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- joelhardi, on 10/24/2007, -7/+44Or you can compile Firefox with whatever options you want AND keep the fox logo -- this is what Gentoo people do. The restriction is just against distributing compiled binaries with the Firefox logo that aren't official builds.
Debian folks should just get over themselves and distribute a version with the standard fox-free globe icon, and call it "Mozilla browser" or something if they have to. The silliness is in creating a fork just to have a different name and logo, and ... Ice Weasel? C'mon, that's not even a real animal. Next is Thunderbird going to become Sunshine Pony? - atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -14/+41There's nothing to support and nothing to be against. You either use it or not, if the name or artwork doesn't sit well with you, you can always download the browser directly from mozilla.org the only thing is that is not going to be managed by apt-get, but that's not a big deal.
People -- grow up! - venom8599, on 10/24/2007, -9/+32@zoom1928
No, it's the hypocrites at Debian who want to bitch and moan when someone tries to protect their trademarks and copyrights, while at the same time defending their own trademarked name and copyrighted logo. If I make a crappy Linux distro based on Debian, keep the name and or trademarks, but patch it myself potentially causing severe issues with it, I'm sure Debian would be just fine with it.
They eventually caved and agreed to stop using the name, but the elitist manner in which they conducted themselves shows clearly the worst kind of FOSS zealotry. FOSS is fine, but zealotry no matter what form it takes is never a good thing. - beni, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24Counter-points:
1. Debian doesn't have to BE unreasonable.
I can't go into the store, buy a bunch of Coke, and add cinnamon and rebottle it and label it as Coke, it's not Coke unless the company says it is. Just because any random joe can't add code to without passing it through Mozilla people doesn't mean it's not free software.
2. It's an improved Firefox... for now.
Unless IceWeasel can continually provide patches at an equal or better pace than Mozilla can, their advantage in that area may not stay an advantage for long. As non-Mozilla patches are added, it's going to be harder to integrate the same patches that Mozilla does, because they'll be patching a different codebase.
3. Firefox is free enough.
Yes, there may be copyrighted artwork and plugins. As for the artwork, it's used to brand the browser, part of establishing the trademark. Trademarks aren't against the principle of free software, they're essential to the promotion of a product. If Firefox wasn't trademarked, someone could release a rebadged version of Konqueror and call it Firefox. When I want to download a copy of Firefox, I want the real deal, not some cheap knock-off. If GNU wants to patch or otherwise change firefox, they certainly can, but it ceases to be Firefox, and it's perfectly reasonable for Mozilla to require that they not brand it as such. In fact, under US trademark law, if Mozilla fails to defend their trademark, even if they don't care about who's using it, they stand to lose their trademark if it's ever challenged in court by a third party. The logic is, GNU over there is using the Firefox name on their web browser and Mozilla did nothing about it, so I can too. Most (if not all) non-free plugins belong to third parties who are often unwilling to release their source. Mozilla isn't the bad guy here.
4. Lots of things are important to GNU.
A totally free browser may be important to GNU, but look how well they did on a kernel, which was THE KEY to making the GNU operating system. Someone outside the project made a better kernel, faster. Mach still isn't anywhere near as complete or as fast as Linux.
5. Firefox looks and sounds better.
It may be a matter of opinion, but at least Firefox has an established brand name. Over 22 million downloads of Firefox, according to spreadfirefox.com. That's not exactly a small user base. The chances of getting a non-techie friendor relative to install something they've actually heard of is a lot easier.
edit: oh my, that's a long post. - nstanosheck, on 10/12/2007, -10/+29"but that shouldn't get infront of what IceWeasel stands for."
Debian Elitism? :-p - Gatorade, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23You know why we can't support a knockoff of Firefox? Because the mass market can't be flooded with semi-improved clones of the best browser out there. It has taken long enough for the majority of my less than tech savvy friends and family to recognize the firefox logo and know it means INTERNET. Ice weasel is just set out to complicate things. It will not suceed.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -14/+30*sigh* when will you idiots get it?
debian doesn't give a flying ***** about market share, it's a non profit organisation.
if only the dev's who maintain debian used it, they wouldn't give a *****. - stephenwq, on 10/12/2007, -9/+24"Give me IceWeasel over Firefox anyday. Oh, you use Firefox? That sucks! IceWeasel is so much better. See, the name alone will make people want to switch from whatever the hell they’re using"
Hell no, IceWeasel sounds nowhere near as good as Firefox.
Fire > Ice
Fox > Weasel - felyduw, on 10/24/2007, -5/+17@zoom1928
Mozilla Foundation is defending their trademark. If you feel that this is all about AOL then you sir have a real case of i-don't-know-what-i'm-talking-about-itis. - ihatethedekoys, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15An issue most people overlook in this whole debate is the patch submitting.
Debian still supports Firefox 1.0.4 while Mozilla does not. If Debian were forced to submit patches then when Mozilla drops support of 1.5 Debian would have to stop supporting it as well. Which, would force all their users to upgrade and that can break dependencies and whatnot.
However, if Mozilla didn't force Debian to submit patches then somebody could take Firefox, add malicious code to it, and then redistribute it as "Mozilla Firefox."
They had to change the name. There wasn't any way around it. - eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -7/+17I honestly didn't think this sort of thing went on outside of elementary school. If the guys at Debian aren't going to grow the hell up, fine, but stop paying attention to them.
- venom8599, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13@drag
Well, Ubuntu's going to (presumably) use it because it's based off of Debian. It's not like they decided to ditch Firefox for IceWeasel on their own.
Bringing up Debian's copyrights and trademarks is important, since Debian and GNU are now trying to claim that Firefox isn't Free software, since it contains a copyrighted and trademarked logo. By that rationale, Debian itself isn't Free software. That is hypocrisy. - warpzone, on 10/24/2007, -9/+19"if only the dev's who maintain debian used it, they wouldn't give a *****."
And THAT is exactly why Debian drives people away from Linux. Want to know why Ubuntu is so popular? It's got many great features from Debian, and 95% less asshats. - ihatethedekoys, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12werd.
People are acting like Debian is banning Firefox.
They aren't. You can still go to getfirefox.com, download, and install it. Debian will probably also move Firefox to the "non-free" repository.
Debian isn't forcing anybody to use anything. You want to use Firefox? Go for it. You want to use Iceweasel? Go for it.
All Mozilla is doing in protecting their trademark. All Debian is doing is protecting their OS.
People need to chill out. - pufuwozu, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13It wouldn't suprise me if Firefox was put in the multiverse repository so that people may still download and use it with the non-free logos and artwork.
IceWeasel would be installed by default and would be in the main repository. - clawven, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12The #1 reason I will support Iceweasel, but not use it:
It won't work with the Firefox autoupdate system, so it will always lag behind on security patches. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+17You people don't have a clue what is going on here.
Not at all.
The issue is very simple.
Debian is not allowed by Mozilla to patch Firefox for any security or bugfixes and still call it firefox without allowing Mozilla.org to examine and give a chance for them to veto any patches first.
In the past there was this issue and Debian worked out a agreement with Mozilla because Debian has a proven history of doing high quality stuff. However somebody else is in charge of these sort of decisions so they've decided to be ***** about it and broke the previous arrangement.
The requirement Mozilla places on Debian and other distros for patch review is to much of a beuacratic hurdle for Debian because Debian is in a unique position.
First off Debian backports security fixes to older versions of Firefox. So don't have to choose between having a secure browser or keeping your favorite extensions non-broke, like you currently have to do with Windows and most other Linux systems.
Debian is the only significantly large non-profit, community ran distro. Ubuntu, Redhat, Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, Slackware, are all profit oriented and backed by companies that steer and control them.
Debian has support for 10 official architectures (x86, m68k, sparc, alpha, powerpc, arm, mips/mipsel, hppa, ia64, s390) and several ports being worked on (AMD64, ppc64, superH, armeb, m32r). Debian also has non-Linux ports (hurd-386, netbsd-i386, netbsd-alpha, kfreebsd-gnu)
In addition to that they have several branches for each port (Unstable, testing, stable). And some extra branches (oldstable, and experimental).
All of them have Firefox. If you lost count that would be over 60 different versions of Firefox that Debian currently has.
AND MOZILLA SAYS THAT IF YOU TRY TO DO A BUG FIX YOU HAVE TO SEND PATCHES TO THEM FIRST. For all 60 stuff. That would take weeks.
Now on top of that Firefox has to be remained modifiable. That is the entire ***** point to Debian and if they can't modify stuff themselves then how can the end user? It's Mozilla that are being the ***** here.
Oh, and before any body screams 'Oh, the Debian logo'! Or some ***** like that. Try to use the Redhat logo some time. Or the Ubuntu one. You just _can't_. It's a f-ing trademark. And trademarks have to be protected.
But even then Debian still makes allowances, much more then other large distros. They have versions of the logo that you can use if your using Debian or are a Debian related project that isn't a part of Debian proper. In fact you see the 'Debian Swirl' logo, which is the Debian affiliated logo, much more then the 'Debian Swirl + genie bottle', which is the 'official' this is for Debian use only logo.
It's Mozilla project that are being pendemic here, not Debian. No other program has this problem. Not Gnome. Not KDE. Not Blender, or Konquerer, or any other of the hundreds of thousands of other programs aviable for Linux. FIREFOX IS THE ONLY ONE.
Think about that for a second.
They, Mozilla, is the only one with this problem. They don't make allowances, nothing like Debian does. What they should do is have 'official Mozilla Firefox' logo, then another logo that is recognizably Firefox, but not the official one for distributions to freely use. Then there won't be a problem.
And for the author of the opinion article:
Nobody is going to fork Firefox over a trademark disput, you moron.
There are already a number of fine non-firefox browsers for Linux. Seamonkey. Epiphany. Galeon. Opera. Konquerer, and probably a half a dozen other smaller projects. Nobody is going to fork Firefox because there is no point. There are already enough alternatives that nobody has to use it to get the same benifits.
Anyways, they'll just use a different Icon. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Not really, since the vast majority of people use Windows and don't have to worry about this pointless and boring Debian/IceWeasel stuff.
This article should be called 'another reason not to bother with Debian'. - pgm_01, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10So Debian doesn't protect it's logo?
http://www.debian.org/logos/
Oh I guess it does.
Is Mozilla absolutely anal about their logo?
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/identity-guidelines/firefox.html
Yup.
Still more: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html
Is it necessary?
Absolutely. Microsoft could release a version of Firefox, use the logo and name, create giant security holes and then say look how insecure the browser is, use IE instead.
Our copyright/ trademark/ patent laws have gotten so screwed up that if you don't enforce your trademark, you lose it. I will use Firefox, whether I have to get from a universe repository or from Mozilla, it still will be my browser of choice. The worst case scenario is that Ubuntu/Kubuntu users will get it from Easy Ubuntu or Automatix. - brkn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8rorrison: Because a couple of Debian package maintainers will do a much better and faster job of understanding the code base and working on security improvements than the actual Firefox team, who developed it in the first place, right?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I use Ubuntu.
If Ubuntu automatically upgrades me to IceWeasal and Ice Weasal is the what the latest greatest firefox is, I will use Ice Weasal.
If Ice Weasal is not what the the latest greatest firefox is I will uninstall Ice Weasal and go back to installing firefox myself. - SkaAgent11, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I hope the open source community learns quick that there is a difference between idealism and fundamentalism. I swear, there is a certain eeriness about watching the political climate in the open source community that reminds me of 3rd world politics. Compromise is necesary for all but the most basic of human rights and dignities. Free software isn't about 40 acres and a mule, its an ideology of building good software. And if you want a quick way to kill it, then spreading its users into multiple camps is the quickest way to do it.
And for the love of *****..."IceWeasel"?
The Debian community needs a tutorial in marketing and politics. - gangranous, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This is just Greek Tragedy.
The crux of the problem has to do with US Trademark law, which does not allow for making exceptions -- if you own a trademark, you are obligated to vigorously defend it. In fact this is the same reason that the trademark "Linux" itself has to be defended, which made headlines a while back as well. Just search the web for "Linux trademark defend". Anyway -- as these are the stupid trademark law rules, the Mozilla foundation can't make an exception for the Debian organization.
Debian previously had an agreement with the Mozilla foundation to allow use of the name without the logo. Unfortunately the Mozilla foundation has had to change their trademark policy and can no longer honor this agreement. The problem is that Debian is used as the base for a number of distributions that include Firefox, including Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc. In fact most of the popular distributions ran into the same problem, like Red Hat, SuSE, etc.
Due to Debian's Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), all software must have the right to be modified, and that includes the logos. The logo that ship with Firefox don't conform to this. So when the Mozilla foundation demands that the logo be used if the name is used, they forced Debian's hand. This came at a bad time -- right before the release of Etch -- and so Debian had to do something quick and decisive to solve the problem ASAP. They're doing this because THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE that fits within all of the rules.
Other "more commercial" Linux distributions such as Red Hat and SuSE can ship Firefox using the logos because those distributions don't have the same rules concerning requiring logo modifications being allowed.
The bottom line is that this was problem was an eventuality; between US trademark law and the DFSG, there's no other choice than to fork if Firefox is going to be considered free software in the Debian tree. - terrab0t, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I'm a little torn on the main point of the article - that Firefox isn't completely free of useage restrictions, but the author brought up another interesting point: the terms Photoshopping and Googling have solidified both of those products' places as the defacto standards in their respective fields. In both cases it's well deserved, but consider how much harder it is to dethrone either of them now that they are a part of our language; a verb. I bet Xerox held it's competition down much longer with it's company name entrenched as a verb than it would have otherwise.
If we stop saying "web surfing" and start saying "Firefoxing", we could very well over-write IE as the default. People might actually get their new computer and ask "how do I Firefox with it?". When they are pointed to the IE logo, they may feel that it isn't exactly what they are looking for. "It doesn't say 'Firefox', so it must be some kind of cheap imitation. How do I get the real thing so I can really Firefox?".
I don't know what specific action you could use "Linux" as a verb for, but there has to be something. We could also try to linguistically wipe out MP3, AAC and WMA by using OGG everywhere. I OGG'd my CD collection. I need a new OGG player. Don't even go the generic route and say "Digital music player". They're OGG players now and we need OGGs to fill them. If it doesn't play OGGs, it's some kind of wierd foriegn knockoff. If an online store doesn't sell OGGs, you must need some kind of special player for their stuff; no good. They're OGG stores now. They sell OGGs. If they don't sell OGGs, they're not an OGG store and can't possibly have what I need for my OGG player.
Damn. I think I'm already brainwashing myself. Time to stop Firefoxing and go to bed. - Gdjrptryjg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Which are...
- felyduw, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7@pufuwozu
Unfortunately for you IceWeasel is condemned to failure outside of the zealot section of the Debian community. Just like Mach is condemned to be just another kernel someone developed. Linux will continue to be the de facto Free Software kernel and Firefox will continue to be the de facto Free Software browser. Both have trademarks and both defend them. Does that make them non-Free ? No, it doesn't.
Debian can do whatever they want to do, it's their right. Just don't start attacking the Mozilla Foundation on something which they are truly entitled and obliged to do. - burke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's not about whether it's condemned to failure or not, it's about whether the default browser is free software.
Debian doesn't really care whether people use it or all go out and download Opera as soon as their OS is installed. All they care about s providing a platform of free software, which is exactly what they're doing. - netcrusher88, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9okay, um, the name IceWeasel makes me want to shoot someone, and honestly, I'm glad I ditched Debian because they seem to be RMS's lapdog. Just wait - once GPLv3 is released they're going to fork the kernel because it will never be GPLv3 licensed and GPLv2 just won't be "free" enough for Debian anymore.
I suggest we quit using the term "free" to describe software and start saying "liberated". It's stupid to say that IceWeasel is a "free" fork of Firefox. as far as i'm concerned, mozilla's got the right idea anyway. Now, we can accurately say that IceWeasel is "liberated", because "liberated" doesn't necessarily imply that it was an easy transition, or willing, plus it's easier to make fun of. - RyanJones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@pufuwozu:
1. It is really free - of the devs have that much of a problem with it why not submit the patches to Firefox directly through bugzilla? That's the whole point of it being open source - the patches could contain a security fix that could benefit all OS' not just Debian.
2. Its never that easy, ever looked at what normally happens when two of Firefox's branches merge? Its normally pretty easy but sometimes its chaos and you have to remember these are almost identical - Ice Weasel and Firefox could very well becomes completely different thereby making it almost impossible to get the code bases to integrate correctly.
3. People can do what ever they want with it but you need to look at this from Mozilla's point of view. Say you wrote a pierce of software, it was open source so people could download the code, modify it and re-distribute it without your permission. Your software becomes popular but you find out a company has ported the codebase while still using the same logo and name as your program. What if that copy then gets more security flaws? Are the average users going to think twice when they see "Massive security flaw found in Firefox" even though it could only be referring to Debian? No they aren't. This could potentially happen, non-official patches could open up holes and change Firefox's security record in the users eyes. it has happened before, people using Windows getting worried about a security flaw in Firefox for Linux... this would be the worst case and so its obvious that Mozilla want to avoid it.
4. Once again it is completely free.
5. Once again it is completely free.
I think its a good idea really, if Debian's patches are bad then it won't look bad on Firefox or Mozilla because they are no longer the same thing. - inactive, on 10/24/2007, -7/+10i have never understood debians stallman type insanity over social issues.
sure they are important, but not to the point of reproducing crappy versions of everything.
there is nothing particularly onerous about mozilla's terms anyway so wtf? - FuManchu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3First of all, I think there is a copyright issue still, with the Marvel Comics Group.
Didn't "Iceweasel" battle the "Fantastic Four" back in issue 12, along about 1965?
Also, @ joelhardi who asks:
"Next is Thunderbird going to become Sunshine Pony?"
Nope. "Sunshine Pony" is copyrighted by a porn model who specializes in cowgirl poses. ;-> - Drewdah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I for one am not excited about having a seperate fork of Firefox to have to test my web applications in. Right now it's just security fixes, but it's not going to stop there.
In my opinion, stunts like these are what have kept the *nix flavor of the desktop OS (which has more flavors and stupid names than I care to mention) away from the hands of your average computer user. Ubuntu was a step in right direction, rally everyone behind one well-built distro and market the damn thing so it can get some non-geek exposure. I see IceWeasel as a step back. - gfnw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It's actually not primarily the "having to submit all patches to Mozilla" issue.
The one, overriding problem here is that Mozilla won't allow Debian to use the name "Firefox" without also using the official logo. The official logo is under non-free copyright and therefore cannot be included in Debian no matter what concessions or compliances are made.
Debian will not use the official logo, therefore they cannot use the official name either.
Read here for the real story:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622 - lostngone, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Ok then they will include this thing called "IceWeasel". Then no one will have any problems with Mozilla if they makes changes to its source tree so often that "IceWeasel" is unable to sync its patches/fixes/updates from Mozilla? Face it, without Mozilla group doing all the work "IceWeasel" would be just a couple 100K of unusable code. I seriously doubt Debian has any plan to complete fork off IceWeasel to its own completely separate tree.
.
But then again I really don't know what I'm talking about - Ennoch, on 10/24/2007, -11/+14Debian: The AssHat OS.
- adidax, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Screw both of them, use Opera.
- gfnw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4That's not the point. It isn't supposed to be a competitor to Firefox. It isn't supposed to be saying "We're better than you".
It's an ALTERNATIVE, free of copyright issues. - rimbaud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You should definitely install FireSomething: randomises the name of the app.
http://shorty114.net/2006/07/firesomething-update/ - TimG088, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Whats up with all of the elements and animal names? I think I'm going to create my own. It will be called....Water Walrus!!!
- Shadowman, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Debian-based Ubuntu will probably do the same thing and Shuttleworth definitely does give a flying ***** about market share. Bill Gates must have a good laugh when he hears about pissing contests like this in the Linux community.
- Ryland, on 10/24/2007, -20/+22And they wonder why Linux/Unix doesn't have more market share as a desktop OS... this is retarded.
- MonkeyFit, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6"Of course I'll use Firefox on Windows."
Duh. IceWeasel is only available on a linux platform. - pufuwozu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4And that's exactly what they're doing. Debian won't be including Mozilla Firefox but they'll probably use IceWeasel instead.
- venom8599, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Ok, so IceWeasel is going to be completely free then? No copyrights on the images or trademarks on the name? If they do then everyone under the sun should start distributing broken versions of it with the same logo and name.
- lostngone, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5I'm sorry if sat down and spent as much time as the mozilla group has I would expect my work to be respected and my wishes honored and not just, Ice"Weaseled" out of.
If debian doesn't like what the Mozilla team is doing with its license, fine just don't include with the release. - atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4"And THAT is exactly why Debian drives people away from Linux. "
I think that's exactly why Debian and Debian derived distros are highly popular -- by concentrating on what is important for them devs actually succeeded to make a very sound operating system. Look on Distrowatch and see that 5 out of top 10 are Debian based distros.
And if by this approach drives some kind of people away from Linux maybe that's even a great thing in itself, not everybody _has to_ use Linux. - beni, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Ok, but I've got dibs on KY Sheep.
- MrViklund, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Just use FireFox. Do we really need yet another browser out there that will take 0.001% of the market?
- dfltr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2forking a hugely popular app for the sole reason that their logo is copyrighted is just mind-boggling. i honestly can't believe that people are willing to do something that ill-advised just to prove a point. congrats, Debian, on being so rigid.
- Alisic, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Just what I wanted to say. Compared to Opera, they both pretty much suck.
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