Firefox To Be Renamed In Debian

Viraptor writes, "Debian is ready to change the name of Firefox in its distributions, beginning with Etch. They say it can be done within a week. The reasons stem from Mozilla's recent insistence on trademark fidelity and its preferences regarding Firefox patches. Debian doesn't want to accept the original trademarked fox & globe logo; they don't see it as really 'free' to use. On the other hand, Mozilla doesn't want Firefox distributed under that name if it lacks the logo. Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing. But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first. We will surely see more clashes between copyright claims and 'really free' distros such as Debian. Ubuntu is also asking similar questions." No word yet what the new name will be or what the logo will look like.

Well, then:

[A beautiful mind (821714)]

Word [wikipedia.org].

Re:Well, then:

[gbjbaanb (229885)]

Or they could use a different logo/name combo that is quite similar to the original - how about FireFoxy [vegard2.no].

Re:Well, then:

[maximusind (893564)]

That is probably the gayest thing I've ever seen. And I've seen two dudes fucking, too.

FreeFox

[mcvos (645701)]

Or they could use a different logo/name combo that is quite similar to the original

I prefer FreeFox. Still very recognisable, while at the same time rubbing it in that Firefox is not truly free.

Re:FreeFox

[IamTheRealMike (537420)]

Firefox is free, however it's trademark protected and that means you can't both hack it to pieces and use the Firefox name+brand. That's entirely reasonable - if I took Debian, changed things randomly that broke it in obscure ways then shipped it as Debian using the Debian logo of course they'd be pissed off too.

And for those who are wondering, yes, this is exactly what happened. The tensions between the Mozilla team and Debian have been around for ages, this is not news, but it got a lot worse lately. Firefox is getting larger and the quality of the brand matters a lot more, meanwhile, the Debian guys were taking Firefox and making massive changes to it. For instance I've seen persistent reports from many different people that the Ubuntu Firefox is much slower than the official build. The last time I came across this issue, it was because Debian had completely forked the XULRunner platform - some guy felt it was "too Windows-like" and that "the UNIX way was superior". So, day was night and night was day and the XUL platform Mozilla wanted to push was already incompatible and forked. The developers who had designed this platform were understandably angry and now Debian has got what it deserves.

Anyway, none of this really matters. Debian is non-existant on the desktop and has an atrocious brand. Meanwhile Firefox has a very strong brand. One of the reasons Fedora et al ship Firefox and not the GNOMEified Epiphany equivalent is because customers know the Firefox name and want it, and don't know the Epiphany name. On the desktop Debian vs Firefox is no contest.

Mod parent up

[rg3 (858575)]

The grand parent may be trolling or mixing the idea of freedom of the program source code with trademarks. The Mozilla Foundation simply don't want you to patch their product and still distribute it under the same name and using the same artwork and logos. That looks OK to me. The source code is completely free as in free speech, and Debian is free to apply their own patches and distribute the resulting program under a different name and using different logos. As some people already said, Debian themselves follow a similar policy regarding their name and logos.

Re:Well, then:

[rlbond86 (874974)]

Just more proof that some Linux users are far too elitist. Who cares if the firefox logo is trademarked? Now we'll have two distros of firefox. This is what I hate about open source. Too many daughter projects spin off the main one and the original project becomes less focused.

Way to go, Debian.

How did I know /. readers would confuse the issue?

[psamuels (64397)]

Just more proof that some Linux users are far too elitist. Who cares if the firefox logo is trademarked?

We don't, particularly — the trademark isn't the problem. What we care about is that it also has a copyright license that does not allow any derivative works. So, you can't start with a Firefox logo image, pull up your favorite image editor and hack it into something new and interesting — say, for example, an icon set for a desktop theme.

Debian takes the right to modify software very seriously. And yes, that includes images shipped with software.

It is possible to trademark an image yet still allow derivative works to be created from it. Mozilla Corp, unfortunately, chose not to do this.

Re:How did I know /. readers would confuse the iss

[aziegler (201013)]

Debian takes that right very seriously, and it has the right; Mozilla doesn't have a problem with that. However, their unmodified images are part of the branding, and the use of the name with the logo is mandatory as part of the branding. Mozilla's lawyers indicated to them (by my reading of the original thread) that while they *could* trademark the Firefox logo and make it under a modifications-allowed license, they would greatly risk their ability to police and enforce the Firefox logo as a trademark. Similarly, Debian's patches are of questionable quality and necessity and allowing the use of the "Firefox" name with these questionably patched versions would potentially damage the quality of the Firefox mark.

Debian just can't expect to get a free ride for doing a half-job. Or even, as the case appears to be, a quarter-job.

As has been pointed out: Debian takes its image and mark very seriously, too. Why the bitching by Debian supporters when they have to make changes for the very sort of thing that they do themselves?

Oh for heaven's sake.....

[cyber-vandal (148830)]

Will Debian stop using the Linux trademark as well?

Re:Oh for heaven's sake.....

[KFW (3689)]

Agreed. I find it ironic that Debian also has restrictions on their copyrighted logos. See: http://www.debian.org/logos/ [debian.org]

/K

Re:Oh for heaven's sake.....

[Mistshadow2k4 (748958)]

Exactly. Don't get me wrong, I love Debian, but I've sen them do the same thing more than once. Remeber ProgenyDebian? Can't recall what it's called now. More recently there was GenieOS [toluenterprises.com], originally called DebianPure. And if I'm not mistaken, there was something about another project using Debian's genie logo; I'm surprised they haven't decided that GenieOS's genie logo is too similar to theirs as well. They've got no room to be griping if they do.

Re:Oh for heaven's sake.....

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite (721679)]

Well since you didn't quote the restrictions on the image used by amongst others slashdot, here it is:

This logo or a modified version may be used by anyone to refer to the Debian project, but does not indicate endorsement by the project.

Fairly liberal I'd say, and if you care to contrast with Mozilla's trademark policy [mozilla.org] it makes a world of difference.

Selective quoting

[KFW (3689)]

But that isn't all that is on the page. How about at the top:
 

Although Debian can be obtained for free and will always remain that way, events such as the problem with the ownership of the term "Linux" have shown that Debian needs to protect its property from any use which could hurt its reputation.

  Or (regarding the Debian Official Use Logo):
 

This logo may only be used if ... official approval is given by Debian for its use in this purpose.

It would seem that Debian recognizes that the use of trademarks is important to protecting the reputation of a project, and may even require approval in some cases. So why should they expect FireFox to be any different?
/K

Re:Selective quoting

[masklinn (823351)]

So why should they expect FireFox to be any different?

They don't, part of Debian's build process for Firefox strips the logo (and some other things, anything considered "non-free" actually). They had striked a deal with some Mozilla spokeperson some time ago about that, and were allowed to use the Firefox name without the Firefox logo (the Mozilla branding usually requires you to have them together, and probably imposes some other things, if you want to use the Mozilla Firefox brand), but it looks like that policy has changed and they can't anymore.

Which means that now they can either include the logo (which they can't, since it's non-free, unless they move Fx to non-free packages) or stop using the name.

They picked the later.

Please mod down misleading parent post

[by Anonymous Coward]

Wow... This has to be one of the most misleading and uninformative comments I've read on Slashdot in a long while. (And that's saying something!)

If you had actually taken the time to read the page you linked, you'd notice that Debian has TWO logos to explicitly prevent situations like the one that Mozilla is creating.

From the page that YOU linked:

Debian has decided to create two logos: one logo is for official Debian use; the other logo falls under an open use type license.

So what, exactly, is your problem with Debian's logo situation?

Re:Please mod down misleading parent post

[psamuels (64397)]

So how's that different from Firefox? Firefox has the official-use logo (fox humping the Earth), and the open-use logo (Earth unmolested by giant wildlife).

Not really different. In fact, Debian is happy to use the open-use Firefox logo, and that's what we're already doing. The "problem" is that Mozilla Corporation has demanded that, if we don't use the official-use logo, we stop calling our browser Firefox. Of course we will comply.

Nothing to see here, except Debian preparing to comply with the demands of a trademark holder.

The only remaining problem is what to call the browser instead. I'd probably support a friend's [erinn.org] suggestion of Firefaux, except that I think it would violate trademark law, which prohibits "confusingly similar" names. Because of this I think it's a bad idea to use either "Fire" or "Fox" in the new name. So ... yeah. Iceweasel.

Re:Oh for heaven's sake.....

[Justin205 (662116)]

The difference is that the Linux trademark is much more free to be used than the Firefox trademark. Read Mozilla's trademark policy [mozilla.org] and you might see some of why Debian has a problem.

And of course, the Linux kernel does not, and never has, required patches to be submitted before they're used. Distros like Gentoo maintain a set of their own patches for the Linux kernel, with no problems. Debian also has their own kernel patches, last I checked.

Re:Oh for heaven's sake.....

[Noksagt (69097)]

First: Firefox has always been patched in Debian (and many distros). The only thing new is that it won't have the same name.

According to the DFSG, they'd have to keep it in nonfree if they wanted to keep the name.

Re:Oh for heaven's sake.....

[joto (134244)]

And, although I like Linux a great deal, that has not exactly worked out for the best with each distro having its own kernel.

The alternative would be that the distros used different versions of the mainline kernel, compiled with different options. I fail to see how adding a few additional patches, and third-party drivers would make things much worse. Besides, most of the incompatibilities between different distros has not been caused by changing kernels. They are caused by different compile-time options, different choice of packages, difference in package systems, filesystem layout differences, different versions of shared libraries, and the ever-changing C++ ABI.

Do you think web designers would be happy to support several slightly different versions of Firefox?

I don't fucking much care what makes web "designers" happy. Instead they should focus on keeping us readers happy, which means that any web-page should be designed for any browser. That means IE, mozilla, opera, or simply whatever standard-conforming browser you have.

If your page is fragile enough to break if someone uses a version of firefox with a patch to change the name and logo, then it will surely also break between firefox 1.5.0.5 and 1.5.0.6. By your logic, browsers shouldn't be improved either.

Re:Oh for heaven's sake.....

[jrockway (229604)]

This is not at all what's happening. Debian wants to patch firefox so that it works with the Debian OS. Mozilla says that if you do that, you can't use the logos. Debian says, fine, we won't use your logos. Mozilla then replies, well if you don't use the logos, you can't use the name either.

Debian is not allowed to ship software which can't be modified by users of the distro, it's against their policy (the Debian Free Software Guidelines). Since Mozilla won't cooperate with Debian, Debian has to rename Mozilla's software. That makes everyone happy. Debian can follow its own guidelines, and Mozilla can choke the life out of their software with their tight iron-fist. Everyone wins.

This is not a new issue, either. Nearly every distro dumped XFree86 when they started acting this way. They forked it and now we have X.org. (XFree86 is completely dead now.) OpenBSD ditched Apache for the same reason.

Re:Oh for heaven's sake.....

[SimplexO (537908)]

This is not at all what's happening. Debian wants to patch firefox so that it works with the Debian OS. Mozilla says that if you do that, you can't use the logos. Debian says, fine, we won't use your logos. Mozilla then replies, well if you don't use the logos, you can't use the name either.

Close, it's more like this:

• Debian says, "I want to modify the source so that Firefox can better fit in with my OS."
• Mozilla says, "Sure, but you have to run changes through us to release it with the official branding. We want to protect our brand and QA those changes before you ship something that will reflect on our image."
• Debian responds, "Um, no. We do what we want because it's free software. This isn't going to fly with us."
• Mozilla answers, "Well, you're free to have the source and do with it what you will, but the logo is copywritten and the name is trademarked and we reserve the right not to let you use it without our permission. The only way you're getting that is to let us QA the changes or ship it unmodified."
• Debian says loudly with it's nose in the air, "OK, fine! We're not using the name or the logo, because we do what with Free software. That's what makes it free."

It seems like the natural course of events happened here. Debian wants everything to be free. Mozilla wants to protect a brand. So Debian takes what's free and makes its own brand. I think the culture of that at Mozilla is not into Free Software as an ideology (and there are many blog posts by Mozilla employees that say so) but that it is a means to create great software. I think the culture of Debian is that they're really into Freedom and the software will come over time. Given the availability and an infinate amount of time, the probability of creating great software goes to 1. (They like the Math equations over there in the Debian camp!)

Of course, it all doesn't matter as long as Ubuntu gets to keep the Firefox branding. If not, I'm sure there will be scripts written to change it all back. Freedom, baby! Yeah!

In a sign of frustration, the new name will be

[by Anonymous Coward]

Irefox.

In a sign of open warfare, the new name will be

[Mateo_LeFou (859634)]

Internet Foxplorer

Make up your own names

[Beryllium Sphere(tm) (193358)]

Firesomething [mozilla.org] is an extension that keeps changing the name you see. It's for people who aren't willing to wait for the regular changes like m/b->Phoenix->Firebird->Mozilla Firebird->Firefox->whatever Debian calls it.

Re:Make up your own names

[masklinn (823351)]

Dude, the fix is trivial, i'll even walk you through it:

1. Download the XPI archive (don't install it)
2. Decompress the XPI archive (unzip it, XPIs are just renamed ZIP archives)
3. Open the INSTALL.RDF file with your favorite text/RDF/XML editor
4. Look for the maxVersion element
5. Replace it's text content (which should be "1.0+") by "2.0"
6. Save and close
7. Recompress the content of the folder to a new XPI archive (compress it to ZIP then change the extension)
8. Open the EXTENSION window of your Firefox
9. Drag and drop your modified XPI in the extension window
10. When the XPI's installed, restart firefox
11. Enjoy

new logo

[gbjbaanb (229885)]

Maybe it'll be a blue world or circle, with 'Internet' in the name somewhere, and perhaps, as its used to explore the wonders of the internet, add the word 'Explorer' to it perhaps.

I can't see that catching on though, they'll call it WaterVole or something equally stupid :)

Nerds arguing

[Valacosa (863657)]

I'm sure that most of you would agree, there's nothing worse than being forced to watch two nerds argue. They can yell at each other about the most trivial of details, and neither one will budge. It's kind of like elk.

Watching open source development is like watching 50,000 nerds argue.

To pre-empt the "ZOMG MOZILLA TEH NAZI" crowd...

[BHearsum (325814)]

Here is a link to the thread on debian's bugzilla:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=3 54622 [debian.org]

The trademark problems discussed make the issue pretty clear.

Re:To pre-empt the "ZOMG MOZILLA TEH NAZI" crowd..

[OverlordQ (264228)]

hese are
the conditions you need to get on board with:

- All changes the distributor wishes to make to the source code must be
provided as discrete patches, along with a description of why the change
is required
- Releases are expected to be based on the CVS tag and/or source tarball
for the release version, plus approved patches.
- build configurations should also be submitted for approval.
- The logo and the trademark are required to be used together.

To me #1 and #3 are blatant restrictions on the freedom of using firefox, so I can agree with Debian's stance of calling it something else.

Stakes

[drooling-dog (189103)]

Someone once said that academic politics is so fierce precisely because the stakes are so low. Maybe that applies in this case as well...

Submitting patches

[by Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing.

This is only the case if the Firefox trademark will be used. Now that Debian is changing the name, they don't need to have their patches vetted.

There's been complaints for years and years at Mozilla over the dubious quality of some of the Debian patches, not to mention the very large amount of them (Debian users have a hard time getting support in the Mozilla IRC channels because there's a thousand and one new weird issues that are unique to Debian), and that's directly helped shape the policy that the trademarks can only be used with unaltered products, or with the alterations directly vetted. This is not unreasonable. The actual code is still completely free and available for everyone to do with as they please - it's purely the Firefox branding (and its meaning as a high-quality product) that's being protected here.

Read the Mozilla Trademark Policy [mozilla.org].

To Debian: Pick Your Battles

[BeeBeard (999187)]

Thank you for helping to clear that up. I followed a link in another post where the essence of the argument over the issue was supposedly located, and it ended up being page after unreadable page of typical Debian infighting.

Debian's problem has always been that its handlers place users and the usability of their distribution far below very petty internal arguments intended to frame the distro as some sort of legal pioneer (Debian Linux vs. Debian GNU/Linux "controversy" anyone?). It's a huge turnoff to the non-zealots among us, and certainly makes for bad PR.

Re:To Debian: Pick Your Battles

[fv (95460)]

Debian's problem has always been that its handlers place users and the usability of their distribution far below very petty internal arguments intended to frame the distro as some sort of legal pioneer

Debian did not choose this battle. They have been distributing Firefox for years in the same way they distribute other open source software. It was Mozilla who forced the issue by threatening legal action [debian.org] if Debian doesn't change the name or start submitting all patches (even security patches) to Mozilla for permission before they are applied. Mike Conner of Mozilla says "you should consider this, as I previously said, notice that your usage of the trademark is not permitted in this way, and we are expecting a resolution. If your choice is to cease usage of the trademark rather than bend the [Debian Free Software Guidelines] a little, that is your decision to make."

Debian asked "could we at least get a stay of execution? Etch is going into deep freeze in less than a month. Would it be possible to resolve this after the release?" and Mozilla responded that "If we were forced to revoke your permission to use the trademark, freeze state would not matter, you would be required to change all affected packages as soon as possible. Its not a nice thing to do, but we would do it if necessary, and we have done so before."

Many legal squabbles are instigated by Debian, but this isn't one of them. Mozilla has forced the issue. Linux Weekly News wrote a good summary of the situation. [lwn.net]

-Fyodor
Insecure.Org [insecure.org]

Re:To Debian: Pick Your Battles

[Josh Triplett (874994)]

Debian did not choose this battle. They have been distributing Firefox for years in the same way they distribute other open source software. It was Mozilla who forced the issue by threatening legal action if Debian doesn't change the name or start submitting all patches (even security patches) to Mozilla for permission before they are applied. Mike Conner of Mozilla says "you should consider this, as I previously said, notice that your usage of the trademark is not permitted in this way, and we are expecting a resolution. If your choice is to cease usage of the trademark rather than bend the [Debian Free Software Guidelines] a little, that is your decision to make."

Not only that, but that statement directly revoked the previous standing agreement Debian had with Gervase Markham from Mozilla, which essentially said that Mozilla trusted Debian's (generally conservative) judgement on patches. With this pointed out, Mike Connor confirmed that Gervase did indeed make that agreement, and that Mozilla wished to revoke it.

I understand the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation's issue here, and they certainly have the right to defend their trademarks; that defense itself doesn't necessarily go against Free Software principles. As I understand it, Debian doesn't have any problem with the *trademarks* on the software, because a big build switch exists to turn them on and off; however, Debian *does* have a problem with the non-free copyright license on the images, and thus doesn't use them.

The other problem lies in the fact that Mozilla doesn't really care about the quality of Debian's patches, as much as about getting everyone to use the official releases, regardless of distro policy. They don't like Debian backporting security fixes to 1.0 rather than upgrading people to 1.5, or backporting fixes to 1.5 rather than using Mozilla's (large) point releases; Debian has a "no new upstream versions" policy for stable releases, to avoid breaking things, and many people who run Debian stable rely on that policy.

Root of the conflict: trademarks, not copyright

[CTho9305 (264265)]

The reasons stem from Mozilla's recent insistence on trademark fidelity and its preferences regarding Firefox patches. Debian doesn't want to accept the original trademarked fox & globe logo; they don't see it as really 'free' to use. On the other hand, Mozilla doesn't want Firefox distributed under that name if it lacks the logo.

The problem with allowing the name and logo to be separated is that it damages the brand identity - people might wonder whether this "Firefox" with one logo is really the same as a "Firefox" with a different logo, or people might think the unofficial logo is the official one (which would clearly harm the brand - consider Firefox t-shirts and the logo).

Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing. But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first.

Both sides have a point. Often, problems that users encounter with "Firefox" in distributions turn out to be a result of the questionable downstream modifications [burntelectrons.org] the distro maintainers added. Do you really think Mozilla would be worried and spending their time on these kinds of issues if there wasn't a good chance that people would associate Mozilla Firefox with low quality due to distro modifications? If there was no risk of damaging the brand, it would certainly be better for everyone to use the same logo and name.

From the distro's point of view, of course it's annoying to have to get approval on all patch sets. However, there is generally a long time between releases anyway (especially Debian's releases ;)), and so long as the distro's patch set doesn't change between security releases, no additional review is required (as I understand it) for the security updates, so this really shouldn't be a problem there.

We will surely see more clashes between copyright claims and 'really free' distros such as Debian. Ubuntu is also asking similar questions.

One irony of the situation is that Debian itself has the same problem with their branding: if you modify the distribution, you can't call it Debian any more. It's an unfortunate issue that if you want to have a useful (i.e. recognizable and trusted) brand, you can't allow people to ship their own derivatives of your product while using your branding.

Allowing users of your product complete freedom is a nice ideal, but it's not possible to do under the current laws unless you place no value on branding.

It is about copyright

[Noksagt (69097)]

I disagree. This issue started as a copyright issue, which was never resolved. Debian is NOT able to use the COPYRIGHTed image of the logo. MozCo didn't grant them permission to use it (which is why it wasn't used by Gentoo or many other distributions for a long time) & the license would run contrary to DFSG anyway. Trademark was not an issue--Debian was allowed to use the trademark (as was Gentoo and as were other distros).

It is only now, that Mozilla has changed the way they police and grand permission for their trademark, that the trademark has become an issue. Other distros have been able to get trademark permission. There is no way for Debian to get this same permission while that image remains under a non-permissive copyright & while it remains a term for trademark use.

The problem with allowing the name and logo to be separated is that it damages the brand identity

This is really ridiculous--brandnames and logos are separated ALL the time.

Often, problems that users encounter with "Firefox" in distributions turn out to be a result of the questionable downstream modifications the distro maintainers added.

No other F/OSS software package seems to have an insurmountable problem with this. They don't even have major problems with Gentoo & the strange CFLAGS or compiler arguments that some users of that distro use. Bugs are typically reported to the distro. If it is an upstream probelm, they'll hear about it.

From the distro's point of view, of course it's annoying to have to get approval on all patch sets. However, there is generally a long time between releases anyway (especially Debian's releases ;)), and so long as the distro's patch set doesn't change between security releases, no additional review is required (as I understand it) for the security updates, so this really shouldn't be a problem there.

It is more than "annoying." It is dangerous. Distros should NOT have to wait for approval for patching security bugs. This isn't just theoretical--Debian does backport fixes to versions of Firefox that Mozilla stopped maintaining. While there is some time between releases, the package repositories get updated all the time.

Questions on Thunderbird & Other Mozilla Produ

[Noksagt (69097)]

Why is this only happening with Firefox? Why not Thunderbird or the other Mozilla products which are in Debian's package repository? Why not the "Mozilla" name, itself?

Firefox logo/trademark is important

[JimDaGeek (983925)]

The Firefox logo/trademark is important. Firefox has 10%+ of browser share now. That wasn't very easy to get. More and more non-techies are now familiar with Mozilla and/or Firefox and the logo. My father-in-law and wife are not technical, however both prefer Firefox now. One calls it Mozilla the other calls is "the fox", however both know what icon to click if I place it on their desktop.

The people of Debian are being stupid. The Firefox logo is an important logo and should be kept. Debian protects their trademark(s), why shouldn't Mozilla? I use Ubuntu over Debian, I just hope Ubuntu doesn't follow this stupid example of Debian. Mark S. seems to have his head on straight and since he is a business man I would think he understands the importance of a trademark.

It is not like Mozilla is trying to lock up the code and make everything proprietary. They just put a lot of effort into getting their name _and_ logo known and want to keep it that way.

Debian shouldn't have to be a Firefox promoter

[jesterzog (189797)]

The Firefox logo/trademark is important. Firefox has 10%+ of browser share now. That wasn't very easy to get. [.....] The people of Debian are being stupid. The Firefox logo is an important logo and should be kept. Debian protects their trademark(s), why shouldn't Mozilla?

Isn't that exactly what's happening here? Debian's acknowledging that the Firefox trademark is protected, and therefore preparing to change the name in Debian. I'm sure there are people involved in Debian who'd like to keep the Firefox name, but unless it can be done within the terms of Debian's main goals, it's not going to happen.

That said, why should Debian be bending over backwards and sacrificing how it does things so a single package (out of thousands) can keep up its perceived market-share, as you seem to imply in your post? People such as yourself might care about Firefox's market-share, but this has nothing to do wiht Debian. Besides, who cares if Debian people are being stupid? It's their right to govern their distribution as they see fit [debian.org], and if this bothers people outside, such as Firefox users who don't want to see their perceived market share diminish, then it's their problem more than Debian's.

I know it's not just you, but your post is an example of what seems to be a huge misunderstanding everywhere that the open source "community" is some kind of big organisation with common goals. It's not -- it's a vast collection of people who share and use each other's source code through the application of open source licenses. What people use it for and who uses it is up to the people involved. Personally I like this, and I prefer it hugely over proprietary vendors arguing with and paying millions of dollars to each other to decide who can see what, what works where, and how broken something will be when it's released. Trying to imply that there's a massive open source organisation, though, and that everyone has the unified goal of having OSS take over servers and desktops and whatever else it takes to get noticed, is ridiculous.

It's Firefox that's clamping on the restrictions here, and rightly so for their own interests since Firefox wants to associate its name with a level of quality that it has control over. Fair enough, but if the Debian developers decide that Firefox's interests are incompatible with their main distribution goals, they're completely within their rights to do this. Any "loss in perceived market-share" is entirely because the Firefox team hasn't done everything necessary to cater to what its users require.

What Happened to "Community Edition?"

[Noksagt (69097)]

Mozilla still has a draft policy [mozilla.org] allowing people to name modified versions of "Mozilla Firefox" as "Firefox Community Edition." What happened to this? Many distributors have been following this. Why can't Debian use the name "Firefox Community Edition, Debian" as the new name fro their browser? Or will Mozilla be going after all of the other distributors they had previously granter permission to as well?

Note also that the "community editions" also forbade use of the official logo!

Funniest part

[93 Escort Wagon (326346)]

"But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first."

Yes, we certainly wouldn't want Debian Stable's release frequency to slow down any further than it already is.

Re:FireBollox

[rhavenn (97211)]

No, Firefox is finally getting some name recognition and when people install Ubuntu or whatever they will be looking for "FireFox" and not whatever name Debian comes up with. It's a "brand". Linux splinters everytime someone has a little tiff and people wonder why there is no marketshare. The brand gets so splintered that any newb trying to figure out what to run is totally lost and yes, the Linux community needs newbs.

Debian really needs to get the stick out of their ass. It's a great server distro, but if they want any sort of desktop marketshare then they have to change. Ubuntu better tell Debian to shove it and include the logo and Firefox as Moz wants them too otherwise you're just going to confuse people. Not everyone wants to read Wiki's and forums to figure out that the browser they have is indeed Firefox.

In addition, so Debian starts patching and they start breaking extensions. Hmmm...people get pissed and stop using the browser and then stop using Debian cause the browser sucks.

Re:FireBollox

[Randle_Revar (229304)]

You have it backwards. Mozilla is the one being unresonable here. Other open source projects have trademarks but they don't insist that Debian must use a different name because they have custom patches.

But they should!

[Russ Nelson (33911)]

A trademark MUST stand for something other than "Well, we started with this but hacked the hell out of it so it's something completely different now." Mozilla is NOT being unreasonable. The other projects which let people misuse their trademarks are risking the loss of enforcibility of their trademark.

Yes, this is an issue that the open source world has not thought very deeply about yet.

Re:My god

[savala (874118)]

Mozilla was under GPL/MPL (dual licensed). I believe that SeaMonkey is also. FireFox has a different license. The license terms are "near GPL", but aren't the same at all.

This is close, but not quite true. All Mozilla, SeaMonkey and Firefox code is tri-licensed (MPL/GPL/LGPL), no exceptions. (Actually it used to be that a small percentage of code wasn't under the GPL yet, and Mozilla spent a couple of years tracking down the owners and acquiring permission to really make it all GPL-ed.)

And then there's the Firefox binary, which is licensed with the Mozilla EULA [mozilla.org].

But yeah, as you said, the issue at hand here is purely about trademarks, which (sadly?) need to be strongly protected for legal reasons.

It IS about the copyright on the logo

[Noksagt (69097)]

Mozilla has voiced multiple issues with Debian's package. But, in their words:

If you are going to use the Firefox name, you must also use the rest of the branding.

The "quality" of Debian's patches was brought up later, but it seems to be moot--since there is no way to get around that first big issue of the copyright on the logo.

A new name

[canuck57 (662392)]

Why not fireballmer (Couldn't resist)

Re:Can we get an internet or web in there somewher

[digitalhermit (113459)]

Agreed, products should always have names indicating their purpose. We need to lobby Congress to pass a law. For example, what the hell is a Buick Regal? Or iPod? Are there peas in an iPod? NO! Then why call it that. Look at DreamWeaver. What the hell does that have to do with the web? What's a DreamWeaver? Sounds like some euphemism for LSD or some shaman witchery. Evolution is an email client? WTF? What's this idiotic language called Ruby? What the hell does that have to do with programming? Or Perl? Or Python? Or C?

Here are my suggestions...
Firefox should be "HTTP/FTP/Gopher/Archie/XML Renderer"
DreamWeaver should be "Software for Designing HTTP/XML Format Documents for Internet Usage"
C should be "Low to Medium Level Computing Language"
Gentoo should be "Linux Distribution for People Who Prefer to Churn Their Own Butter" (I kid, I kid)

Re:the browser formerly known as ...

[Dausha (546002)]

"Didn't Prince try this in the 90's?"

That was just Prince wanting to release albums but not owning his own stage name. Apparently, his earlier contract included the stage name. The contract must have been for albums and term of years, so that when the albums were out he could contract elsewhere, but he couldn't take his name with him.

Or, I suppose you could say that "Prince" was his slave name.