Mozilla Demanding Firefox Display EULA In Ubuntu

TRS-80 writes "Users of the upcoming Ubuntu release, Intrepid Ibex, are being confronted with an EULA the first time they launch Firefox. Mark Shuttleworth says 'Mozilla Corp asked that this be added in order for us to continue to call the browser Firefox... I would not consider an EULA as a best practice. It's unfortunate that Mozilla feels this is absolutely necessary' and notes there's an unbranded 'abrowser' package available. Many of the comments say Ubuntu should ditch Firefox as this makes it clear it's not Free Software, hence unsuitable for Ubuntu main, and just ship Iceweasel or Epiphany, the GNOME browser." A few comments take Canonical to task for agreeing to Mozilla's demand to display an EULA without consulting the community.

What's the big deal?

It's just making Ubuntu more familiar to ex-Windows users.

Blindly clicking through meaningless and offensive EULAs is standard practice in the Windows world.

Making Ubuntu Accessible?

I thought the idea of Ubuntu was to get linux adoption up - and by getting rid of Firefox, it'll just be more difficult to get people to migrate... Besides, displaying a EULA is common practice - maybe just have a big, blanket EULA when installing ubuntu - which covers all software included..

Re:Making Ubuntu Accessible?

I thought the idea of Ubuntu was to provide a community-based GNU/Linux distro by improving the experience, not just to do whatever it takes to get more users. Displaying a EULA is not common practice in the GNU/Linux world, and displaying one isn't the best way to improve the experience.

Re:Making Ubuntu Accessible?

And how would they go about fixing their usability problems if those very people didn't use the operating system in the first place? If something isn't easily usable, it in a way, is broken. And if they aren't going to fix the usability of it, all of the other "improvements" will be largely for naught.

GPL Compliance

I know you're trying to be funny, but it really *isn't* a big deal. In fact, the GPL itself specifies that

If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: Copyright (C) This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html#howto [gnu.org]

Not only that, but as you state, no Windows user would think twice about clicking through a EULA. As a long time Ubuntu user, I myself never realized until today that there are no EULAs present.

Fair enough

Firefox is a trademark, Mozilla need to defend that trademark, and it's in Ubuntu's interests to provide a browser that people have heard about, rather than "Iceweasel", which they haven't. That, and I doubt Mozilla's EULA would be that onerous; the only people who are going to be truly upset at this are the people who hear "EULA" and kneejerk a negative response.

Re:Fair enough

Firefox is a trademark, Mozilla need to defend that trademark...

Linux is a trademark too. Does that mean I need to accept an EULA every time I install a new kernel? No.

Re:Fair enough

Because then they couldn't call it Firefox. That's the reason for the EULA; Mozilla is quite understandably protective of its Firefox trademark, and doesn't want it applied to builds that have been patched or changed by distros. Ubuntu punches above the weight of most other distros, however, and could probably come to an agreement more easily; they'd want their users to be able to find a browser they're familiar with.

BTW, what you described pretty much already exists in the form of IceWeasel, which was created when Debian found that the terms for use of the Firefox trademark were too harsh for them.

Re:Fair enough

>Mozilla is quite understandably protective of its Firefox trademark,

I think you mean "insanely overprotective of it's Firefox trademark". Mozilla has restrictions that no other FOSS project I know of has, all to "defend their trademark". But Linux, Apache, Gnome and KDE, to name a few, are all trademarked and they don't have those restrictions. Combine that with pointless EULAs, and non-free artwork, and you have a project that doesn't measure up as FOSS.

Re:Fair enough

That's not the way it happened. It wasn't the Mozilla contact, it was debian's own people, pointing out that their deal with mozilla was against debian principles - debian does not allow itself to accept licenses which are specific to debian, believing this could lead to it distributing non-free stuff. (After all, that agreement meant that a user couldn't take debian, call it something else, and distribute it as a new distro, because they wouldn't have that agreement for the mozilla trademarks).

Re:Fair enough

Shipping IceWeasel as the default browser I could understand. I'm fine with that. However, if they made "apt-get install firefox" install IceWeasel instead, it would be the beginning of an unholy shitstorm against them, and rightfully so. You promote your ideals as much as you can, but you NEVER modify the specific action requested by a user and twist it to meet your ideals. Pull it out of the repository and make people go manually install it if they wish, but if I tell my system to install one piece of software it damn well better not decide on a "better" one.

Re:Fair enough

For a lot of people, this EULA thing might make them snap and ditch Firefox completely. If that happens Mozilla will lose a bit of market share, maybe even a significant bit.

To be honest, I doubt there are that many outside of the Slashdot peanut gallery that will hear about this, and even fewer of those will care. Anyone pissed enough with Firefox over the Awesome Bar etc will probably have switched, and if there's going to be a significant dip in market share then it'll be because of visible things like that; things that actually matter and are obvious problems to end users. A EULA ranks lower; ask the man in the street what he thinks about his web browser popping up a license agreement over its trademarks and his reaction will most likely be "So?".

Re:Fair enough

Lets see... When do Free Software/Open Source companies fail? Is it A) When they agree with the community or B) When they try to make it all corporate and businesslike? The answer of course is B. The tri-license Mozilla is distributed under along with the copyrights on the artwork and trademarks on the name are typical of many F/OSS projects that don't require the use of an EULA.

EULAs alienate the F/OSS community and make the software seem very corporate. It matters a ton to Mozilla and any user of Ubuntu.

Re:Fair enough

"The answer of course is B."

Is that so? I've seen plenty of people who criticize that open source software will never succeed on the desktop until it's more business-like.

Re:Fair enough

Then we should all start filing it as a bug until it gets fixed or they put iceweasel in.

Too corporate

I wonder what further bad will come out of Mozilla being too corporate. It starts to look like an elegant way of getting a paycheck and less like about making a good browser.

It is inconcievable that Mozilla would face any legal problems due to a lack of EULA.

EULA is quite important

The Firefox EULA outlines some quite important issues, not least of which is that it doesn't ship with a warranty. But what might be quite concerning to some, and is made clearish in the EULA, is that Firefox by default sends data to whatever 3rd party (Google) runs their anti-phishing. It's all to do with storing partial hashes rather than website addresses on the computer and in theory the 3rd party can't do anything useful with it and are legally required to not keep it. But some people still might find this quite concerning. More information on how Mozilla tries to make the data sent useless here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=419117 [mozilla.org]

Re:EULA is quite important

The 'no warranty' issue could be shown during ubuntu's installation as a whole, as it applies to everything in ubuntu. As for sending data to google - it shouldn't present this as a eula; it should present it as a very clear /option/ at the first run; just like IE7 does.

They being so difficult

I wonder why they're being so difficult. Firefox already isn't called like that in my OS for over a year anymore, it's "Gran Paradisio", and firefox 2 was something else that I already forgot (and don't care what it was again either). What bothers me more is that the logo is an empty globe instead of the better looking one with the fox. But so again, I wonder why they're doing that, while this isn't a problem for most other software like gimp, pidgin, inkscape, audacious, openoffice.org, KDE, filezilla, and so on. I mean, what does mozilla do so different that they have this trademark problem and the others don't?

EULA Contents:

EULA: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/legal/eula/firefox-en.html [mozilla.com]

Summary:
Preamble - notice that the source is available and this license does not apply to the source.
1. License Grant - This license gives you the right to use the executable provided by Mozilla Corp.
2. Termination - if you breach this license, S1 is voided.
3. Proprietary Rights - again, the source code is not proprietary. The branding logos are, you don't have the right to modify them.
4. Disclaimer of Warranty
5. Limitation of Liability
6. Export Controls - you must comply with teh law.
7. US Govt End Users - 2 sentences of legal references related to employees of the US Govt using Firefox.
8. Misc, nothing interesting at all. This agreement constitutes the agreement...

Sounds like Mozilla Corp doing the bare minimum to cover their asses, in a responsible fashion, without actually affecting end users at all.

Next step for Mozilla Corp..

...is to provide a "genuine firefox advantage" feature, that will check if your Firefox (tm) installation is genuine, and show a nasty transparent box in the corner of the screen...

I'm as big a fan of Mozilla and Firefox as anyone,

but this is a bit much.

I remember when Mozilla first decided to add an EULA to Firefox, and the coders weren't sure what the point was, except that a lot of other Windows software also had them.

My worry is, is this going to extend to the Firefox that is on the live CD (which will affect people more, due to the limitations of running anything on a live CD)?

I think the Mozilla guys are asshats about this. I'm surprised that they felt this was absolutely necessary.

Looks like the lawyers have taken over mozilla.org.

EULA summary

1. We're letting you use the software. Have fun.
2. If you don't want to use the software, don't.
3. We need to protect our trademarks, so if you change something and redistribute it, don't call it Mozilla or Firefox.
4. No warranty, get over it.
5. We're not responsible for anything that goes wrong. This actually is just a paraphrase of section 4, and like section 4, we've stated it in ALL CAPS, so you'll be sure to pay attention to it.
6. There might be laws about sending this software out of the country. Try to obey them.
7. If you're using this in a US government environment, there are certainly many laws that will regulate its use. Please pay attention to them.
8. We're doing it the California way, the UN will not be involved (thank goodness), this agreement is written in English, you can give this (unmodified) license and product to someone else, and we won't mind.

There. The important parts.

-Restil

Re:not free?

You're thinking beer, perhaps? Forcing end users to agree to a EULA before using a particular piece of software explicitly claims limitations on that software. I don't believe Opera (which isn't free either) required an agreement to a EULA. Though they of course retain all their copyrights and trademarks, they are non intrusive about it.

I haven't read Mozillas take on it, and why they require it to use their trademark. But it's annoying. One reason I prefer FOSS is the lack of EULAs, serial number entry and general 'stay out of the users way' attitude.

I have to admit that I scoffed when debian spun iceweasel, thinking them overly concerned with *any* encumbrance. I'm glad they did now. I don't care what name my browser takes, if it's compatible with the addons I use and works without trying to annoy me... even if it's just the first time it's used.

Re:So what?

The average users doesn't use linux. The average user doesn't care if they click a EULA before running firefox.