[gobolinux-users] Firefox & Mozilla

[MJ Ray]

Rayne Van-Dunem <raynenamibia at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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).

I agree with 2, but not with 1 - at least it affects GNU too and other 
distributions can expect to see MozCorp knocking them up soon.

> 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.

Yes, that's wrong.  One should always make it clear when the source is 
modified.  However, plenty of other free software has that requirement 
(see the GPL, for example) without reaching Mozilla's level of 
friend-beating.  This is all about tighter control of free software's 
friends: people who are going to be unethical about passing off trojans, 
bugs and malware as Firefox aren't going to bother following Mozilla's 
trademark licensing - the frequent suggestions in some places that 
restrictive trademark terms somehow limit trojans are incredible.

[...]
> 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);

Actually, Mozilla Foundation previously agreed to Debian's actions, as 
far as I can tell, but MozCorp now does not agree.

[...]
> 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. [...]

For some releases, I doubt any Linux-based distribution could use an 
unpatched compile of the official tarballs unless they liked spewing 
copious errors out of X.

[...]
> 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" [...]
  ^^^
not any more, at least for debian.

It would be even better if IceWeasel gets a working bare X edition, as 
its GTK+ version doesn't quite look GTK+ anyway and I don't want to 
install Qt for one application ;-)

Hope that helps,
-- 
MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Somerset, England. Work/Laborejo: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
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