[gobolinux-users] Firefox & Mozilla

[Rayne Van-Dunem]

Actually, its not the trademark that is the main issue here, and I'm
thinking that the Iceweasel debate, in its present form, is 1) restricted to
Debian-Mozilla relations and 2) being blown *Way* out of proportion by the
media (both pro- and anti-FOSS).

For one, consider this: if someone outside of Mozilla *modifies* the Firefox
source code and redistributes it under the same name (Mozilla Firefox) with
distro-specific bugs (and even major code flaws), and the public gets ahold
of it, uses it, and gets turned off, they're going to point the finger
*directly* at Mozilla.

Therefore, Mozilla's trademark provisions allow for redistribution under
their name as long as the code remains *unmodified*. Redistribution of
modified code is also allowed (per the GPL), but the trademarks "Mozilla"
and "Firefox" (and the adjacent artwork, over which there is a copyright)
have to be stripped from the code for the above reasons.

Now, to Debian.

Debian's devs had submitted requests to the Moz Bugzilla in regards to the
fixing of code. The requests sat at the Bugzilla unanswered for a long time,
and Debian decided to recompile Firefox with modifications. Mozilla warned
Debian that, in order for it to retain the trademark and the art copyright,
it had to remain unmodified (or at least sanctioned by the Firefox devs);
otherwise, both had to be stripped from the code. Debian opted for the
latter (going as far as to strip it of any "unfree" components), and
released Iceweasel.

The only possible implication that I could see for other distributions,
which mostly use the substitute globe logo with the Firefox name, is the
titularity of the Firefox name itself. Considering that they all compile the
official tarballs into their own respective binaries, they are, or should
be, protected from any legal stink with Mozilla as long as the code is
distributed unmodified. However, the statement that the name is as protected
as the logo slightly muddles things.

It could be that the conditions are as follows:

1. The official logo (with the fox) is tied to Firefox in *binary* form.

2. The name (Firefox) is tied to Firefox in *source* form.

So that may explain why Mac users can get both the logo and name from
Mozilla - Mozilla personally compiles Firefox for Mac in binary form - while
Debian or Fedora can only get the name - Mozilla compiles Firefox for the
various *nixes in source form, while those OSes have to then recompile
Firefox in binary form for themselves.

So Gobolinux could just retain Firefox with the name sans the logo (which is
sanctioned by Mozilla), or it could go whole turkey and dump them both -
thus, Firefox - in favor of Debian's IceWeasel.

The next question, though, that should be asked is whether IceWeasel will
use GTK+ or Qt. Debian may be more inclined to use GTK+ since it and GNOME
are sponsored by the GNU/FSF, but GNOME already has "Epiphany" (also
Firefox-based) as its in-house browser.

Given that Gobolinux uses KDE by default (but not *expressingly* so), this
could pose a problem, or an opportunity, or both.

Rayne

On 10/16/06, Roebe XXX <shevegen at linuxmail.org> wrote:
>
> "ugh, of all the insane stuff...
>
> why make anythng easy when one can make it difficult?"
>
> I guess the Mozilla Corporation is to blame for that.
> They could have chosen a license without these
> restrictions. My only real, personal problem is that
> specific patching delay, which I find not acceptable.
>
> Firefox is nice, but as far as development projects are
> concerned I think projects like KDE do a MUCH better
> job than Mozilla does.
>
> --
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