[gobolinux-users] Firefox up to date

[Laurent Pelecq]

MJ Ray a écrit :
> 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.
>
> 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".


Yes the MPL is not compatible with the GPL. However it is possible to
distribute modified binaries compiled from source but with restrictions (I
haven't read that in detail). The MPL is still a free license according to
  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

The official binaries are a good way to avoid compilation (I assume that
there are built from the source code without anything changed).

Laurent