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Titel: The end of Firefox in Debian?
 Verfasst am: 22.09.2006, 00:08 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 30. Nov 2005
Beiträge: 91
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Titel: RE: The end of Firefox in Debian?
Verfasst am: 22.09.2006, 01:24 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 13. Mai 2005
Beiträge: 732
Wohnort: Texas
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| Well I am half way through (dinner time) but my respect for mozilla is wanning) |
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Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
Mark Twain
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Titel: Re: The end of Firefox in Debian?
Verfasst am: 22.09.2006, 09:35 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 07. Mai 2005
Beiträge: 526
Wohnort: Waliser Märze
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clubex hat folgendes geschrieben::
Compelling reading, and I can see both points of view it will be interesting to see how it is resolved. I like and use Firefox but I will not be too bothered if it cannot be shipped with Debian. There are other alternatives Konq is getting better with each release. And I expect it will be available elsewhere although I don,t know whether I would want to use it. A Debian alternative version would mean a lot of work. Thunderbird is a non starter for me Kmail is far better.
It looks like Mozilla, now it has a strong following, is flexing its muscles to renage on a previous agreement. |
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Titel: Re: The end of Firefox in Debian?
Verfasst am: 22.09.2006, 10:31 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 05. Okt 2004
Beiträge: 2069
Wohnort: w3
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This discussion again shows how easy it is to start a project and create free and open source software, as long as it does not become popular worldwide. As soon as this happens, all big open source projects have been hit by trademark/copyright/licensing problems. Debian and Mozilla are both no exception to this. The two communities decided slightly different how to deal with these problems, and different traditions in development and management do add some pepper here.
Personally I really don't appreciate the direction copyright and trademark laws have moved world-wide. The wrong ones are protected now, and the ones who would need legal protection are hindered (just look at the very case, where two nice open source projects are hindered in co-operating). However, as long as we are where we are, we have to find our ways through this jungle.
I think the Debian community should stand with their principles and remove the name and logo from all mozilla products it distributes. One of the top priorities should be securing freedom, and we are not the marketing machine for the Mozilla Foundation. If they decided to create corporate value in trademarks and copyrights, I wish them great success - but Debian is the wrong partner to assist them in this task.
Greetings,
Chris |
_________________
"An operating system must operate."
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 22.09.2006, 11:53 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 30. Nov 2005
Beiträge: 91
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To me the saddest aspect is that something which has
benifited both Debian and Mozilla should now seperate
them. Many M$ users had not even heard of Linux and
open source until Firefox was touted as a superior
alternative to IE. I hope that some sort of compromise
will eventually arise and draw Mozilla and Debian
together again and continue to benifit them both.
titan:
Yes thankfully we have many browser and mailer choices
within GNU/Linux. This episode might just stir up some
competition within the developer community and give us
worthy successors to Firefox and Thunderbird.
At least this dispute doesn't appear to affect the Gecko
engine which, if it did, would IMHO have a greater impact. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 22.09.2006, 13:34 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 22. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 1296
Wohnort: Budapest
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thebrowserformerlyknownas-1.0.0.deb
Get sponsorship by Prince! 
hubi |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 22.09.2006, 14:49 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 21. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 185
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Who was the mozilla guy who posted on the bug list....another useless lawyer? 
He's definitely not the technical type or he'd understand how Debian works... |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 22.09.2006, 23:42 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 05. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 414
Wohnort: Auckland, New Zealand
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| Teh Mozilla foundation is a company right? debian strives to be non-corporate. It doesn't surprise me that there is a conflict of interest. |
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Linux is evolution, not intelligent design - Linus Torvalds
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 08:11 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 25. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 2133
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It's funny, but Debian users are a lot like those people who will only buy organic food. If a product is "tainted" because it doesn't comply with their set of very strict rules, they won't eat it. Even if they go hungry.  |
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And I ain't got no worries 'cause I ain't in no hurry at all (Doobie Brothers, "Black Water").
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 09:25 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 22. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 1296
Wohnort: Budapest
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ockham23,
those b*st*rds (TM) are selling GM rice illegally in Europe, to stick with your comparison. But I don't get your comparison.
Debian applies changes in FF, and the MF does not like it. It's more like Mercedes not giving AMG the licence to call their tuned cars "Mercedes" and urge AMG to remove every Mercedes branding in the car. But Mercedes would not dream of doing that - for a good reason.
hubi |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 09:54 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 07. Mai 2005
Beiträge: 526
Wohnort: Waliser Märze
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ockham23 hat folgendes geschrieben::
It's funny, but Debian users are a lot like those people who will only buy organic food. If a product is "tainted" because it doesn't comply with their set of very strict rules, they won't eat it. Even if they go hungry.
I assume you are jesting but the reality is two leading players in the open source community can't agree over trademark and logo issues. It is sad not funny. The DFSG is problematic but I think is the right direction for Debian, it will be interesting what the mainstream computer press say about Debian releasing without Firefox and probably Thunderbird. It can only be seen as an own goal for the community. I doubt it will affect anyone anyway as there will be a non branded Debian Firefox plus Mozila Firefox will be be available elsewhere.
Having read all the e-mails in the link Mozilla come accross to me as hard nosed and arrogant and very much like the response from a commercial software company so from your simile above, yes I might be going hungry |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 11:26 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 05. Okt 2004
Beiträge: 2069
Wohnort: w3
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hubi hat folgendes geschrieben::
Debian applies changes in FF, and the MF does not like it. It's more like Mercedes not giving AMG the licence to call their tuned cars "Mercedes" and urge AMG to remove every Mercedes branding in the car. But Mercedes would not dream of doing that - for a good reason.hubi
Very nice - a perfect example of how to explain the situation to outsiders!
Greetings,
Chris |
_________________
"An operating system must operate."
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 12:01 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 25. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 2133
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| It's more like AMG obtaining one Mercedes and making a hundred thousand "improved" copies of it. DaimlerChrysler would never allow that. |
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And I ain't got no worries 'cause I ain't in no hurry at all (Doobie Brothers, "Black Water").
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 12:36 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 22. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 1296
Wohnort: Budapest
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Wait, until AMG got hold of the replicator known from Star Trek
iirc, Debian still can distribute whatever they want (that's the licence), but FF does not want the branding in it, because the MF regards the changes as a fork, as far as I understand the discussion on the mailing list.
hubi |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 13:57 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 25. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 2133
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Zitat:
Wait, until AMG got hold of the replicator known from Star Trek
With respect to software and other digital content, the replicator has already become reality for all of us. |
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And I ain't got no worries 'cause I ain't in no hurry at all (Doobie Brothers, "Black Water").
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 15:33 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 21. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 185
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| What does Debian change in FF? I thought it was just packaging it as a .deb so we can do the usual apt-get stuff? |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 15:57 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 22. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 1296
Wohnort: Budapest
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| In this thread there is a link to the discussion on the mailing-list. It's about backporting and patching. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 17:44 Uhr
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Developer
Anmeldung: 01. Okt 2004
Beiträge: 245
Wohnort: Australia
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| This bears similarities with cdrecord and Mr Schilling |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 23:12 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 08. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 300
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| yup a scary parallel to that, kelmo. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 23:13 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 08. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 300
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| Also I think this is a tempest in a teapot...Debian maintainers just simply repackaged the browser into a deb |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 23:45 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005
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deepdayze, no, they don't, they change the code to eliminate certain 'features' that make mozilla products incompatible with debian security etc, the self updater for example if I remember right. Mozilla has said over and over that they don't really care about this problem, so debian has to fix the stuff, they have to port back security updates to older but still supported browsers which mozilla no longer supports, and much more.
While none of these changes in any way changes the core intent of the mozilla firefox branded browser, for some reason now firefox inc. has decided that it needs to apply these rules in a strict way, irregardless of intent etc. This is so typically corporate and annoying that it's sad, but that's how it goes when you start feeding at that trough. But by the rules as I read them in those exchanges, debian must not use either the firefox logo or brandname, which really sucks, firefox is a key part of what drives people to linux in the first place, so having to rename it is completely counterproductive.
And if firefox inc wasn't so damned annoying about this they could have figured out a good way to work out the problem, but they aren't.
The truly sad thing is that before, when Mozilla was at mozilla.org became mozilla.com, for some reason this was not a major issue. But now, suddenly, the dogs are sniffing around. It's too bad that corporate exposure has to spoil so much, this is only a sign of things to come in my opinion with the kernel as a whole if the key kernel maintainers don't stop being so damned corporation oriented.
If I were working for or at mozilla.com, I'd give some serious thought to just how this situation came to be, and how truly negative it actually is in larger senses, in terms of the open source landscape as a whole. Even though they are right within the letter of the law, they are 100% wrong in terms of the spirit of open source, which should be their primary goal. But I guess those millions of google ad dollars somehow have changed their perceptions a bit more then they would like to admit. |
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New: rdiff-backup script
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 23.09.2006, 23:58 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 08. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 300
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| That's a very valid point, h2. I would like to see the Debian people sit down with the Mozilla people to work out the issues amicably. That would be the best route. Linux does not need all the bad blood right now. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 24.09.2006, 00:01 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005
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From what I read in those threads, mozilla has no interest in working this out at all. They only have an interest in protecting their trademarks. This is pathetic. Even though they give reasons like being able to defend against improper packagers of firefox, that's nonsense, if they wanted to create a different license for approved distros they could have easily done that, but what they really want to do is protect the income generating trademark.
That reeks to high heaven of corporate types having gained voice in mozilla.com, and I have a very good idea of who at least one source of the problem is, the head wags the tail... |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 24.09.2006, 03:10 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 08. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 300
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| I can also see the bickering within Debian itself as well...really bad |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 24.09.2006, 03:31 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 26. Jun 2005
Beiträge: 389
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What I can understand from mozilla's side is this:
Zitat:
The key problem is that there is code, and a build switch, that
explicitly handles the official branding/logos vs. the generic
name/artwork, and the package maintainer has chosen to break this switch
by making the unofficial side of the switch also label itself as
Firefox. I don't understand the motivations here, since the changelog I
saw isn't visible (packages.debian.org is still being weird) but the
gist of it was "avoid using the official branding switch" which seems
like one of those "makes it harder to undo" steps since people actually
would have to change code instead of build options to not be bound by
those terms. If users don't build with the official branding, its
because they are not accepting the terms of using things bound up in
trademark law. Doing things this way implies that only the artwork is
part of the official branding, as opposed to the name as well.
Debian maintainers have included a switch which strips out the copyrighted artwork of firefox (which is OK), while maintaining the name firefox (which is not OK). And the reason is because the artwork is copyrighted.
and so...
Zitat:
I've confirmed that this isn't acceptable usage of the trademark. If
you are going to use the Firefox name, you must also use the rest of the
branding.
>> Why can't you just use the official branding switch, anyway?
>>
>
> Because it uses graphics which have a non-free copyright license.
>
This is not something where you are free to pick what parts you want to
use. Either use the trademarked logos and name together or don't. The
name is trademarked in the exact same way as the logo, so I fail to see
how you can argue that one is acceptable to use and the other is not.
Maybe there's a technicality, but the name is just as free as the logos...
And mozilla also argues that debian logo and artwork are also copyrighted and if debian has no problems with that, why the double standards. Debian says that while debian has a loose policy with respect to copyright logos, debian maintainers may apply their own (stricter) standards.
And finally there is some issue about patches being approved by mozilla before they are shipped by debian, since usage of logo and name implies and endorsement by mozilla. But this is merely a problem of making an agreed-upon procedure work properly.
Personally I think that the discussion was interesting and very well conducted with both sides clearly recognizing the interests and concerns of the other. Seems to me that debian should just build a debian firefox based on firefox (call it debbiefox or something). Mozilla has no objections to that. Merely that if debian were to use the firefox name, they should use the firefox graphics as well, and if so, they should permit patches to be approved before being released. |
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