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#1 2006-09-29 18:17:15

Lone_Wolf
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From: Netherlands, Europe
Registered: 2005-10-04
Posts: 11,868

Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Debian To Rebrand Firefox

Archlinux mozilla-firefox package also uses several patches that don't appear to come from Mozilla devs  . Could we get similar problems ?


Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.


(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

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#2 2006-09-29 19:07:14

johnisevil
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From: Hamilton, ON Canada
Registered: 2003-08-07
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Lone_Wolf wrote:

Debian To Rebrand Firefox

Archlinux mozilla-firefox package also uses several patches that don't appear to come from Mozilla devs  . Could we get similar problems ?

I don't see why it would.  Arch isn't as strict about what constitutes as "free".

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#3 2006-09-29 20:13:18

cactus
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

I have lately been feeling a bit disillusioned with firefox, and mozilla in general. This article only adds to that feeling...

I have found that the firefox browser has become slow and prone to gobble memory, at least on Linux. On the windows platform, it runs amazingly well.

I have been trying a few different browsers again lately (and revisiting some old ones), and I have been finding epiphany to be pretty good. It still uses gecko rendering, which I find a bit slow at times...

I might try opera. I have a few friends who swear by it, but I can only remember using it 'back in the day', and I wasn't overly impressed with it then...


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#4 2006-09-29 20:45:24

Lone_Wolf
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From: Netherlands, Europe
Registered: 2005-10-04
Posts: 11,868

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Attempt to clarify my question :

This is the part that may have bearing on AL :

Furthermore, Mozilla claims that if Debian runs any patches to the version of Firefox included with Debian distros, it has to run them by Mozilla first for approval.


In the source article Firefox Not Really Free? at internews.com it's a bit clearer :   

n an e-mail sent to Debian developers, Mozilla staffer Mike Connor explained that the Mozilla Corporation has been handling patch approvals from distributions since the corporation's inception in September of 2005.

"The way this works (and the way Red Hat and Novell have already gone through the process for 1.0 and 1.5) is that you have to submit patches that deviate from the source tarballs in order to continue to use the trademark," Connor wrote.



This looks to me that if you patch mozilla-firefox the patches have to be approved by mozilla , or you are not allowed to use the name/logo anymore.


Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.


(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

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#5 2006-09-29 20:55:07

allucid
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Registered: 2006-01-06
Posts: 259

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/faq.html

Doesn't say anything about patching.

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#6 2006-09-29 21:11:26

neotuli
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2004-07-06
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

A while back, this issue was already debated and handled. As far as I know, some dialogue with the mozilla guys resulted in Arch being given permission to distribute firefox using the default branding in question.


The suggestion box only accepts patches.

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#7 2006-09-29 21:40:42

cactus
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

allucid wrote:

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/faq.html

Doesn't say anything about patching.

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trade … olicy.html

Community Editions

Localization Teams and others that feel overly constrained by the guidelines regulating Official Localized Releases sometimes produce Community Editions of Mozilla products. Community Editions also are regulated by guidelines, though they are not as strict as those governing Official Localized Releases. Given that Community Editions are not as strictly regulated as Official Localized Editions, they cannot be distributed under the Mozilla name or trademarked Mozilla logos, and must be identified as Community Editions. For more information, please see Mozilla's Trademark Policy for Community Editions.

Serious Modifications

Those taking full advantage of the open-source nature of Mozilla's products and making significant functional changes may not redistribute the fruits of their labor under any Mozilla trademark. For example, it would be inappropriate for them to say "based on Mozilla Firefox". Instead, in the interest of complete accuracy, they should describe their executables as "based on Mozilla technology", or "incorporating Mozilla source code." They should also change the name of the executable so as to reduce the chance that a user of the modified software will be misled into believing it to be a native Mozilla product.

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trade … olicy.html

Basically, it sounds like you can compile the source, and alter some of the preferences, but any patching beyond that seems to fall under "Serious modifications"..


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#8 2006-09-29 21:48:15

JGC
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Registered: 2003-12-03
Posts: 1,664

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

We are allowed to ship firefox with branding, I got permission from mozilla for that. About the patches: redhat has those permissions too and 99% of all the patches we apply to our firefox packages originate from Redhat. If mozilla would keep me from maintaining the original trademarks and such, so be it, I'll stop maintaining it and purge it from the repos if they make issues of it.

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#9 2006-09-29 22:46:37

stonecrest
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From: Boulder
Registered: 2005-01-22
Posts: 1,190

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Well, Debian also had mozilla's permission at one point, and it got revoked. So I wouldn't say that having their permission is the end of the issue.

If mozilla would keep me from maintaining the original trademarks and such, so be it, I'll stop maintaining it and purge it from the repos if they make issues of it.

Lets not overreact here. If they did that, it's no reason to suddenly desert all the users that like to use firefox. Hopefully if that situation occurred, Arch would either package firefox without modifications or would go the way of Debian.


I am a gated community.

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#10 2006-09-30 05:32:17

depaloan
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Use Swiftfox

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#11 2006-09-30 05:35:26

Snowman
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From: Montreal, Canada
Registered: 2004-08-20
Posts: 5,212

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

depaloan wrote:

Swiftfox is just an optimized build of firefox. It probably has the same licencing/branding issues as firefox.

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#12 2006-09-30 08:31:19

Romashka
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Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 1,054

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

I think MOFO is going in direction that is not compatible with Free Software principles.

First, they overPRed their poor Firefox 1.0 release, then released 1.5 with 'innovative' features that were in Opera, Safari, Konqueror and Epiphany long time before, then they released a couple of security fixes within short interval between. At the same time there are so many bugs that are few years old! Now they are preparing 2.0 'mega-next-gen-release' which brings almost nothing new to be called 2.0. When it will be released Asa Doltzer and others will be blindly PRing its 'innovative' features again, declining the true facts.

I'm not trying to say that Firefox is bad. But those PRers are trying to make it like the 8th miracle of the world, while describing other browsers' long-standing features as their own 'inventions'. So stupid.

It's all sad. Instead of fixing Gecko all they do is trying to mimic other browsers, like Opera, for example (which is clearly visible in Firefox changes history), Epiphany and especially M$IE (antiphishing, 'intuitive' (read - stripped down to stupidity) and 'user-friendly' UI (read - almost a copy of IE but with different icons (but which will look more Vista-like in 2.0, horray!))). (sorry, I might be more subjective while describing UI here).

They have created Mozilla Corporation, placed ads in mass media, now they are enforcing distro makers to follow their trademark policies. It's all absolutely normal and right, but ...for commercial software. And Firefox is just that - not Free but Commercial OSS.

Gecko and SpiderMonkey are good engines. Not very fast, with some old bugs, and no visible progress until recent dev versions, but good. Old Mozilla (now SeaMonkey) was also a good browser + email client + simple web editor. Thanks for good guys SeaMonkey is live again, Gecko found its place in Epiphany. And Firefox continues to smell more like IE.

Sorry for this angry post. I'm just upset with what Mozilla->Phoenix->Firebird->Firefox became and where it is going. Sadly, there's only one usable GTK2-only (no GConf and GNOME stuff) browser - Kazehakase which I'm going to use for my Xfce now, instead of Firefox.


to live is to die

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#13 2006-09-30 08:50:26

onearm
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

I have a feeling lately that the guys of Mozilla Foundation are primarily trying to catch IE (in market share) and so they are concentrating on the win's version of FF, with the linux one as a less prioritized build. And, as linux user, I couldn't like it less. I agree with Romashka, I've thought to drop FF in favour of Seamonkey or Konqueror but I'm too used to some extensions (the real strength of FF)


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#14 2006-09-30 08:52:03

hehejo_
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From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-08
Posts: 47
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Jap, I have nearly same thoughts about Firefox 2.0.
It sounds that the improvements are to include famous plugins/extensions like tabmixplus and the like.

Let's see what the future brings.

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#15 2006-09-30 08:55:54

dtw
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From: UK
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

I thought that was a great post, Romashka smile

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#16 2006-09-30 10:41:20

allucid
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Registered: 2006-01-06
Posts: 259

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Snowman wrote:
depaloan wrote:

Swiftfox is just an optimized build of firefox. It probably has the same licencing/branding issues as firefox.

Yeah, but it doesn't use the Firefox name so everything should be ok. That was the issue: modified versions of Firefox could not be called Firefox.

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#17 2006-09-30 11:33:58

depaloan
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Registered: 2006-07-12
Posts: 18
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

allucid wrote:
Snowman wrote:
depaloan wrote:

Swiftfox is just an optimized build of firefox. It probably has the same licencing/branding issues as firefox.

Yeah, but it doesn't use the Firefox name so everything should be ok. That was the issue: modified versions of Firefox could not be called Firefox.

Exactly big_smile

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#18 2006-09-30 12:05:41

JGC
Developer
Registered: 2003-12-03
Posts: 1,664

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Looking at the debian bugreport attached to this issue, it seems we're not allowed to use official trademark shit also. it seems somewhere in 2005, after I got their permission to use official branding, the policy has changed: every patch or change you apply has to be processed by the mozilla guys. Every single improvement you make that they don't like voids your rights to use the firefox logos and trademarks.
My guess will be that thunderbird and firefox will come without the --enable-official-branding flag for the next release. AFAIK it's no longer called "firefox" then, but "Firefox community edition", which also has some of the stupid license restrictions.

Ah well, at least xulrunner isn't trademarked (yet), so I have a free epiphany at this moment smile

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#19 2006-09-30 12:20:18

entvex
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Registered: 2006-04-02
Posts: 52

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

why is mozzila doing this ?? trying to kill open soures sad
and i was thinking FF was The one to show how good open code is sad
i feel like mozilla is cheating on me


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#20 2006-09-30 12:23:56

Romashka
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Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 1,054

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

This is exactly what I was thinking about, Jan.
So, will there be another firefox & thunderbild builds now, or when 2.0 will be released?


to live is to die

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#21 2006-09-30 12:27:08

Leffe
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Registered: 2006-05-30
Posts: 47

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Romashka wrote:

M$IE (antiphishing

Netcraft were first (2004).

allucid wrote:

Yeah, but it doesn't use the Firefox name so everything should be ok. That was the issue: modified versions of Firefox could not be called Firefox.

Their homepage states it is a Mozilla Firefox build.

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#22 2006-09-30 12:34:01

Romashka
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Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 1,054

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

entvex wrote:

why is mozzila doing this ?? trying to kill open soures sad

No, I don't think so. But - money! Do you know how big is their profit? Try to google. I don't remember exact link, but it is a lot of money!
BTW, do all of you noticed that MozCorp hired ExMSIE security chief recently?

entvex wrote:

and i was thinking FF was The one to show how good open code is sad

Nope. There are quite big list of free OSS projects taht ate really good. (I think most of you  can create such list by yourself). But Firefox is not one of them (IMHO).


to live is to die

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#23 2006-09-30 14:48:35

Snarkout
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Registered: 2005-11-13
Posts: 542

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

I generally only use firefox on my Windows box at work, not because I dislike it, but because I like Konqueror more.  My wife uses it everywhere, though, and loves it because I can import her prefs from other machines easily.  This means she can have a Mac, a Windows box, and a linux box that all look and act the same while she's browsing.  We shouldn't underestimate the importance of this.

I'm still trying to figure out who is being the asshat in the current situation with Moz and Debian.  I also wonder if it's more a matter of business community vs idealist community than a real, valid argument.


Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
-Albert Einstein

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#24 2006-09-30 14:59:16

JGC
Developer
Registered: 2003-12-03
Posts: 1,664

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

Romashka wrote:

This is exactly what I was thinking about, Jan.
So, will there be another firefox & thunderbild builds now, or when 2.0 will be released?

It will either be the next security update, or before we ship the 0.8 official release of archlinux. I don't want these packages with trademark stuff in the official release of 0.8 when the fix is just so easy.

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#25 2006-09-30 15:41:11

stonecrest
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From: Boulder
Registered: 2005-01-22
Posts: 1,190

Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

entvex wrote:

why is mozzila doing this ?? trying to kill open soures sad

They are still, and always have been, open source. Please learn the difference between free and open source, they are not the same.


I am a gated community.

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