Prohibit trucks? And prohibit debris? That's just dumb. You cannot prohibit everything.
...we don't have to deal with unreasonable licensing nonsense.
As Linus has put it, people trust him precisely because they do not depend on him. The same goes for *BSD and BSD folks. We can trust BSD systems because we are not related. The only bond is common source code, which has least strings attached.
Stallman and his FSF tried to play his licensing games not once. There were two precedents, when Stallman tried to commit change from LGPL to GPL in glibc & gcc. Thanks God the change were spotted and patches were shot in mid air.
As long as SUSE/Novell, Red Hat and IBM employ many Linux, folks, I do not believe the change of license would occur: not because devels are afraid of losing the support, but because many of the developer feel that they owe something to supporting companies. IOW, the Linux devels have more friends in corporate world than in FSF.
At least now, many people start understanding what was Linus talking about decade ago, when he started dealing with FSF/GNU people and customized GPLv2 for the kernel. People who demand implicit trust are the people not to be trusted.
+10. C/C++ are most often used languages in real life. That's fact.
Java is also used - in data centers and in middle ware. IOW, precisely what I call niche: for every server in the world using Java there are at least ten running PHP or something else. And for every server out there - whatever it is running - there are lots of gadgets and embedded systems around us. PHP == C, embedded == C/C++. GCC is true king of the software world.
People like Java - so let them be. It is unfortunate that Sun still keep the stewardship of Java platform. I'd love to have stripped down Java, so that we could bundle Java applications with our own stack. But Sun doesn't allow to ship one particular version, nor stripped-down version: they do not like embedding (slave JVM inside other application - applets in browsers are notable exception), they want auto-updates (no way we are allowed to have updates from 3rd party), they want plugins, they want megabytes of useless stuff to be shipped. As my company stands, we are not allowed to include untested code - and no way we would be able to test all java libraries Sun includes. And Sun disallows us to ship subset. Dead end, IOW, as I am concerned.
Funnily enough if you could check my Google history, you would find that about quoter of all my requests in Google starts with word "wikipedia". And Google obediently fetches me relevant pages from wikipedia;-)
hope OpenGL return again and force the Neverwinter Nights to develop Nwn 3 with a OpenGL path again:I
Not until M$ looses its grip it holds with every game developer as hostage to cheap development tools M$DevStudio for M$Widn0ze and Xbox.
As of now, they are obediently do what M$ tells them. Earlier Xbox release? - Pay them promotional fees and consider it done. Poor/late MacOS/X support? - No problems. Non-existent Linux support? - Give them another rebate for M$DevStudio and they would forget about such OS.
DirectX wasn't technical thing. It's a thing to control companies developing for Windows and effectively locking them in Windows, so they couldn't run away from it.
This is precisely why I never listen to such analyst. They are dumb.
The point of Apple is to make hardware ergonomic and user friendly. Software is the glue. But regardless of quality of glue, you cannot force user to stick with shit.
Look at M$ and its relations of OEMs & hardware manufacturers - and resulting quality of Windows, its drivers and integration with hardware. This is precisely what would happen to Apple, would it ever stop being vertical company: crashes & blue screens (since software would never know hardware it runs), incompatibilities & over-delayed releases (since exact way hardware works might be known only few weeks before it's released).
Apple would never do that.
Intel has been forced to restructure and, in our opinion, cannot go on supporting Apple (or any other customer) indefinitely
HAHAHA! Morons! Apple survived not single CPU manufacturer/architecture in past, with Intel being third. Apple is outliving CPUs for sure. That's tradition.
What's more, for Intel now Apple is becoming important part. Compared to other HW manufacturers, Apple has very narrow well defined goals it is trying to achieve no matter what. That's something certain for Intel in the uncertain market.
Also, Apple is often early adopter. (I do not know even where to start with what they did first. Plug&Play & USB as two big examples.) And that's again good for Intel, since they can now pilot new technologies on "high end" Apple's hardware, w/o need to wait for other manufacturers who are in their turn wait for Intel to drop prices. Win-win combination: Intel can sell more expensive hardware to people who can appreciate it and Apple can improve its "exclusiveness" rating.
Next move in campaign to regulate possible means viewer access content, EC considering adding a tax for house windows. The view from windows closely resembles what most of us see on TV thus making it a way to access public information. Also it indirectly competes with TV so taxing all windows installed in houses is just natural extension of TV/Radio/Internet taxes.
The original justification for a broadcast license is that the spectrum was sorely limited. When the spectrum was unlicensed, people broadcasted over each other, tried jamming rival stations, etc. Online, there are no such limitations. And such, licensing makes no sense.
You have messed up "licensing" with "management". Licensing is all about money, it's one of the primary businesses of state. Management - to avoid collision - is really different matter and often accomplished and enforced by industries themselves.
Do not tell me that maintaining the record who uses which frequency costs the millions/billions of $/€ broadcasters/celcos/telcos usually end up paying.
Don't force everyone to register as a non-hate speecher.
Why not??? Just try to imaging everyone in country paying up $5 to state to be a registered as non-hate speecher. 300Mln*5 = 1.5bln/year. We are talking serious money here.
Normally constitution defines what law can be accepted and way they can be executed. But having constitutional case from behind prison bars is last thing anybody want to be engaged. So normally law makers/executive branch do whatever they like.
EU is such a great idea. Too bad it has too many idiots running the show over there.
You missing the point: EU were made to give the idiot that show. And while everyone stares in confusion at the show, people, who made up EU, silently do their job and profit from us.
No wonder the only response were ever get from state is "raise taxes!" Politicians here are really showpeople, they really do not know how to run state. And not that modern democracies would allow them to run that state. It's limbo, so that people who can profit - can go on and profit undisturbed. While we are all distracted with that toy called democracy.
It's not much different on other side of pond. It's just different people who profit from state, different people act in the show - show itself is different. But model is the same.
complete dissolution of Copyright within Canada's borders.
You mean it is first country which acknowledged that making digital copies has no overhead and centuries old copyright regime is becoming obsolete?!
I am moving in!!
The problem with copyright is that in USA it is broadly interpreted. e.g. in Russia you need to buy a license if you going to make a profit. Most of non-for-profit actions (if not all) require no nod from copyright holder.
Or to put it bluntly, USA laws were screwed to make it appear that every unapproved copy is infringing. Many lands didn't fallen for it and still maintain that "every unapproved sold copy" is infringing. And that's logical: no profit was made - copyright holder cannot claim damages. But in USA logic is already screwed.
I checked out the changelog and I see there's a new icon set for the "too", which sounds promising...
That's harsh. For dumb uninformative comment which even doesn't link to the ChangeLog.
KOffice 1.6 ChangeLog . It's pretty damm long for minor release. Search for Krita: it take 2+ PageDowns of my screen. That's pretty much for overview of changes and fixes. How ignorant you have to be to ignore all other improvements and pick that "icon set" change deep down. Which is probably simplest change of all.
GIMP v. others is one thing. GIMP has lots of well known problems - discussed over here in Slashdot many times. (New imaging core, GIMP v. Photoshop) More competition is better.
KDE vs. GNOME holy war is absolutely different thing: desktop environments are developed differently, targeted at two different kinds of users. Clashes are inevitable. And it's not a competition really - the user bases are almost not overlapping.
Same goes for OO.o vs. KOffice ODF tools. Normally users pick one tool and stick with it. That creates ground for holy wars: different mind sets and different user bases.
DTP profis normally use all tools available to them, cherry-picking best features out of all what's available to them. Krita tapping into all power of KDE quickly become serious contender. In a way Krita just adds pressure on GIMP people to improve it: switching from one FLOSS app to another is matter of seconds. There is no holy wars here - just pure pragmatism.
I really wish OO.o was developing at pace of KOffice. OO.o2 which brought mostly cosmetic changes, really didn't improve usability. Cursor still often jumps around document at random. KOffice is so much faster/slicker/cleaner, compared to the ugly bloat of OO.o. I have to use OO.o in office and it is pain to do any serious document with it. KOffice 1.5 already has all features required - but my company of course requires seamless M$Office import, at least to level of OO.o.
I wonder just how much at all such vulnerability relevant to real world?
I yet to see single server using nVidia cards - let alone running X at all. (Okay, I know, some ex-Wind0ze admins like to run GUIs on servers.)
Rest of the *nix systems using nVidia blob driver - are workstations with single user and administrator in one person. Just like I have at home. The bug is irrelevant.
IOW, I'd rather rename the topic to "Bug in nVidia closed-source Linux driver". It's just stupid calling any every crash/panic a vulnerability.
I desperately want a Wii, and have no personal interest in a PS3.
Wii is targeted at different audience. There are some games not available for Wii - but available for PS2/3. As well as Xbox.
Wii is targeted at non-gamers. Bit like Nintendo DS is targeted at kids - but also has appeal to wider range of audience. Games there aren't just dumb - but funny. But on PS3 you get more serious gaming with serious titles. Compare e.g. PS3's "Gundam: Target In Sight" v. Wii's "SD Gundam"
I have quite a dilema now. The games I want are available for PS3 and Xbox. But coolness factor definitely favors Nintendo now. Especially after hands on with Nintendo DS Lite, I definitely want to give Wii a try. But I know no games I might like for Wii.
This makes is possible to dispose of some matters more quickly, but you'll also see some things litigated over and over again that aren't repeated or end very quickly on a motion to dismiss (pursuant to a prior, precedential ruling) in the U.S. common law system.
You are missing the point. As one of German judges said, he can rule on current situation, he doesn't have to look back to what matter was 10/20/30/+ years ago as his US colleagues have too.
What's more, the law might not change, but reality does. E.g. abuse of copyright law and that stinky "Intellectual Property" term (which came into reality last decade) went in force only thanks to your precedents systems and the cases made in the beginning of last century. Just how relevant century old decision to new reality? Words have changed their meaning, things changed their roles - cases grew irrelevant. But US courts has to rule regarding the cases.
Just how thoughtful it is???
I prefer to have an option to ask again and European system provides that. In US you are constrained to receive the same old response over and over again.
Now we just have to see how it will turn out in the end: would other Linux distros ship IceWeasel or would stick with Firefox.
On one of the blogs, user have opined that switch to IceWeasel might end up being full featured fork: at moment there are some things Mozilla avoids shipping (e.g. ad blocking) to not anger its sponsors (e.g. Google) living off ads. With trademark gone - as well as Mozilla supervision - people now can do that in IceWeasel.
I know no distro which would even think allowing that
MozCo said that RedHat & Novell with their "ENTERPRISE" distros bowed to that demand and send all changes for review to MozCo.
But well me personally coudn't care less about some crazy enterprise stuff the guys are pushing. I'm sticking with Debian because I trust it and its developers.
P.S. Last Debian I have installed with KDE, gave me Konqueror as default browser. (Probably Firefox got killed during default GNOME wipe out.) And I'm still running it - w/o any visible problems. Slashdot work Ok too;)
I'm appalled that people detests someone or something for standing up for their rights and their freedom, I don't understand why.
Yeah, I feel pretty much the same way. Mozilla tries to protect their Trademark (a right granted by the government) and everyone bashes them. It's pretty irritating.
You are wrong. That was before. Now Mozilla wants to protect quality of product which uses the aforementioned trademark.
Basically they want to have a say in package/distro release schedule. I know no distro which would even think allowing that: there are lots of other issues to handle during release times, rather than waiting for approval for particular change from other people, living on their own schedule. (Work once in medium/big company just to see how that doesn't work in real life.)
Also, I would opine, that Mozilla guys are not trustworthy on such long-term matters. They write good code, they do good job on publicizing it. But they want to be bleeding edge - what comes to contradiction with stability goal of Debian. Mozilla people often says that bug would be addressed in next big release. They do not want to support old code. Seeing some particular bugs being not addressed on bugzilla.mozilla.org for YEARS, would we want to find Debian on waiting end of one of such bugs???
Slashdot Mirror
To you and many other posters: RTFA.
The article is about future potential incompatibility of licenses between kernel and applications. Amount of code which floats between kernel and applications is pretty big and might have implications, since GPLv3 is stricter.
Also RTFA highlights what was already said before that in fact it would trash completely whatever Intellectual Property portfolios young F/LOSS companies have managed to put together - further inhibiting spread of F/LOSS.
Nobody is switching Linux kernel to GPLv3. That's old news and plain impossible.
They were started by FSF - so they inherently have the copyrights written off.
FSF provides legal protection against GPL violations to projects which have done so. That's why some project give up copyrights to FSF. You have to agree, that few US citizens can afford lawyer competent in software licensing.
Absolute freedom - everybody does what he wishes - is anarchy. Nothing surprising.
Have you read what you have wrote? Are you from US? Are you listening speeches of George W. Bush often? Because he uses the same pattern: to stop wars, we need to wage a war.
Restricting people for sake of freedom? How more dumber it could be.
What you are trying in fact to say, is that GPL tries to establish system of compromises which leads to sustainable software ecosystem. Rules and discipline are must for any system to be sustainable in long term. But also, both rules and discipline has to be flexible so that system can survive cataclysms.
As sign that Stallman/FSF are not capable of building such system, you can take the fact, that they have never managed to produce usable OS kernel. In other words, they have not compromised enough. End of story.
So you think GPLv3 does it right? Prohibit trucks? And prohibit debris? That's just dumb. You cannot prohibit everything.
As Linus has put it, people trust him precisely because they do not depend on him. The same goes for *BSD and BSD folks. We can trust BSD systems because we are not related. The only bond is common source code, which has least strings attached.
Stallman and his FSF tried to play his licensing games not once. There were two precedents, when Stallman tried to commit change from LGPL to GPL in glibc & gcc. Thanks God the change were spotted and patches were shot in mid air.
As long as SUSE/Novell, Red Hat and IBM employ many Linux, folks, I do not believe the change of license would occur: not because devels are afraid of losing the support, but because many of the developer feel that they owe something to supporting companies. IOW, the Linux devels have more friends in corporate world than in FSF.
At least now, many people start understanding what was Linus talking about decade ago, when he started dealing with FSF/GNU people and customized GPLv2 for the kernel. People who demand implicit trust are the people not to be trusted.
+10. C/C++ are most often used languages in real life. That's fact.
Java is also used - in data centers and in middle ware. IOW, precisely what I call niche: for every server in the world using Java there are at least ten running PHP or something else. And for every server out there - whatever it is running - there are lots of gadgets and embedded systems around us. PHP == C, embedded == C/C++. GCC is true king of the software world.
People like Java - so let them be. It is unfortunate that Sun still keep the stewardship of Java platform. I'd love to have stripped down Java, so that we could bundle Java applications with our own stack. But Sun doesn't allow to ship one particular version, nor stripped-down version: they do not like embedding (slave JVM inside other application - applets in browsers are notable exception), they want auto-updates (no way we are allowed to have updates from 3rd party), they want plugins, they want megabytes of useless stuff to be shipped. As my company stands, we are not allowed to include untested code - and no way we would be able to test all java libraries Sun includes. And Sun disallows us to ship subset. Dead end, IOW, as I am concerned.
Funnily enough if you could check my Google history, you would find that about quoter of all my requests in Google starts with word "wikipedia". And Google obediently fetches me relevant pages from wikipedia ;-)
Not until M$ looses its grip it holds with every game developer as hostage to cheap development tools M$DevStudio for M$Widn0ze and Xbox.
As of now, they are obediently do what M$ tells them. Earlier Xbox release? - Pay them promotional fees and consider it done. Poor/late MacOS/X support? - No problems. Non-existent Linux support? - Give them another rebate for M$DevStudio and they would forget about such OS.
DirectX wasn't technical thing. It's a thing to control companies developing for Windows and effectively locking them in Windows, so they couldn't run away from it.
This is precisely why I never listen to such analyst. They are dumb.
The point of Apple is to make hardware ergonomic and user friendly. Software is the glue. But regardless of quality of glue, you cannot force user to stick with shit.
Look at M$ and its relations of OEMs & hardware manufacturers - and resulting quality of Windows, its drivers and integration with hardware. This is precisely what would happen to Apple, would it ever stop being vertical company: crashes & blue screens (since software would never know hardware it runs), incompatibilities & over-delayed releases (since exact way hardware works might be known only few weeks before it's released).
Apple would never do that.
HAHAHA! Morons! Apple survived not single CPU manufacturer/architecture in past, with Intel being third. Apple is outliving CPUs for sure. That's tradition.
What's more, for Intel now Apple is becoming important part. Compared to other HW manufacturers, Apple has very narrow well defined goals it is trying to achieve no matter what. That's something certain for Intel in the uncertain market.
Also, Apple is often early adopter. (I do not know even where to start with what they did first. Plug&Play & USB as two big examples.) And that's again good for Intel, since they can now pilot new technologies on "high end" Apple's hardware, w/o need to wait for other manufacturers who are in their turn wait for Intel to drop prices. Win-win combination: Intel can sell more expensive hardware to people who can appreciate it and Apple can improve its "exclusiveness" rating.
M$ Xbox HD-DVD - IIRC - $200. Enjoy.
Andrew Blake make HD stuff for some time already. And it is definitely worth its every bit.
Next move in campaign to regulate possible means viewer access content, EC considering adding a tax for house windows. The view from windows closely resembles what most of us see on TV thus making it a way to access public information. Also it indirectly competes with TV so taxing all windows installed in houses is just natural extension of TV/Radio/Internet taxes.
[sarcasm off]
You have messed up "licensing" with "management". Licensing is all about money, it's one of the primary businesses of state. Management - to avoid collision - is really different matter and often accomplished and enforced by industries themselves.
Do not tell me that maintaining the record who uses which frequency costs the millions/billions of $/€ broadcasters/celcos/telcos usually end up paying.
Why not??? Just try to imaging everyone in country paying up $5 to state to be a registered as non-hate speecher. 300Mln*5 = 1.5bln/year. We are talking serious money here.
Normally constitution defines what law can be accepted and way they can be executed. But having constitutional case from behind prison bars is last thing anybody want to be engaged. So normally law makers/executive branch do whatever they like.
You missing the point: EU were made to give the idiot that show. And while everyone stares in confusion at the show, people, who made up EU, silently do their job and profit from us.
No wonder the only response were ever get from state is "raise taxes!" Politicians here are really showpeople, they really do not know how to run state. And not that modern democracies would allow them to run that state. It's limbo, so that people who can profit - can go on and profit undisturbed. While we are all distracted with that toy called democracy.
It's not much different on other side of pond. It's just different people who profit from state, different people act in the show - show itself is different. But model is the same.
Or just like Reagan have said: "If it moves - tax it, if it still moves - regulate it, if it cease to move - subsidize it".
The same greedy career hunting bureaucrats having had M$, now look for something new to profit from. True image of EU :-(
You mean it is first country which acknowledged that making digital copies has no overhead and centuries old copyright regime is becoming obsolete?!
I am moving in!!
The problem with copyright is that in USA it is broadly interpreted. e.g. in Russia you need to buy a license if you going to make a profit. Most of non-for-profit actions (if not all) require no nod from copyright holder.
Or to put it bluntly, USA laws were screwed to make it appear that every unapproved copy is infringing. Many lands didn't fallen for it and still maintain that "every unapproved sold copy" is infringing. And that's logical: no profit was made - copyright holder cannot claim damages. But in USA logic is already screwed.
+10
Same in Russia.
That's harsh. For dumb uninformative comment which even doesn't link to the ChangeLog.
KOffice 1.6 ChangeLog . It's pretty damm long for minor release. Search for Krita: it take 2+ PageDowns of my screen. That's pretty much for overview of changes and fixes. How ignorant you have to be to ignore all other improvements and pick that "icon set" change deep down. Which is probably simplest change of all.
GIMP v. others is one thing. GIMP has lots of well known problems - discussed over here in Slashdot many times. (New imaging core, GIMP v. Photoshop) More competition is better.
KDE vs. GNOME holy war is absolutely different thing: desktop environments are developed differently, targeted at two different kinds of users. Clashes are inevitable. And it's not a competition really - the user bases are almost not overlapping.
Same goes for OO.o vs. KOffice ODF tools. Normally users pick one tool and stick with it. That creates ground for holy wars: different mind sets and different user bases.
DTP profis normally use all tools available to them, cherry-picking best features out of all what's available to them. Krita tapping into all power of KDE quickly become serious contender. In a way Krita just adds pressure on GIMP people to improve it: switching from one FLOSS app to another is matter of seconds. There is no holy wars here - just pure pragmatism.
I really wish OO.o was developing at pace of KOffice. OO.o2 which brought mostly cosmetic changes, really didn't improve usability. Cursor still often jumps around document at random. KOffice is so much faster/slicker/cleaner, compared to the ugly bloat of OO.o. I have to use OO.o in office and it is pain to do any serious document with it. KOffice 1.5 already has all features required - but my company of course requires seamless M$Office import, at least to level of OO.o.
I wonder just how much at all such vulnerability relevant to real world?
I yet to see single server using nVidia cards - let alone running X at all. (Okay, I know, some ex-Wind0ze admins like to run GUIs on servers.)
Rest of the *nix systems using nVidia blob driver - are workstations with single user and administrator in one person. Just like I have at home. The bug is irrelevant.
IOW, I'd rather rename the topic to "Bug in nVidia closed-source Linux driver". It's just stupid calling any every crash/panic a vulnerability.
Wii is targeted at different audience. There are some games not available for Wii - but available for PS2/3. As well as Xbox.
Wii is targeted at non-gamers. Bit like Nintendo DS is targeted at kids - but also has appeal to wider range of audience. Games there aren't just dumb - but funny. But on PS3 you get more serious gaming with serious titles. Compare e.g. PS3's "Gundam: Target In Sight" v. Wii's "SD Gundam"
I have quite a dilema now. The games I want are available for PS3 and Xbox. But coolness factor definitely favors Nintendo now. Especially after hands on with Nintendo DS Lite, I definitely want to give Wii a try. But I know no games I might like for Wii.
You are missing the point. As one of German judges said, he can rule on current situation, he doesn't have to look back to what matter was 10/20/30/+ years ago as his US colleagues have too.
What's more, the law might not change, but reality does. E.g. abuse of copyright law and that stinky "Intellectual Property" term (which came into reality last decade) went in force only thanks to your precedents systems and the cases made in the beginning of last century. Just how relevant century old decision to new reality? Words have changed their meaning, things changed their roles - cases grew irrelevant. But US courts has to rule regarding the cases.
Just how thoughtful it is???
I prefer to have an option to ask again and European system provides that. In US you are constrained to receive the same old response over and over again.
Everything is right.
Now we just have to see how it will turn out in the end: would other Linux distros ship IceWeasel or would stick with Firefox.
On one of the blogs, user have opined that switch to IceWeasel might end up being full featured fork: at moment there are some things Mozilla avoids shipping (e.g. ad blocking) to not anger its sponsors (e.g. Google) living off ads. With trademark gone - as well as Mozilla supervision - people now can do that in IceWeasel.
MozCo said that RedHat & Novell with their "ENTERPRISE" distros bowed to that demand and send all changes for review to MozCo.
But well me personally coudn't care less about some crazy enterprise stuff the guys are pushing. I'm sticking with Debian because I trust it and its developers.
P.S. Last Debian I have installed with KDE, gave me Konqueror as default browser. (Probably Firefox got killed during default GNOME wipe out.) And I'm still running it - w/o any visible problems. Slashdot work Ok too ;)
You are wrong. That was before. Now Mozilla wants to protect quality of product which uses the aforementioned trademark.
Basically they want to have a say in package/distro release schedule. I know no distro which would even think allowing that: there are lots of other issues to handle during release times, rather than waiting for approval for particular change from other people, living on their own schedule. (Work once in medium/big company just to see how that doesn't work in real life.)
Also, I would opine, that Mozilla guys are not trustworthy on such long-term matters. They write good code, they do good job on publicizing it. But they want to be bleeding edge - what comes to contradiction with stability goal of Debian. Mozilla people often says that bug would be addressed in next big release. They do not want to support old code. Seeing some particular bugs being not addressed on bugzilla.mozilla.org for YEARS, would we want to find Debian on waiting end of one of such bugs???