[gobolinux-users] Firefox up to date

[MJ Ray]

Laurent Pelecq <laurent.pelecq at soleil.org> wrote:
> It seems it has changed. I haven't seen any restriction. There is no
> license file in precompiled binary package (which is bad). But
>   http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/faq.html#free

The first alarm bells are ringing that there's no licence.

More alarm bells are ringing as that FAQ answer says:
  "Firefox is open source software, meaning that anyone has the
  right to download and use the browser for free, to distribute
  it unmodified to other people, and even to view and modify
  the source code [...]"

That is some new definition of "open source software" and
quite different to the free software definition at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html which lets you
distribute modified versions, quite clearly.

(Also from that FAQ answer: is Firefox not all under GPL yet?
I thought that the relicensing project had completed.)

Anyway, Mozilla's binaries are not free software, see
  http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/mpl-faq.html
which says you can distribute them under the terms of
  http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/distribution-policy.html
which includes
  "you must not remove or change any part of the official binary"

Sadly, that is not free software because it does not allow
users to adapt it to their needs.  For a free software browser,
we need to use a recipe that builds our own trademark-safe
binaries.  Sorry, but it's not my fault that Mozilla gives us
a choice of "do unnecessary work" or "lose some freedom".

> Do you remember where you've read that initialy?

In the source code (which I don't have checked out right now),
the entire other-licenses folder isn't MPL.  Some of it has no
copyright permission and extra trademark restrictions.  This
was a running discussion on debian-legal over some time.

> > I would guess that OpenOffice.org's recipe might be a binary download.
> 
> I haven't found this recipe in the recipe store. Isn't this a binary
> package only?

It seems I'm wrong.  I thought I'd seen one, but I didn't find
it in my recipe lists either.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/  irc.oftc.net/slef  Jabber/SIP ask