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#26 2006-09-30 17:59:22

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

JGC wrote:

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.

If a name-change is required I would suggest to share the name of this-thing-is-firefox-without-brand with Debian.

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#27 2006-09-30 20:32:55

Snowman
Developer/Forum Fellow
From: Montreal, Canada
Registered: 2004-08-20
Posts: 5,212

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.

OK, I misundertood the issue then.

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#28 2006-09-30 20:59:42

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

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

I would use Konquerer if it weren't for the fact that I can't stand KDE. Besides stuff dependant on Qt and KDE libs what other browsers are out there? I wouldn't feel good becoming dependant on xulrunner, as this could also feel the wraith of Mozilla's marketing machine in the future.

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#29 2006-09-30 21:08:09

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

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

Snarkout wrote:

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.

She can try Opera.

iBertus wrote:

I would use Konquerer if it weren't for the fact that I can't stand KDE. Besides stuff dependant on Qt and KDE libs what other browsers are out there?

Opera. It requires only Qt and could also be statically linked (there is a package in AUR). If you want GTK but not XULRunner then try Gtk+ WebCore Project will mature quickly.
UPDATE: hmm.. nice browser: Atlantis

BTW, I'm impressed with the WebCore/KHTML progress.


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#30 2006-09-30 21:11:32

Gullible Jones
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Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

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

cactus wrote:

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

Tell me about it.

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.

It performs better on Windows but the start time seems to increase with each version. On Linux, I find the current version very sluggish and unresponsive - not as bad as, say, Azureus, but not good at all. Turning off Pango support helped a bit, but not all that much.

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...

Kazahakase looks like it might be good too, it uses XULRunner and GTK2 (no Gnome deps). Quite unstable last time I tried it, though, and the interface is IMHO ugly and poorly thought out.

(I use Galeon right now; I find it faster and less annoying than Epiphany, though it is lacking in some respects.)

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...

I've tried the Linux version a few times, and found the interface to be pretty sluggish, like Firefox. The rendering speed was better than Gecko's but nothing to shout about; what struck me the most was that it would render certain elements at different speeds - text would all be rendered very quickly, followed by images, but tables and such would take a second or two to show up. I'm not sure if that was a bug or just the way Presto works.

FWIW, the Kazehakase devs have plans for giving it support for other rendering engines. I'm not holding my breath though, the only one that could really replace Gecko (GTK-Webcore) seems to be dead - there's been nothing on the mailing list at all since June.

Edit: fixed quotation.

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#31 2006-09-30 21:22:54

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

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

Gullible Jones wrote:

Kazahakase looks like it might be good too, it uses XULRunner and GTK2 (no Gnome deps). Quite unstable last time I tried it, though, and the interface is IMHO ugly and poorly thought out.

Yes, Kazehakase's GUI is not very good.

Gullible Jones wrote:

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...

I've tried the Linux version a few times, and found the interface to be pretty sluggish, like Firefox. The rendering speed was better than Gecko's but nothing to shout about; what struck me the most was that it would render certain elements at different speeds - text would all be rendered very quickly, followed by images, but tables and such would take a second or two to show up. I'm not sure if that was a bug or just the way Presto works.

It all depends which version you have tried. Have you tried 9.0x recently? It works like a charm. I use it mostly on Windows I didn't see any differences in Linux version.

Gullible Jones wrote:

FWIW, the Kazehakase devs have plans for giving it support for other rendering engines. I'm not holding my breath though, the only one that could really replace Gecko (GTK-Webcore) seems to be dead - there's been nothing on the mailing list at all since June.

Didn't know about that. It's sad. I think they just don't have enough resources to keep in sync with mainstream Qt version. There should be a major improvements in KHTML in KDE4.


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#32 2006-09-30 21:27:11

magnum_opus
Member
Registered: 2005-01-26
Posts: 132

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

entvex wrote:

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

cause if you don't defend a trademark you lose it.
if they lose their trademark then they lose a lot of legal recourse if some one starts offering firefox downloads that are patched to install rootkits or whatever, and while most people wouldn't download it of a random website they might download it off say sony's website or debian's website or whatever (not accusing any one, well except sony, but certainly not debian), and that would be a Bad Thing for firefox and mozcorp

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#33 2006-09-30 21:31:07

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

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

magnum_opus wrote:
entvex wrote:

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

cause if you don't defend a trademark you lose it.
if they lose their trademark then they lose a lot of legal recourse if some one starts offering firefox downloads that are patched to install rootkits or whatever, and while most people wouldn't download it of a random website they might download it off say sony's website or debian's website or whatever (not accusing any one, well except sony, but certainly not debian), and that would be a Bad Thing for firefox and mozcorp

But they could make some exceptions for some good distros. I don't think that they think that Debian can make patched Firefox with rootkit.  wink


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#34 2006-09-30 21:33:47

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

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

The KHTML situation is a simple example of lack of modular design. At the core, there is no reason for the guts of KHTML to depend on every KDE lib. This type of system should be built in such a manner that it's easy to change it from Qt to GTK and also from KDE to GNOME or any other desktop. The problem is that developers don't see their products as anything that someone else might try to use differently than they would themselves. I also expect some of it has to do with not wanting GNOME (the competition) to make use of the slick KHTML engine. The only way Apple was ever able to do it was to almost rewrite the whole thing.

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#35 2006-09-30 21:41:55

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

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

Apple didn't rewrite so much code. Apple's WebCore and KDE's KHTML are almost identical, if I'm correct.


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#36 2006-09-30 22:00:22

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

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

So, wait... we're complaining that mozilla doesn't want people redistributing patched versions of firefox with their name, but we're okay with the completely non-free and non-open source opera?

Alright then.


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#37 2006-09-30 22:02:48

elasticdog
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From: Washington, USA
Registered: 2005-05-02
Posts: 995
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

magnum_opus wrote:
entvex wrote:

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

cause if you don't defend a trademark you lose it.
if they lose their trademark then they lose a lot of legal recourse if some one starts offering firefox downloads that are patched to install rootkits or whatever, and while most people wouldn't download it of a random website they might download it off say sony's website or debian's website or whatever (not accusing any one, well except sony, but certainly not debian), and that would be a Bad Thing for firefox and mozcorp

Exactly...I think a lot of people are missing the issue here.  Firefox is having growing pains due to their own success.  It's all about their legal responsibility to defend their trademark in order to keep end users protected and ensure that their trademark is secure (which is important for any software, not just commercial).

Yes, it's open source, but if someone takes that source, and inserts a rootkit, or virus, or whatever that causes mass problems, basically the Mozilla Foundation doesn't want to be the one held responsible for it.  Thus, if you make a change in the code, you can't still call it "Firefox" unless you get those changes approved.  Debian, at this point, doesn't want to follow those rules, because they are making only minor branding changes, IIRC, and they think it will hinder their process.  So they got in an argument over the issue.

Having said that, I do agree that Firefox devs need to concentrate more on real bug fixes and speed improvements cross-platform and not do all these feature-hyping releases that don't do much of anything.  For the plugins alone though, I still think it's the best option out there.

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#38 2006-09-30 22:06:16

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

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

stonecrest wrote:

So, wait... we're complaining that mozilla doesn't want people redistributing patched versions of firefox with their name, but we're okay with the completely non-free and non-open source opera?

Alright then.

big_smile
I mentioned Opera mainly as faster & more standards compliant alternative + the only one except Firefox for both Linux, MacOS X and Windows. See what posts I was answering to.

Gecko-based browsers are good alternative too, but I don't know any for both Linux, MacOS X and Windows.

BTW, it's free, but not as in 'free speech', just freeware.


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#39 2006-09-30 22:39:46

stavrosg
Member
From: Rhodes, Greece
Registered: 2005-05-01
Posts: 330
Website

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

Romashka wrote:

BTW, it's free, but not as in 'free speech', just freeware.

Again, and as stated in the offending links, if you remove the artwork and the name, you end up with a completely free browser, distributed under the GPL lisence. And if you put something like "A browser  based on the firefox codebase" in the package description, most people will not fhave trouble locating it. And you're not violating anything.
So where's the problem?  roll

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#40 2006-09-30 22:46:55

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

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

stavrosg wrote:

Again, and as stated in the offending links, if you remove the artwork and the name, you end up with a completely free browser, distributed under the GPL lisence. And if you put something like "A browser  based on the firefox codebase" in the package description, most people will not fhave trouble locating it. And you're not violating anything.
So where's the problem?  roll

1st - position of MozCorp about their trademarks. It is not in the spirit of Free Software. It's commercial OSS. And many people just don't like this.
2nd - if each distro will start to rename firefox & thunderbird, then how many new names will be there? I think much more than enough. This will confuse newbies.


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#41 2006-10-01 00:01:06

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

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

Romashka wrote:

1st - position of MozCorp about their trademarks. It is not in the spirit of Free Software. It's commercial OSS. And many people just don't like this.

-1 Flamebait

Romashka wrote:

2nd - if each distro will start to rename firefox & thunderbird, then how many new names will be there? I think much more than enough. This will confuse newbies.

I wouldn't be surprised if distros all chose the same name, assuming it gets to that.


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#42 2006-10-01 03:26:35

cactus
Taco Eater
From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰
Registered: 2004-05-25
Posts: 4,622
Website

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

It is well within the rights of the moz foundation to enforce their trademark..in fact, they have to..if they want it to remain a trademark. selective enforcement would lead to it being overturned in a challenge. so..i understand it..

their terms of use are fine. I think it will just cause end users a bit of confusion when a distro provides browserX, which is firefox with maybe a patch or two... it will definately reduce the exposure of the mozilla corp brand..

*shrug*


"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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#43 2006-10-01 08:52:29

onearm
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From: Anywhere but here
Registered: 2006-07-06
Posts: 359
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Re: Debian To Rebrand Firefox - Does this affect archlinux ?

cactus wrote:

I think it will just cause end users a bit of confusion when a distro provides browserX, which is firefox with maybe a patch or two... it will definately reduce the exposure of the mozilla corp brand..

Exactly what we don't need to make more people switch to linux or OSS in general, more confusion. I can understand the reasons of the MozCorp but I don't think it is a right move now, they haven't yet enough brand recognition.


To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
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#44 2006-10-01 09:46:03

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

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

cactus wrote:

their terms of use are fine. I think it will just cause end users a bit of confusion when a distro provides browserX, which is firefox with maybe a patch or two... it will definately reduce the exposure of the mozilla corp brand..

Exactly! Then "Firefox" will be only in Novell's, RedHat's and other distros which will have "approved" patched versions. Others will call Firefox something else - so the brand "Firefox" will be less widespread.
There's no such problem on Windows, however. Maybe MozCorp just don't care about most Linux distros as much as about Windows?


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#45 2006-10-01 09:53:47

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

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

stonecrest wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if distros all chose the same name, assuming it gets to that.

IMHO you are too optimistic.  wink


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#46 2006-10-01 09:58:54

stavrosg
Member
From: Rhodes, Greece
Registered: 2005-05-01
Posts: 330
Website

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

Romashka wrote:

There's no such problem on Windows, however. Maybe MozCorp just don't care about most Linux distros as much as about Windows?

That's the impression I have since the early 1.5.0 days. It's the perfect browser in windows, but sub-par in linux.

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#47 2006-10-01 19:56:41

allucid
Member
Registered: 2006-01-06
Posts: 259

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

Romashka wrote:
cactus wrote:

their terms of use are fine. I think it will just cause end users a bit of confusion when a distro provides browserX, which is firefox with maybe a patch or two... it will definately reduce the exposure of the mozilla corp brand..

Exactly! Then "Firefox" will be only in Novell's, RedHat's and other distros which will have "approved" patched versions. Others will call Firefox something else - so the brand "Firefox" will be less widespread.
There's no such problem on Windows, however. Maybe MozCorp just don't care about most Linux distros as much as about Windows?

Windows users use the official Firefox build so none of this applies.

[this is not directed at anyone in particular]
If you have problems with the terms of the trademark, then don't use Firefox. I think we could all do without the conspiracy theories, though.

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#48 2006-10-01 20:17:04

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

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

allucid wrote:

If you have problems with the terms of the trademark, then don't use Firefox.

Well, soon Arch users will have something like ...ArchFox, maybe  roll


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#49 2006-10-01 21:19:06

PJ
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2005-10-11
Posts: 602

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

Romashka wrote:
allucid wrote:

If you have problems with the terms of the trademark, then don't use Firefox.

Well, soon Arch users will have something like ...ArchFox, maybe  roll

Why are you so conserned about the name? The source is still released under GPL (and of course LGPL & MPL). Why bother about the name. It's still the same browser underneath, even if it has to change name and graphics.

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#50 2006-10-01 21:24:29

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

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

PJ wrote:

Why are you so conserned about the name? The source is still released under GPL (and of course LGPL & MPL). Why bother about the name. It's still the same browser underneath, even if it has to change name and graphics.

I'm not concerned about the name. I don't care what exact name will be. tongue
Of course new name won't change anything. It will be the same Firefox with patches from Arch devs, as always.


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