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abhay
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Joined: 30 Jul 2005
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 Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 10:29 pm Post subject: Will Gentoo go the Iceweasel way or we don't have that prob? |
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(I didn't know where to ask this so I am doing it here.)
Hi,
Most (if not all) of you must be following the clash between Debian and Mozilla over the non-inclusion of Firefox logo in official Debian builds.
http://ze-dinosaur.livejournal.com/12083.html
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3364701970.html
What I wanted to know was that whether Gentoo also applies any such patches to Firefox, which changes it structure in anyways? Will Gentoo developers have to get their patches approved from Mozilla as well? Will Gentoo get affected by the objections raised by Mozilla, regarding how Debian is using Firefox branding? In its essence...will Gentoo be taking the Iceweasel (the alternate name suggested by Debian devs for Firefox) route or will it stay with Firefox?
Regards,
Abhay |
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PaulBredbury
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 10:38 pm Post subject: Re: Will Gentoo go the Iceweasel way or we don't have that p |
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| abhay wrote: | | Most (if not all) of you must be following |
Nope, I am blissfully unaware. And don't care. People are idiots. I use swiftfox, which is faster anyway. |
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vonr
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 11:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Well, afaik Gentoo has explicit permission to use the branding. It seems that the Gentoo Firefox maintainers have always been pretty careful not to step on Mozilla's toes in this regard (see for instance this). |
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Sachankara
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 11:28 pm Post subject: Re: Will Gentoo go the Iceweasel way or we don't have that p |
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Gentoo already have Mozilla Foundation's "approval" to use the name Mozilla Firefox and the logo for it's ebuild.
Though I really don't care. I don't use Firefox directly anymore. I use Epiphany, which not only renders faster than Firefox, it also has better printing support, non-XUL based interface (pure GTK+), loads increadibly fast, etc. Just hoping for the Gentoo developers to add support for using xulrunner as the rendering backend instead of Firefox (hoping for the same thing with yelp and other tools that either depends on Seamonkey or Firefox).
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mikegpitt
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Joined: 22 May 2004
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 12:01 am Post subject: |
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| Ugh... unfortunately it sounds terribly debian. I'm all for GNU software, in fact I mostly try to use it, but things like this seem pretty ridiculous. |
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tabanus
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 12:11 am Post subject: |
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OMG, I had no idea that Mozilla were such total assholes. I quite like the product, and I've been following the Mozilla-Debian debate and to be honest I thought Debian were being overly sensitive. But look at this:
| Mozilla Bugzilla wrote: |
3. We would like to add the popular Yandex search engine to the list of the
default engines (by far it is the most effective when you search for pages in
Russian). Your permission is needed. |
And Mozilla's reply
| Mozilla Bugzilla wrote: | | You may add Yandex to the list, but you can't change the default. |
Link
They won't let a Russian distro change the default search engine to a Russian language one and still call it Firefox. Think I'm going back to konqueror, it's nicer anyway.
Hey...here's a thought. What how about creating an ebuild for the Debian re-branded version when they release it 
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Gergan Penkov
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 12:40 am Post subject: |
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this is not really the problem, the problem are the patches:
http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/blog/2006-02-22/debian-versioning-of-mozilla-libraries-harmful/
because of such things the weasels want to press debian...
and I must say that the morrons have left the distributions without a choice - look how many patches come in the fox-products, they even could not be compiled without them - it is all winblows and market share for them in order to take the google's money...
[edit a little bit the stile  ]
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Sachankara
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:06 am Post subject: |
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| tabanus wrote: | | They won't let a Russian distro change the default search engine to a Russian language one and still call it Firefox. |
Probably because they get money from Google everytime someone uses the Google search bar. 
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mikegpitt
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 3:21 am Post subject: |
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| Sachankara wrote: | | tabanus wrote: | | They won't let a Russian distro change the default search engine to a Russian language one and still call it Firefox. |
Probably because they get money from Google everytime someone uses the Google search bar. |
And making money is evil right? jk.
I always admired how firefox was able to generate revenue via the google toolbar so Mozilla can provide it free to all and still be able to operate. Google does have Russian language search. I'm sure the firefox developers wouldn't mind pre-shipping firefox with a cookie that sets the language to Russian... this is probably straying off topic. |
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tylerwylie
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:33 am Post subject: |
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The doom of Firefox is near, Epiphany will rule forever!!!
er oh wait...
*reads topic*
Well, it is their trademark and they protected it, seems like both guys win here. |
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cokey
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:41 am Post subject: |
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that is pathetic from debian, they should really wake up
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abhay
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:03 am Post subject: |
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I know that Gentoo has explicit permission but it was given in Gerv's times. He is not handling Mozilla's trademark policies anymore...this new guy "Mike Connor" seems to be doing it. Also look at this comment of Mike from the Debian Bugzilla, | Quote: | For what its worth, Gerv is not responsible at this time for
trademark permissions or approvals. As noted previously, since the
inception of the Mozilla Corporation, we have been handling trademark
policy and enforcement. We didn't follow through as well as we
should have (we only got through Novell and Red Hat's patchsets) but
we're starting to fix that. |
It clearly shows that he will knock every major distro's door and see if they are adding some custom patches or not and how well they are handling Mozilla trademark.
Now what I want to know is whether we ("We" as in Gentoo) are adding some custom patches to Firefox or is it just upstream stuff? If we are adding custom stuff, will Gentoo mind showing every patch to Mozilla and getting it approved before adding it to the tree or will it be unacceptable.
Also, imho Mozilla people are not being assholes. They are just trying to save their trademark and see that the quality they want to assocaite with the name "Firefox" stays intact. A blog entry by one of Mozilla's devs talks about it here
http://djst.org/blog/2006/09/27/the-name-firefox-not-allowed-in-ubuntu/
| Quote: | | The truth is, however, that Mozilla Corporations aggressive defending of their copyright is sensible. There is (at least) one strong reason why Mozilla must defend their copyrighted name and logo, and that is quality assurance. If anyone were allowed to make their own highly modified version of the browser and for example bundle it with spyware, and on top of that still call it Firefox with the recognized fox-around-globe logo, then people would no longer associate Firefox with high quality. |
I kind of agree with him... |
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Gergan Penkov
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 11:30 am Post subject: |
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Ha ha ha, now go on and remove the gentoo applied patches, and build your quallity assured mozilla, I wish you good luck 
This has nothing to do with QA, and this is not the way with FOSS, it is just frickin' ad-ware, which happens to be open-source.
I just don't care as I use only xulrunner (and build all pkgs against it) and there aren't any trademarks on it.
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tabanus
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 11:33 am Post subject: |
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| abhay wrote: | | Quote: | | The truth is, however, that Mozilla Corporations aggressive defending of their copyright is sensible. There is (at least) one strong reason why Mozilla must defend their copyrighted name and logo, and that is quality assurance. If anyone were allowed to make their own highly modified version of the browser and for example bundle it with spyware, and on top of that still call it Firefox with the recognized fox-around-globe logo, then people would no longer associate Firefox with high quality. |
I kind of agree with him... |
I fail to see how a different icon would in any way affect the functionality or security of the product. Debian are stupid for their uber-strict definition of free. Mozilla are equally stupid on their enforcement of the icon.
I can see the day when this is forked into a separate "free" Linux version. As long as Mozilla continue to licence the source as GPL, it shouldn't take too much work either.
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Carlo
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:10 pm Post subject: |
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| abhay wrote: | | Now what I want to know is whether we ("We" as in Gentoo) are adding some custom patches to Firefox or is it just upstream stuff? |
The latter.
The Mozilla Foundation has to defend their brand. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to sue the dark side (e.g. a cracker or spammer distributing an "improved" Firefox), but loose it instead. On the other hand not explicitly allowing the Debian guys to backport security patches and still using the Mozilla brand is as stupid as the "we cannot use this non-free logo" position.
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Gergan Penkov
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Carlo wrote: | | abhay wrote: | | Now what I want to know is whether we ("We" as in Gentoo) are adding some custom patches to Firefox or is it just upstream stuff? |
The latter.
The Mozilla Foundation has to defend their brand. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to sue the dark side (e.g. a cracker or spammer distributing an "improved" Firefox), but loose it instead. On the other hand not explicitly allowing the Debian guys to backport security patches and still using the Mozilla brand is as stupid as the "we cannot use this non-free logo" position. |
I don't see how one could even imagine, that a linux distribution will ship a browser with spyware and they are pressing linux distributions, not spammers - they could not find and track the spammers in this way - these arguments worth nothing.
And should in this case all the upstream demand to see the patches applied to the free software - this is just another schilly, nothing more, albeit much more powerfull.
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Carlo
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Gergan Penkov wrote: | | I don't see how one could even imagine, that a linux distribution will ship a browser with spyware and they are pressing linux distributions, not spammers - they could not find and track the spammers in this way - these arguments worth nothing. |
Doesn't matter. Not to defend your brand - regardless which organization can be listed as example that you didn't - can suffice to loose it. The Mozilla Foundation does it quite friendly btw.. The usual way is to charge your lawyer to send cease and desist letters (which can be expensive for the recipient (brand violator)).
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Gergan Penkov
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:58 pm Post subject: |
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I agree with this, but Linus allow us to use the gentoo sources and my uname does not show gentoo-kernel, it shows Linux and I'm pretty sure he does not inspect our patches...
And I really have nothing against the ad-ware way, but for god sake why should they force it on us in this way, they are MPL/GPL-browser and not opera.
There was such a case with mandrake, if I remember this correctly, using the screensavers to add ads in their free version...
And this comes every now and then, with 1.5 release - people have waited for the official branding 4-5 months.
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Carlo
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Gergan Penkov wrote: | | I agree with this, but Linus allow us to use the gentoo sources |
Well, I'm not a lawyer. On the one hand there's the GPL, on the other the MPL. On the one hand a kernel, on the other a user space application. I haven't read the exact conditions for usage of "Mozilla Firefox", either. Apparently the Mozilla Foundation is very restrictive - not to say anal - in this regard. But swearing how much they suck doesn't help a bit. Either convince them to become more open of fork.
btw.: If Gentoo would be a commercial entitiy and we would use Gentoo Linux as trademark, Gentoo had to negotiate the conditions with Linus (or more exact the Linux Mark Institute).
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Gergan Penkov
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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No need to fork for now as far as I know they are dual-licensed MPL/GPL, on official-branding they are MPL and include the copyrighted stuff - icons and names, if it is to be called iceweasel (or whatever) and use some other icon eg not official branded - mozilla could not say a word about the patches, changes in the search engine...
This is what swiftfox makes and they could not go against them ...
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Hey little bitch!
Be glad you finally walked away or you may have not lived another day."
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marcion
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 11:42 pm Post subject: Patching Mozilla |
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Patching Firefox so it updates through the apt package manager is a good thing. They are making the software better for Debian users.
When the trademark and the brand are more important than making the best software then something has gone rather wrong there.
So what the heck are the Mozilla people doing? Going after Debian seems a strange thing to do. I applaud the Debian people for standing up to this abuse of power. This is not the way we do things in the free/open source community, if it is not good for SCO then it is not good for Mozilla.
My 2p:
- Well firstly I do not think the patching is an issue for our main ebuild as the patching is done by the end user's machine at install time. However, what about mozilla-firefox-bin ?
- Secondly, I think that if Debian and Ubuntu call it iceweasel or whatever then we should strongly consider following, it makes sense for all the community distros to have similar package names.
- Thirdly, I am using Epiphany now in protest and it is rather good. It is faster and prettier than Firefox. There is now a package called epiphany-extensions that gives you a very good adblock indeed.
When the Gentoo ebuild allows you to build epiphany against xulrunner then people will be able to choose not to have firefox or seamonkey on their systems and still browse graphically in Gnome. Gentoo is all about choice after all... |
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dleverton
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| Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 11:59 pm Post subject: Re: Patching Mozilla |
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| marcion wrote: | - Well firstly I do not think the patching is an issue for our main ebuild as the patching is done by the end user's machine at install time. However, what about mozilla-firefox-bin ?
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mozilla-firefox-bin is the official binary from Mozilla, there won't be any problems with that. |
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marcion
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 12:14 am Post subject: |
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| tabanus wrote: | | I can see the day when this is forked into a separate "free" Linux version. As long as Mozilla continue to licence the source as GPL, it shouldn't take too much work either. |
If Debian does fork and Ubuntu follows, then most other Linux distros would tend to follow. However I do not think it is likely.
Indeed, I think Mozilla will back down if Debian stands firm. Why? Because a lot of people still use Debian, and Mozilla get money from Google and others for each install of Firefox. Mozilla will lose a lot of money if a forked version uses some other default search engine.
If we were gonna fork then why not make a native GTK/KDE version that followed all the GNOME/KDE desktop conventions and looks less like a dog - someone has done it already it is epiphany/konqueror. The main reason that these have not taken off fully yet seems mostly because people want to remain compatible with Windows for various bizarre reasons. |
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abhay
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 2:13 pm Post subject: |
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| marcion wrote: | | Indeed, I think Mozilla will back down if Debian stands firm. Why? Because a lot of people still use Debian, and Mozilla get money from Google and others for each install of Firefox. Mozilla will lose a lot of money if a forked version uses some other default search engine. |
imho you are a little over-estimating the revenue that could be coming to Mozilla from Linux users and specifically from Debian ones, considering the limited number of users working on Linux OS and then specifically on Firefox.
As for Mozilla people going after Debian is concerned. I don't feel if we can even call it as "going after". I mean they couldn't have done it in a more laid back way. "Going after" would have meant sending Debian a cease and desist notice. Also it has been made clear earlier by another user that if they don't protect their trademark now, then they might loose any claims (if they need to make any) in-future as well.
Also, someone here said that no Linux distro is going to pack spyware in Firefox so they should not be snubbed like this. Here it should be known that even if Mozilla makes an exception for Debian i.e. allows them to continue the way they are doing and actually "go after" "spyware manufacturers", then also it will be unacceptable to Debian (look at #8 point under Debian Free Software Guidelines). So effectively what Debian wants Mozilla to do is to let go of their trademark completely and allow everyone to do what ever they want with Firefox's code and then package it in what ever way they want to. Now, if that is not being anal...then I don't know what is... |
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Naib
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:35 pm Post subject: |
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| tabanus wrote: | | abhay wrote: | | Quote: | | The truth is, however, that Mozilla Corporations aggressive defending of their copyright is sensible. There is (at least) one strong reason why Mozilla must defend their copyrighted name and logo, and that is quality assurance. If anyone were allowed to make their own highly modified version of the browser and for example bundle it with spyware, and on top of that still call it Firefox with the recognized fox-around-globe logo, then people would no longer associate Firefox with high quality. |
I kind of agree with him... |
I fail to see how a different icon would in any way affect the functionality or security of the product. Debian are stupid for their uber-strict definition of free. Mozilla are equally stupid on their enforcement of the icon.
I can see the day when this is forked into a separate "free" Linux version. As long as Mozilla continue to licence the source as GPL, it shouldn't take too much work either. |
Turn the table around.. are you aware how strongly Debian protects their logo, and they are the distro that is suppose to champion OSS
Debian want to add custom-patches (rather then waiting for them to be integrated into the next release) IF they do that then the code that they are compiling is no longing the code that Mozilla assigns to the trademark and logo which is the firefox logo
ergo, the Mozilla foundation are well within their rights and are doing things correctly, Debian are being ass-hats
IF a patch that debian create (for their version) causes a gaping security hole, it is fair that Mozilla-Firefox gets the bad press for it? NO
As long as Debian keep feeding their patch's back to Mozilla and a fork doesn't occur then let it be
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